Mitt Romney, The LDS Question, and Flipfloppery / 12-13-11

Going to tread lightly here, because this is a sensitive topic. Don't expect a lot of biting wit.

Mitt Romney has two problems.

First, he's a Mormon.

Important clarification: He doesn't have a problem with me. I would vote for a Democrat who's a Mormon. If Harry Reid (you know, the Senate Majority Leader) were running for office in my state, I would choose him over the right-wing alternative. His policy squares with mine. He could be an atheist, a Baptist, a Buddhist, whatever, I really couldn't possibly care less. I want left-wingers in office enacting left-wing policies, thwarting right-wing initiatives.

Yeah, well, as luck would have it, Mitt Romney isn't running for my vote, for the Senate in a reliably blue state, or for governor again, as a moderate Republican.

He's running for the chance to represent the Republicans in an election for President of the United States. And to get there, he needs to win over the people who vote in primaries.

And yeah. Between 40 and 60 percent of the R primary electorate, depending on the state, is made up of evangelical Christians. About half of those of those believe Mormonism is a cult. Trust my numbers, or just do the math: roughly, a quarter of R primary voters gladly place Romney in the Cult Box.

Important fact: Christians classify their Mormon brethren in that uncomplimentary way for multiple reasons. But chief among those is that in LDS circles, the Book of Mormon is viewed as equal to the Bible.

Understatement: fair or unfair, when the LDS church went that route, it was practically asking for the "cult" label. Denying the divinity of Christ is the biggest massive breach of orthodoxy I can imagine, and right behind that, in second place, lies messing with the ultimate authority of the Word of God.

Like I said, that's neither here nor there for me. I have my own tenuous relationship with so-called orthodox dogma. (Really? A virgin birth? Are you serious?)

But again, I'm not voting in the Republican primaries. It's most definitely here and there for a large swath of the people Romney needs to reach.

When combined with his propensity to, um, how to say this -- his propensity to let his views on certain issues "evolve," and his extremely moderate past during his governorship of Massachusetts, Romney has a big problem. He's not appealing to the people who decide if he's appealing.

So he keeps polling between 20 and 30 percent, time and again, week after week, state after state. Forgive me, but duh.

I'll be shocked if Romney garners more than a third of the Republican vote in any primary outside of New England and the Mountain West. And that's no path to the nomination.

But if not Mitt, who?

Tomorrow, I'll give newt Gingrich the same treatment. (Spoiler: The post ends with "But if not Newt, who?")

Ho, Ho, Ho Say Can You See / 11-28-11

With Thanks being all safely Given and out of our public consciousness for eleven months and three weeks, another holiday takes center stage, which it has already taken, because it could.

I'm talking about Christmas! No, really! (ed. note: strike two previous sentences)

Christmas, the superpower of holidays.

At its core, Christmas is good. It grew out of a fantastic idea, a revolutionary idea -- God born as a human! God as a child? What! God as a finite, mortal being. What an idea. If you haven't considered it in a while, do so again. Boggle your mind.

Christmas is brimming with exuberance, optimism, gregariousness, charity. Christmas time moves people. Siblings spend their precious funds on siblings; strangers feed strangers in soup kitchens; poor kids receive gifts from anonymous donors who drop them off at suddenly altruistic places of business. The Christmas spirit is uplifting and real. Just look at the results.

If you're a certain brand of person, you would put your life on the line for Christmas. An edict barring the celebration of Christmas, under penalty of death, would not stop people from celebrating the holiday.

What I'm trying to say is that good people, given the right circumstances, would give their lives for Christmas. Because Christmas is capable of bringing out the best in us.

And Christmas can also be rude, or even ugly. It pokes its head where it doesn't belong, like November 3rd. Uninvited, and all. It can even make quite a mess, in spite of its good intentions: have you seen shoppers assault each other for bits of branded plastic or fur-covered batteries? If not, you've not been paying very good attention.

For the last two months of the year, the marketplace pleads for your money, with no limits on its cravenness. My God, ads on the radio urge us to buy CARS for our loved ones. There is no room for restraint at the inn.

There are not too many ways to say it: Christmas gets used. The Starbucks in which I sit does not serve a $4.75 eggnog latte to spread holiday cheer. (Hint: It's more for the crazy profit margin.) The big-box electronics store doesn't hawk its $799 TV (marked down $200!) just so you can share quality family time watching "Elf" every weekend.

And Christmas is part legend, a malleable one which gathers all kinds of mythology along the way. You think Abraham Lincoln is amazing? All he did was hold together a nation by sheer force of will. Santa delivers presents to every (deserving) kid faster than the speed of sound. And time. And light. You think it was cool when American ingenuity put a man on the moon 42 years ago? Mary's water broke at the end of a hundreds-of-miles-long donkeyback ride, then she birthed a deity in a feeding trough.

Christmas' ideals exhort us to be better. We often rise to the challenge.

Christmas is also covered in warts. If you take the time to look.

Boiling it down even further: Each year, when the calendar completes its circle, here we stand, ready to celebrate the greatest holiday on earth, because it's who we are, and without Christmas, many of us would feel a little empty, a little less significant, a little littler.

Holy Santa, America is Christmas.

You Heard Me / 10-29-11

Not that you were paying attention to a World Series that lacked the Yankees, Red Sox, Phillies, and all teams from Chicago or L.A. (plus nobody invited the Mariners! Again!), but yeah, there was a fair amount of drama in the Fall Classic this past week.

The Cardinals, twice a mere strike from defeat, won it all Friday night. They came back from a two-run deficit in the bottom of the ninth AND tenth innings to wrest Game 6 from the Texas Rangers, then cruised to a 6-2 Game 7 victory to claim the trophy.

This series had it all. Individual heroics, eye-popping errors (confession: "eye-pooping" was the first thing my fingers typed, and that's not so far off), outstanding pitching performances, epic at-bats, game-saving hits and catches, meltdowns, questionable decisions; oh, there was more than enough drama.

And God. There was some God, too. Well, according to Texas slugger Josh Hamilton, who says God dropped by for a nice little mid-game chat.

In the heat of the moment Thursday night, Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa couldn't place a call to the bullpen to get the right pitcher in the game. But in the opposing dugout, minutes later, Hamilton had a direct line to the Deity Formerly Known As Bruce.

