I am a 'victim' of American culture. Okay, 'victim' is not the right word. Mass consumer would be more accurate.
If you peruse previous blog posts you will find quotes from, besides Gandhi, Will Rogers and Sheryl Crow and who knows who else.
I love old movies, Theodora goes Wild, The Awful Truth, everything by the Marx Brothers, and new movies, Little Miss Sunshine, Despicable Me. My iTunes playlist has the lastest songs, Hayes Carll - KMAG YOYO, Arcade Fire - Ready to Start, Baaba Maal - International and classics from the 30's and 40's, Helen Kane - I Wanna be Loved by You, Judy Garland - The Boy Next Door. I've watched television since it was invented. At fourteen my best friend and I found, in a neighbors trash, three years worth of Playboy Magazines which we divided evenly and I kept under my mattress for years. I have been an admire of the female form ever since. I've studied Aristophanes and Dostoyevsky and Edgar Rice Burroughs and George Bernard Shaw and Samuel Beckett. I collected comedy records, Nichols and May, Bill Cosby, George Carlin. And all this stuff and much more filters into my thoughts, speech, actions, and writings. And I am proud of that. And many, many of these things inspire, excite, and energize me.
I love good food and I love cooking good food from all over the world, India, Mexico, Iraq, Italy, South Africa