"I was walking to the plate. And it happened as I was brushing dirt in the batter's box. Very cool. Y'all ought to try it sometime," said Hamilton, a self-avowed born-again Christian who turned to Jesus after years of substance abuse and all the lovely things that come with a destructive lifestyle.

I won't leave you hanging, like a lousy curveball, any longer. Here's the Transcript:

"He said, 'You haven't hit one in a while and this is the time you're going to,' '' Hamilton said. "But there was a period at the end of that. He didn't say, 'You're going to hit it and you're going to win.' "

Hamilton hit a home run that trip to the plate.

(Now to his credit, Hamilton didn't ask God to give away the game's final outcome. That would have sucked. Not for God. Strictly for Josh. Who lost the game, and the series.)

You've probably noticed that I don't take this kind of chatter very seriously, so then here are some assorted conclusions one might draw from the Hamilton-Yahweh pep talk:

1. God dislikes the Rangers. (Chalk one up for divine good taste. What whaat!)

2. Or... God was just popping in to deliver some free information about the near future. You know, between checking in on the earthquake in Turkey earlier that day that killed at least 500 people, the developing floods in Bangkok, and scattered famines and wars.

(Everyone needs some R&R, right? Letting the world's countless tragedies take their collective toll is demanding work. Not that I'd know. God doesn't talk to me. Too busy, you know, whispering some athletics-based fortunetelling in a dude's ear.)

3. Athletes really are more special than the rest of us. (We should totally pay the best ones five figures, daily. Eh, what's this now? Oh.)

4. It was actually Satan, messin' with Texas. (Ol' Luce is probably the only one who can get away with it!)

5. It was actually God. (empty parentheses, for sure)

6. Some combination of Hamilton being wrong/deceitful/confused. (Rats. The answers are losing their snark! Quick! Be all clever-like!)

7. God did speak to Hamilton, but told him he was going to ground out to shortstop. Josh is just covering for a giant Oops. (There you go, me.)

7. Something else happened. Not God speaking to Hamilton, but also not God not speaking to Hamilton. (It's very mystical. "Well, that's not very snarky." "Shut up, inner dialogue!" "Don't talk to me like that, please." "Excuse me. Who are you to say how I may and may not--")

144 Or Less, Vol. X / 8-13-11

Fourth post in four days.

Saw this plastered on a car's bumper:

I'm an American

and a Christian too!

Line 1 is bold. Driving around Suburb, WA, you gotta brand yourself. Lest anyone think you're neither of those things mentioned.

But line 2 is why the sticker, uh, stuck with me. Who defines themselves in that order? And in the superhypothetical setting of a Judgment Day, is that your plan?

"Hi."

"Hey God."

"S'up?"

"You know, the usual. Dead."

"So, you wanna spend some eternity in heaven?"

"Wait wait, I know this one... here goes... I'm an American."

"Well, in that case."

Looking terribly forward to the next generation:

I'm Caucasian

and alive too!

Or:

I speak English

and I chew my food before swallowing too!

Gosh, I hope I don't know this person.

(Word count: 139)

Hell? No / 4-26-11

A guy trying be deep wrote this recently:

"Is Gandhi in hell?"

The writer's so cute. He thinks he's asking a question. Really, it's just too adorable to pass up.

Just because you put the pretty little squiggly line with the teeny tiny dot at the end of your sentence doesn't mean you're posing a legitimate query. In this case, the writer has crushed any question contained within his words, by instead making at least four bold statements.

"Is"

Statement: Hell may be defined as a place where things, beings, spirits, SOMETHING, exists.

"Gandhi"

Statement: The brain/cells/consciousness/mind/personality that made Gandhi Gandhi live on, despite the destruction of that being's first two components. Put another way, what is left of Gandhi, post-death, can still be defined as Gandhi.

"In"

Statement: Hell has a physical location. A person/soul/spirit can occupy it.

"Hell"

Statement: Hell exists.

So go ahead, put your nifty little question mark at the end of your short little sentence. But you're not fooling me.

I reject all four statements contained within your so-called question. Go find someone else to ask your pretend stuff to.

God Isn't / 1-19-11

The practice of negative definitions has been my little spiritual friend for a while now.

God is not bound by time and space; God is not corporeal; God is neither male nor female; God is not like us. I take great solace in these "beliefs."

As a result, I recoil from declarations that begin with "God likes ____," "God's very nature is to ____," or "God will most certainly ____," especially when these become downright laughable.

Like on Monday, when a friend of a friend said, and not jokingly, "God has a twisted sense of humor." This was, mind you, in response to yet another chapter in an unemployed friend's fruitless job search. A search that has now lasted months and is taking its expected toll on all parties.

In essence, this person's super-duper helpful point was "God is cruel." Or "God likes to mess with your psyche. For fun. Come on, get in on the funny, funny joke already."

Yeah, instances like that are why it's easy to see why for so many centuries, the Catholic Church discouraged regular folk from reading the actual text of the Bible.

Got time for a casual glance at Job? You'll conclude, like our buddy from earlier, that God is indeed a sadist. A little reading of Hosea at bedtime? Well, what do you know, God's a masochist. Skim through a few Pauline epistles and God's a sexist; swim a shallow lap around Leviticus and God's a bloodthirsty legalist. (Saunter on over to Revelation and God's a drug trip. Far out.)

I don't know about you, but this God is starting to sound, like, not all there, you know?

Who wants a God like that -- or even a friend like that? Not me. I start with the belief that God possesses none of those attributes listed two paragraphs earlier. The effect is that the Bible gains a freedom it otherwise wouldn't have -- the freedom to be a collection of mankind's evolving view of a deity. Rather than revelation, it becomes insight, wisdom, poetry, guidance, philosophy, allegory.

Liberated from the need to synthesize 66 books into a Great Unifying Theory Of God's Celestial Nature, I'm able to read Job and Ecclesiastes and Deuteronomy and Philippians and take them for what their author meant them to be -- musings on how God is and is not. (With special personal gravitation toward the "is not" portion.)

And as such, the Bible continues to retain power in my life. Because I'm not looking to it for all the right answers, but instead, for the right questions to ask, it shines a light for me. Not a light of "God is exactly like this." A light of "Look at this wisdom. Read these stories. Learn. Be illuminated."

Plus, then I don't have to explain away a friend's suffering as God's twisted joke.

Music:Spirit :: Spirit:Music / 11-16-10

When I can't contemplate, worship, or philosophize, I still have a way to reach for God/Spirit/Tao/Meaning. It's by making music.

And in alarmingly increasingly oftenly times, I find myself unable -- or unwilling -- to dedicate the time to accomplish any decent contemplation, worship or philosophery. I can do each of those in a halfway indecent manner all the time. Almost well enough for them to be worthwhile. But not quite.

Fortunately, to rescue me from myself, there's music.

Lots of humans before me have praised music-making for its creative nature. You'll probably have heard someone say, about art, that to make it is to commune with the Creative Force responsible for our very existence. (It's permissible to call that Force "God." Plenty of people do so.) And we can start there, but I have a much more mystical destination I'm aiming for. With lots and lots of verbal darts.

Because creativity IS, after all, a big part of what makes us unlike the other two-eyed, four-cheeked mammals out there. Everything you see when you look out the window, no matter how ugly it might be, is the result of natural forces or artificial creativity. (Except the second-generation Hummers. Those beasts are the result of evil. Pure, no sugar-added, evil. The bad kind of evil. Look away.)

Writing a song, painting, producing a novel, sculpting: these are so quintessentially human activities that they rise above human. They become quasi-divine abilities. (Blogging is somewhat beneath that level, I admit.)

And now that I've made my quota of jokes for this post, I'm going to temporarily raise the serious level a couple of notches.

To investigate one layer deeper, it's not enough that these creative juices exist. It's their just-out-of-our-grasp-to-explain-ness that strikes me as so very special.

What moves me most about music (and you can substitute other forms of art if they're more your thing) is:

Its not fully known path. "What will come from this? Where is this headed?"

Its wind-like nature. "You can feel it, but you can't grab it."

Its water-like nature. "It moves, it ebbs, it flows, it builds, it progresses. It can fill a space. Its power can be used in so many ways."

Its omnipresence. "All observed and observable societies employ it."

Its omnipotence. "All can receive blessing, happiness, joy, revelation -- and maybe even meaning -- from it."

(Funny, these all are ways people have chosen, for millennia, to illustrate what they call "spiritual" or "divine.")

Before I return to music as water, I want to make a couple more pointlets.

Music has immediacy. It has presency -- a Johnvented word which I define as its "being present in the present and not elsewhere or even elsewhen." It's here, you can sense it, but you can only have it in the moment. You can remember it, but that's not the same as experiencing it happen. Like the present, it only exists while it exists, and it doesn't exist out of that bar-less cage. A plan or an outline or instructions for the performance of music, those things exist at all times. The instruments themselves continue to exist when we're not playing them.

But the music only takes place at its moment. If you miss it, tough beans. That portion of it is gone, forever. It is when it is.

Also, music has a way of acting as a metaphor for our bodies. Music is physical and physics-based, as there are sound waves involved, so far as we can tell. Just as our bodies obey a number of physical laws simultaneously in order to function, music can exist only when the right waves coalesce at the right time. And yet there's something non-physical going on in both cases, right? We experience consciousness, whatever that is, and we gather it's not purely a chemical reaction. We experience music, and the waves resonate in our inner ear and transmit messages to our brain, and the brain conjures up emotions to accompany those messages, but there's more than simply that chemical reaction going on.

I can teach kids that a C-E-G combination creates a major chord, which suggest happy or bright feelings, but those feelings don't flow just from the wave patterns or the accepted conventional associations that go with major chords. They seem to happen on another level, which is probably good, since they're feelings and sensations, not equations. (Feel free to write an algorithm for "peace" to disprove me.)

And then, crucially for me, the way we talk about music has a way of sounding like the way we talk about the Tao.

It's adaptable. It's malleable.

It fills areas. It envelops them too.

It works around stuff. It even moves around walls and people and objects of relative animateness.

It escapes definition. Playfully, almost.

Its source is hard to find, but its effects are easy to observe.

It can be used, harnessed, wielded, yet remains impossible to hoard.

Hm.

To wrap this up, ponder bad music. To you, bad music might mean opera, country, a kid singing out of tune, grunge, or an hour spent watching America Idol. But I'm not talking about matters of personal taste here. As much as I dislike certain brands of music, I know a good performer when I hear one, despite the medium.

I mean consider poor music: poor in effort, poor in creativity, poor in originality, poor in execution.

It just... it just feels so dirty, so wasteful, so irresponsible. So sacrilegious.

And you could say the same for other forms of art, no? Life Theory Moment: The reason so many people despise modern art is that they feel cheated by it, like it ought to do something special, accomplish something, set something in motion, like it ought to turn wheels in their head, at least make them quizzical, but NOT make them indifferent.

So something done wrong feels like sacrilege... then its opposite, that same thing done right, I'd like to call sacred. So it is for music.

144 or Less, Vol. V / 11-16-10

I like to avoid calling people hypocrites -- it's never too long before that kind of talk whips around and bites you in both buttcheeks.

However, if I see another "I don't value riches" type of slogan on an pricey piece of luxury, the irony is going to kill me instantaneously.

Across the bumper of a shiny new Benz today: "Don't let the car fool you -- my treasure is in heaven."

Thirty seconds later, on the lawn of an immaculately landscaped gated home, sitting on a one-acre lot, complete with speedboat in arched driveway: "Our treasure is in heaven."

Like I said, hypocrisy ain't the issue. It's the denial. People should buy nice things if they like spending their money on nice things. Freedom! America!

But don't wallpaper your materialism with anti-materialist slogans. That just looks dumb.

(Word count: 142)

Mediawful / 9-27-10

(Preventative Strike: Here's the link to the full article in question. It is less than four hours old as of this precise moment. Here's the link to an analysis of the survey results being discussed.)

Stop The Presses. Never got a chance to say that in my newspaper days. Nowadays, of course, it'd be Stop The Upload, or Sever The Connection, but those have a decidedly less dramatic ring to them.

What are we press-stopping about? Why, beloved readers, it just so happens that American atheists and agnostics (informally known as the AAA) have outperformed Christians on a test of religious knowledge.

Boom-shakalaka!

By now, the three of you who are still reading despite my incomparable nerdiness, you guys will have skillfully predicted where I'm going with this. Coming up in fifteen seconds: violent rant on how Christians don't even know as much about their own faith as non-Christians! What a sorry spiritual state we occupy, even as we strive to be God's chosen people, blessed in every way and entrusted with the holy mission of showing the heathen the error of their ways. What a failure we are as a, nay, THE Christian nation.

That would be some serious ironic, sarcastic fun. But I'm not going there.

Instead, I'm compelled to rant about how this article sums up the sorry state of journalism in 2010.

The writer's opening paragraph (the "lede" for all you non-reporters):

"If you want to know about God, you might want to talk to an atheist. Heresy? Perhaps."

I know lame when I see it, and that's lame lame megalame lame. With a false equivalency thrown in for good measure. Come on. The survey we're getting to measured respondents' knowledge about religious facts. Not about the nature of God. There's a difference, pinhead.

And how is that heresy anyway? Maybe irony. Maybe.

And why is the "Perhaps" there? To hedge your bets? To not offend? To seem even-handed? To be extra-super lame?

Later in the same story:

"The Pew survey was not without its bright spots for the devout. Eight in 10 people surveyed knew that Mother Teresa was Catholic. Seven in 10 knew that, according to the Bible, Moses led the exodus from Egypt and that Jesus was born in Bethlehem."

It's a "bright spot" that 20 percent of believers can't remember that Mother Teresa was a Catholic nun?

Oh wait, that just what the writer was implying. That's not an actual correct interpretation of the data. That number was for the public at large, of which 82 percent correctly answered the question. And how is it good news for "the devout" that 71 percent of people know that the Bible claims Jesus was born in Bethlehem? What makes that good news? (Let's leave aside the fun fact that Jesus, according to most biblical scholars, was born in Nazareth. Had to mention that. Sorry.)

The article's stupid conclusion:

"For comparison purposes, the survey also asked some questions about general knowledge, which yielded the scariest finding: 4% of Americans believe that Stephen King, not Herman Melville, wrote "Moby Dick."

So the "scariest finding" of all is the comforting fact that 96 percent of the population correctly knows that Stephen King did not write "Moby Dick."

Oh good. Now I can sleep at night. (Must confess, for a while there, I was worried that maybe 4 percent of Americans were trying to check out Herman Melville's "It" from the public library.)

I feel more knowledgeable, yet dumber, for having read that story. Stop hurting my brain, mass media outlets!

Buggers, v. 1.0 / 8-24-10

Things that happen in everyday life sometimes get my goat. They can keep it. The goat, that is. In return, I will continue to produce mini-posts like this one, called "Buggers." Because who really wants to pet a peeve these days? And who doesn't like to say "buggers," with just a trace of a British accent? Yeah, that's right.

[[Parental Advisory: Explicit Theological Sarcasm Ahead]]

Church readerboards are great, because they never mislead, confuse, or err in any way whatsoever. They're exactly like the pope!

Driving along recently, I chanced to gobble up this tasty tidbit, delivered to commuters by one Kirkland congregation: "The Lord delights in those who fear him."

So that's a Bible verse, I'm guessing. Sounds familiar. I'll look it up. Hey, it's Psalm 147, verse 11. (I'm not exaggerating when I say 20 seconds passed between the word "up" and this one right "here." I do so love the Googley Webbamajingy.) Incidentally, the second part of that verse -- the useful stuff -- was left off, the part where it adds, "who put their hope in his unfailing love." But now I'm way ahead of myself. Bad habit.

Yeah, so it's practically impossible to get the wrong idea from the first part of that verse. You'd have to do the unthinkable: read it literally, using commonly accepted definitions of widely understood terms. And who wants to do that?

"delights in those who": You too, can gain God's favor with your behavior! Which is good, because most of us, for as long as civilization has existed, have decided to live by a variant of this rule: "Don't piss the deity off."

"fear": Usually, the term "fear" is used to mean "fear." Yeah, but in this case, it doesn't have anything to do with being frightened of God, as biblical scholars have explained ad nauseam. (Literally, I'm sure.) It's a combination of reverence, awe and respect.

I know this. Seminary students know this. The clergy know this. (Mostly.) People who've spent a decade or two in Sunday School know this. Nine-year-old preacher's kids know this. Pretty soon, once we throw a couple more population groups in there, we'll reach four percent of the people driving by who know this. The other 96 percent are going to tend to substitute, in their minds, for the word "fear," the synonym "fear." By which they will mean something close to "being frightened of that scary thing which makes me feel afraid." That sensation is known as, wait for it, "fear." People ascribe the word "fear" to describe it. So fear God, people! Even if that's not what the author meant!

"him": I realize I'm fighting another uphill battle here, but God isn't actually a him, last I checked, and any verse that calls God a him is only marginally useful, as it is built on a myopic image of God. And if there were verses calling God a her (besides the one that turns God into a giant chicken), those would be equally insufficient. "It" isn't that great of a pronoun for God either. I like to use the gender neutral term "God" when trying to put God in a neat little box. Try it sometime!

Now I understand that the Psalmist, who was not attempting to produce a piece of scripture at the time, but was doing a bit of sacred songwriting instead, and not even directly aimed at the east side of Lake Washington at that, that this writer probably meant that to respect God is pleasing to God and leads to a better life. It's a great point.

A little obvious, maybe, but certainly a point worth making. Or worth ruining on a readerboard, that's OK too.

I Slam Islam / 8-16-10

Religious puns are the best.

As you'd imagine, I don't personally have any problem with Islam. I mean, no more problem than with every other organized religion. All self-perpetuating institutions screw up every so often, go off the deep end, do some seriously f'ed-up stuff in obvious complete opposition to the purported teachings of their faith. It doesn't take a whole lotta research to find some pretty massive screw-ups by powerful people claiming to act in a religion's best interest. (As if that were even possible. If you have truth, it will win out, with or without your "help," such as it may be.)

But slamming Islam has become something of a national sport, and it's driving me absolutely crazy. People with megaphones are going out of their way to trample the Bill of Rights in a way that should shame them -- but instead, they're proud of their actions.

Case in point: the media-driven furor over the right of Muslims living in Manhattan to build a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero. City planners in Manhattan approved the project, which consists of a mosque and community center designed to improve relations between Muslims and non-Muslims. (Please provide your own ironic comment here.) Obviously, their plans didn't please EVERYONE.

"In my opinion, the prospect of a mosque right near this site of reverence and respect for lost loved ones from the attack shows a serious lack of sensitivity.In fact, the majority of the country is strongly opposed to building a mosque at the site of the most tragic terrorist attack on America." That's from Senator David Vitter of Louisiana. I chose his words because they were less inflammatory than the average politician's. (I could have quoted the usual blowhards here -- you know who you are -- but I wanted to save that for later. And Vitter's right about the "majority of the country," but we'll get to that in due course as well. Like, after about 5,000 words of snarkventarrhea. What? Is too a word.)

As I was saying. Not everyone so happy-happy joy-joy about this turn of events. So when President Obama stated that Muslims are entitled, as per the basic rules of our country, to build places of worship near their places of residence, his pronouncement was national news. THIS JUST IN: Obama Supports Freedom Of Assembly! BREAKING NEWS: Obama Consults Constitution In Crafting Opinion!

Excuse me, but Duh.

Only somehow, Not Duh.

Newt Gingrich, this past Sunday, on Fox: "Nazis don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington. We would never accept the Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor. There’s no reason for us to accept a mosque next to the World Trade Center."

GOP congressional candidate Elliott Maynard (W. Va.): "Do you think the Muslims would allow a Jewish temple or Christian church to be built in Mecca?"

I could point out that Gingrich just equated attending a religious service with genocide, and that Maynard thinks that we should exchange constitutions with Saudi Arabia, but I have faith that their words fail on their own, without my help. (Oops.)

Important data on its way. Aaaaaaaaaaand... go:

61 percent of Americans: "Muslims have the right to build a mosque near Ground Zero."

64 percent of Americans: "Muslims should not build a mosque near Ground Zero."

(Those figures come from a Fox News poll. That's all I'm going to say about that. Actually, their polling is not the worst in the business, as long as you)

Sarah Palin read the poll results and chimed in. (I like her. But maybe not in the way you think.) On her twitter page recently, which I really really won't link to: "We all know that they have the right to do it, but should they? This is not above your pay grade. " Sarah is awesome. She manages to say, like millions of others before and since, that freedom is fine as a CONCEPT. Just don't try and exercise it. Well, not you guys at least.

As for Democrats who deserve a flogging, I give you Senate Majority "Leader" Harry Reid, who opposes, for stupid reasons, the building of the mosque at that location. "The First Amendment protects freedom of religion," wrote Jim Manley, a spokesman for Reid. "Sen. Reid respects that but thinks that the mosque should be built someplace else."

(Like maybe in Harlem? Or Brooklyn? How far is far enough, people? What degree of inconvenience do we need to impose on Muslims to make ourselves feel better about... well, whatever it is we need to feel better about at the time?)

Now Reid I can forgive. Sort of. He's in a tight re-election race, he needs to move to the center by taking some positions to his right, to move beyond his base. Those kind of tactics are covered in Intro to Beginners' Basic Elementary Campaigning, Level Zero. I bet Reid doesn't even believe the statement his camp published. He's a Mormon, for crying out loud. He knows about religious intolerance. At least in theory.

But how is it even possible, in the first place, that party lines are drawn over this issue? How is it possible that Reid pissing all over the Bill of Rights is a "move to the center?" I so do want to write "What have we come to as a nation," but I permit myself only x+1 cliches per post.

Unless... unless... the right wing is the side that stopped believing in freedom of religion. Which would be an interesting stance for the party which depends on fundamentalist Christian votes to survive.

RNC Chair Mike Steele: "Mosques are a luxury. We Christians will decide where they may be built, if we allow them at all."

Fundamentalist Stooges: "OK."

Steele: "We'll do the same for the synagogues."

Stooges: "Well, all right."

Steele: "And no more parishes. Until I say so."

Stooges: "Er."

Steele: "Oh, and Rush says no wards outside of Utah."

Stooges: "Uh-"

Steele: "Also, let's say, no-"

Stooges: "Later guys. Let's go make our OWN party."

(Wet dream ends.)

Does it occur to nobody that if the situation were reversed, that the Christian fundies would howl -- and rightfully so -- that their rights were being denied by an oppressive Islamic majority? (It occurs to me. I've thought about it, and I'm only six or seven times more intelligent than your average cable news host or candidate for office, so you'd think some of them would have caught on by now. Or decided that they've been pretending too long to not catch on.)

(Holy punctuation overload, Batman. If this keeps up, my parentheses keys are going to fall off.)

Other Western countries are playing the I Slam Islam game, too. France's congress banned the burqa last month. Canada isn't donating to disaster relief in Pakistan at nearly the rate it gave to Haiti. For a disaster affecting 14 million people in Pakistan, Canadians have cobbled together $200,000 dollars in the first week. Haiti received 17 times more -- $3.5 million in the first seven days. Even more stats: Haiti's TOTAL population is 70 percent of Pakistan's 14 million flood-displaced humans. Phood4thot.

However this ends up playing out, I believe Obama can make some serious hay here. I earnestly -- if naively -- believe that if he were to spend the next few days emphatically driving home the point that people of all faiths are welcome to build houses of worship near their houses of sleepship, and that this is what religious freedom is all about, that he could convince a vast majority of Americans that he is right. Not because he says it's right, but because the guys who wrote the Constitution said so. But he has to be clear, forceful and he has to call out the opposition for putting themselves above the Founding Fathers. (I'm not hopeful here: he's already gone back once on his opening statement, to add that "I was not commenting, and I will not comment, on the wisdom of making a decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically on the right that people have that dates back to our founding.")

Even so, forget for a moment that he'd be constitutionally correct in defending religious freedom. (God, do I REALLY have to write that sentence??) Consider instead that the number of non-Christian believers in this country is holding steady or increasing while the number of Christians is dropping precipitously. (Here are the numbers and the pretty charts: visit infoplease.com and religioustolerance.org.)

If he can establish that non-Christians and non-Christian believers have no home in the GOP, and let the demographics work in his favor, he and his party can reap the electoral benefits for years to come.

Although it's probably OK, in the short run, to do the right thing because it's the right thing. That's acceptable too.

Or if desperate measure are called for, Obama could always buck up and quote his predecessor, who, somehow, once said this: "Al Qaeda's cause is not Islam. It is a gross distortion of Islam."

If Bush were president today, and my brain just died a little from typing that, I'd like to think we'd hear him spout something similar. Something like: "Well, um, if Al Qaeda wants to build a mosque dedificated to worshipping terrism, and they want to, uh, build it two blocks from Ground Zero, then I say, Nuh-uh, No Way Hossein. Now them Musslems, theyk'n build whever they wanna. That's Merica. Land of the brave, home of the free, and all that, y'know."

That's probably enough for now.

(Although, honestly, there are so many other angles to take on this issue.

A) Why should peaceful Muslims pay for the sins of hateful terrorists who desecrate the name of Allah with their actions?

B) What's next to be politicized and debated? Trial by jury?

C) What is the significance of Ground Zero, and how are the various political forces using to their benefit? And is this OK?

D) Scapegoats are forever.

E) How is it possible that the party that defecated all over habeas corpus and now freedom of religion continues to be viable?

F) That's it for me. I'm moving to New Zealand and becoming a Hobbit.

Discuss amongst yourselves.)

What the Heaven? / 10-18-09

Four times, I've been involved in an event that had a chance to end my life.

Once, during a perilous landing on an otherwise ho-hum airplane flight. Once, in a car wreck. Once, when I collapsed climbing out of my hospital bed following surgery. Once, three weeks ago, when my internal defibrillator fired an electrical shock designed to reset my heart rate to normal levels.

But in none of those cases did I find myself sad, darkly reflective, excited, suddenly penitent, or even regretful. Instead, I was strangely calm. Unworried. If anything, curious. Slightly expectant, maybe. Even a few days or weeks after each event, I did not find myself examining my life for improvements I could make, now that I'd dodged the Grim Reaper again. I did not cope with the aftermath by making new resolutions to live life to the fullest, to cherish each day as a blessing, to soak up idyllic family moments...

Don't get me wrong. I have no death wish. I want to see my boys grow up and start families of my own. I want my (presently unwrinkly) wrinkly wife to receive the unparalleled privilege of changing my big-boy diaper, several times at least. I want to eventually not be carded for wine purchases. (You laugh, but I had to break out the ID tonight again.)

Surely you've gathered by now that I'm not going anywhere political with this one. Unless you consider the afterlife political.

Welcome to Heaven
(a subsidiary of God, LLC)
- Green Party members only* -
All others KEEP OUT

*some restrictions apply

The idea you can secure a happier, more comfy, more pleasant, less fire-slash-brimstone-heavy residence to hang out in after you buy the farm, based on your lifetime performance, that idea is nonsensical to me. To imply that we have any control over whatever part of us survives this body... that just screams "delusional" to me. I intend no offense. I just don't get it anymore.

Granted, something's going to happen after my last breath. Not only can I not really picture what that might be, I can't even picture if I will be able to experience it at all, let alone as "myself," whatever that means.

Some of you have close relatives who've died. Moms, dads, siblings, maybe even kids. That's bound to color your idea of the afterlife. I confess I've had no such experience. Which makes me no expert. Let me defer, then, to people smarter than me.

"Since life and death are each other's companions, why worry about them? All beings are one."

"The true men of old did not know what it was to love life or to hate death. They did not rejoice in birth, nor strive to put off dissolution. Unconcerned they came and unconcerned they went. That was all. They did not forget whence it was they had sprung, neither did they seek to inquire their return thither."

Both quotations are from the Chuang Tzu, another "scripture" of Taoism thought purportedly collected by a thinker of the same name. Both passages are instructing the same thing: Live life and let the afterlife sort itself out. You're not exactly in charge of it anyway.

You can argue whether this is comforting or disquieting. To me, it just rings true.

The Taoist Christian, Part 4 / 9-14-09

Part four of many.

Honesty is a good policy, they say. Let's see how that works.

A friend/family member, whose opinion I value extremely highly, remarked to me once (and I paraphrase recklessly) that my foray into Taoist philosophy was a step away from a community-based spiritual life and instead a step toward individual self-fulfillment. This person didn't mean it as either a good or a bad thing, I'm guessing. But as always, it was an astute observation. And since this spiritual journey of mine is taking me far, far away from Christian community at this time, the remark has stuck in my craw. It's been a while since I've attended church. (A while exceeds a year.) And there are reasons for that.

First and foremost, I ceased to experience the benefits of community worship when I realized just how at odds my image of God was compared to most of my fellow worshippers.

I don't believe in a superhuman God who barges in at unpredictable times to address certain situations.
I view most or all of the Bible as allegorical or as a compilation of ways folks have found to explain God and life, not a factual account of verifiable events, certainly not a document divinely dictated. Yes, I mean the Gospels, too.
I am angered by legalism and intolerance and exclusivity, each of which is on ugly display before, during and after most modern American Protestant worship services. As far as I can tell.
I can't listen to a sermon or sing hymns or choruses without discrediting most of the text in my mind. Which sucks, considering how much I love music, and how good music can enhance a spiritual experience. (Come to think of it, that last thought merits its own post, and soon.)
I believe in a highly impersonal God. An inscrutable, un-knowable God who defies definition, whose nature is far too Mysterious to grasp.

Clearly I don't belong in an evangelical worship service. But you want to take this one notch further. I can tell. Go ahead. Ask it.

"I will. How can you be ANY sort of Christian, given those qualifiers? And why would you even want to be?"

Glad you asked. When I say "Christian," your image of what that means probably has little to do with where I'm at.

But think of it this way. What if Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, John Jay, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, what if some or all of those guys were NOT actual historical figures? What if instead of them having existed, they were instead idealized versions of lesser humans, created by brilliant and powerful storytellers of the late 18th century? Or synthesized from various histories, but not living, breathing people themselves? Or what if four out the seven existed, but the others were made up?

Would America as we know it cease to exist? Would it quit functioning? Would our Constitution vanish into thin air? I'm thinking no on all accounts. It would be some pretty heavy shit to deal with, and we'd have to do more than a few mental somersaults and some national soul-searching, but we wouldn't write ourselves a new set of laws based on communist ideology. (And that's just too bad, I tell you.)

I am NOT saying that God/Jesus/Moses/Paul are imaginary figures. Just that the Bible is here and with us, and how it came to be with us is not as big of an issue as what we choose to do with the information it contains. It's not like the collective wisdom of three millenia of writing and debate about this God, like all of that is somehow imaginary. I can Google all that. It can't be invented or denied; it's there plain as day in trillions and trillions of little 1's and 0's.

What I AM saying is that I see God through the lenses of my personal experience, the wisdom contained in scripture, my upbringing, my friends and family, my limited understanding of Christ. I don't hunt for spiritual truths in the Koran or in Viking mythology and I don't care for atheism. But I'm OK with that; those are not my paths and I could not imagine myself taking them. I do consult the Tao Te Ching. And Jeremiah. And Luke. Those places are where I'm from and where I am.

Therefore, I am a Taoist Christian.

Out / 6-27-09

Three disclaimers are in order here, before we get going.

1. This isn't going to happen in your mainstream Sunday morning worship service.
2. Exorcisms are documented in the Bible.
3. The teenager is said to have requested the "procedure."

With that out of the way...

"Rip it from his throat! Come on, you homosexual demon!" a woman yells. "You homosexual spirit, we call you out right now! Loose your grip, Lucifer!"

She's addressing the body of a 16-year-old boy.

"Come out of his belly," someone commands. "It's in the belly. Push."

The teenager submits. Several people are holding him immobile. He vomits.

"Get another bag," a voice calls out. "Make sure you have your gloves."

Those are the "highlights" from the casting out of a homosexual demon. It happened recently in a small Connecticut church. The video got posted on youtube but the church took it down soon thereafter. Not soon enough.

(For the video, by the way, click here, that should do it. I feel like I should include a warning, but I guess we're all big boys and girls here.)

So the church's pastor, later, offers this explanation, which I got from msnbc.com, so take it for what it's worth.

"He was out of control in the church," she said. "This young man came to us. We didn't go to him." She wasn't calling it an exorcism, choosing instead to term it a casting out of spirits. "He was dressing like a woman and everything. And he didn't want to be like that," she said.

It's easy to get mad at all kinds of people here. The pastor, the churchgoers, the larger Christian community, the kid himself. For my part, I wonder if the church routinely performs other exorcism-type services. Like for stealing. Or for pride, or maybe even for adulterous behavior. For lust? It sounds like I'm being flippant, but I'm not -- maybe they do. I can see that happening... some congregations are pretty immersed in the Angels vs. Demons business. So maybe during this particular "casting out" adventure, everyone got a little carried away because of the gayness factor? No... my gut tells me this is just another way for small minds to brand homosexuals as the scary subhuman other.

The video leaves me a little sad, plenty angry and more than a little ashamed, as a guy who still likes to call himself a Christian. But maybe the fact it got publicized nationally and then got mentioned on a few thousand blogs here and there will change something somewhere.

I'm left shaking my head. And thinking the same thing as this gay rights advocate, quoted in the same msnbc.com story: "What saddens me is the people that are doing this think they are doing something in the kid's best interests, when in fact they're murdering his spirit."

The Taoist Christian, Part 3

Part 3 of many.

I suppose I've never really believed... no, scratch that, I've been moving away in the past 15 years from the idea of God as a superhuman being. And toward the idea of God as fundamentally other.

"Well, John, nobody really believes God is just a omnipotent, invisible dude. Of course God is other. He's God!"

Okay. Then what IS God? I mean, if not a personality-laden being with chemical processes interacting synergetically with conscious thought, then what? (And you can drop the "He" from God anytime you like. You yourself don't even believe God is male. So lose the self-deception already.)

I land, straight from that unsolvable question, into Taoism, where the unsolvable nature of the Tao is a given. And I feel at home. From the Tao Te Ching:

"The Tao never does anything, yet through it all things are done."

"Immersed in the wonder of the Tao,
you can deal with whatever life brings you,
and when death comes, you are ready."

And then, from Hua Hu Ching, ostensibly Lao Tzu's other book:

"How can the divine Oneness be seen?
In beautiful forms, breathtaking wonders, awe-inspiring miracles?
The Tao is not obliged to present itself in this way."

Back to the Tao Te Ching, for the kicker:

"The Tao is called the Great Mother:
empty yet inexhaustible,
it gives birth to infinite worlds.
It is always present within you.
You can use it any way you want."

I sense the objections coming.

"You've been watching too much Star Wars, John. A Force-like being doesn't care for us, doesn't become incarnate, doesn't even create the world! You're not a heathen... you're a pagan!"

Calm down. I'm a Christian. Jesus is a mysterious guy whose history is grossly incomplete, but I strive to follow what he said, as best as I can tell that he actually said it. You forget that the Gospels are more like a "Greatest Hits of Christ" performed by a cover band, rather than a live recording of J. C. and the Disciples.

And in case you haven't read the Old Testament, there are some timeless stories that illustrate the nature of a very complex and unpredictable God, and some downright wisdom in places. (Not in Leviticus, that's pretty much man-made legalistic drivel.)

Anyway, it is hard to find better scripture than in the Bible. The God laid out in those 66 books is caring, just, loving, involved, and a little tricky. It's a revolutionary concept if you pause to contemplate it.

But if you mean that I eschew the Bible as a complete revelation of God, yes, I'm a frickin' pagan. And there's only so much description of God as "He" that I can take. And of God as Weathermaster Extraordinaire. And as Selective Healer of Cancers. And as Do-Not-Collect-Heaven-Do-Not-Pass-Go-Proceed-Directly-To-Hell Guy.

Once those ideas of God are out the window, and they do tend to happen in that order, I'm left with a stranger, weirder God than I can ever find discussed in mainstream or evangelical churches.

Fortunately, the Tao is there to catch me. Or I fall into it, and it catches me by not catching me.

The Taoist Christian, Part 2 / 6-3-09

Part 2 of many.

Taoism is especially attractive to me because I get so hung up on the un-knowability of the God introduced in the Bible. I mean, seriously, has anyone reading this blog ever had a two-way conversation with that God?

I don't consider receiving a warm fuzzy feeling to be a two-way conversation. Nor does an all-encompassing profound inner peace count. I don't even consider a reading of 1st Thessalonians to be God speaking.

I'm a human being, dagnabit. If a relationship wants to be called a relationship, the communication has to flow in both directions in real time. Otherwise, who are we kidding? What kind of relationship is it? Those of you who are married: Imagine for a second that your spouse communicates with you exclusively through sometimes cryptic writings from centuries past. How long before divorce?

This isn't late-night Bible-trashing. This is out-loud wondering whether "relationship" is the best word to describe how we get along with God.

(And don't you dare trot out the line about "God is so great and you are so small, where do you get off making these kind of demands?" -- that's nothing but a lame cop-out. If a close personal relationship is the ultimate goal, then both parties have to communicate regularly. That's just how we're wired. Or me at least.

"That's why God sent Jesus, John. Don't you know anything? Of course we can't relate to this Universe-Creating Omnieverything God of Timelessness Eternity. Duh. Get to know Christ already." Mmmm. Same dead ends, people. And let's not even get into the questions surrounding how accurately -- or not -- Christ is portrayed in the Gospels we have left.)

One last pre-Tao point: anyone else have trouble developing an authentic "relationship" with a being that might not exist? I mean, I believe in God and all, but sometimes I wonder. And that gets in the way a lot. Consider the possibility that someone you know somewhat well, say, a friend with whom you just reconnected with on facebook after many years of separation, that this friend is imaginary. You made her up. She wasn't real a decade ago and her semi-regular comments on your status updates are a figment of your imagination. I know, crazy, huh? Now try making that friend the central figure of your life, and worship her. Try it out. See how that relationship feels.

I know. Apples to oranges. Although really, more like lemons to limes.

So enter Taoism, which instructs adherents to contemplate the Tao, to be in tune with it, even to love it. That sounds relational. But it's different in this tradition, and I take comfort there. From the Tao Te Ching:

"The Tao gives birth to all beings,
nourishes them, maintains them,
cares for them, comforts them, protects them,
takes them back to itself,
creating without possessing,
acting without expecting,
guiding without interfering.
That is why love of the Tao
is in the very nature of things."

That's juxtaposed with:

"Every being in the universe
is an expression of the Tao.
It springs into existence,
unconscious, perfect, free,
takes on a physical body,
lets circumstances complete it.
That is why every being
spontaneously honors the Tao."

What does that mean for a guy like me who reveres the Christ figure (in an extremely nontraditional way) but balks at the idea of striving to know and be known by God? Maybe I don't have to try so hard to experience God. Maybe I already am, and I just need to wake up to that fact.


[EDIT 6-5-09: The comments section is useful this time around. I actually explain a couple things a wee bit better than in the post itself.]

No to incompetent gods / 5-17-09

There is, in my stunted mind, one unhurdable problem with the traditional Judeo-Christian view of God, and it's precisely that problem which steers me toward Taoist philosophy.

It's the fact that orthodox Christianity posits a God who is supremely involved in the lives of humans. That doctrine befuddles me. Ordinarily, befuddlement would be fine, since I don't pretend to understand concepts like the Trinity. But then, the idea of a roll-up-your-sleeves deity goes a step farther and flat-out repulses me, and that's quite a bit more problematic.

Don't be mistaken. My beef with regular-old Christianity is NOT the oft-asked "How can a loving God allow sh!t to happen!?" No, it goes more like this: I can't believe in a God who's managing the day-to-day operations of Earth, Inc. It's too cruel, too arbitrary, too incompetent on God's part.

Answer this one: "How does a person believe that God actively protects their four-year-old child while the four-year-old across the street gets inoperable cancer, or the six-year-old across town shoots himself with his dad's gun?" (That's not the same question as "Why does God allow evil to do its thing?")

So let's grant that you're a good, upstanding believer. Let's grant that you believe God has the power to influence events. (Otherwise, well, your God isn't very Judeo-Christian, is He?)

Either you believe this Divine Being sometimes exercises that power and steps in to interact positively with people, or you believe that Being doesn't ever go that route.

If you believe that Being doesn't, you kind of have to ask yourself if your god cares about people at all, and if a "personal relationship" is possible with such a god. You might also want to rethink your understanding of the Bible.

Put it another way: Either you believe God intervenes, or you believe God set the world in motion and then stepped out of the way to let events run their course.

But I can't have it this way: God gets occasionally involved, and sometimes lifts a finger to prevent calamity, and sometimes God can't be bothered. That way leads to madness. For me. Maybe you can deal.

And I don't think I'm falling prey to an either/or logical fallacy here. (Please point it out, if I am.)

I know it sounds like I'm saying, "The world sucks a lot for a lot of people, through no fault of their own, so if you think God's in charge, that's a mighty sadistic/lazy/incompetent God you got there."

If you think that, congratulations, you are getting warmer. But you're off the mark. Mostly, I don't have the patience to put my faith in a lousy God. And that makes me feel so much more at home in a philosophy where the divine is experienced through wonder and meditation, where the divine is not knowable on a personal level like I know my wife, but on a deeper plane, in a mystical communion.

And yet I'm a Christian; the more I read the Gospels, the more I fall in love with the essence of the Christ figure. Still trying to figure out what that means.

The Taoist Christian / 5-15-09

Lots of posts coming on this topic.

First, some quotes. Selected totally at random. No agenda at work here.

Lao Tzu: "Great indeed is the sublimity of the Creative, to which all beings owe their beginning and which permeates all heaven."

Yahweh: "I am that I am."

Lao Tzu: "I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures."

St. Paul: "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."

Lao Tzu: "If you would take, you must first give, this is the beginning of intelligence."

St. Luke: "It is more blessed to give than to receive."

Lao Tzu: "Treat those who are good with goodness, and also treat those who are not good with goodness. Thus goodness is attained. Be honest to those who are honest, and be also honest to those who are not honest. Thus honesty is attained."

Yeshua: "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."

Me: "Lots of posts coming on this topic."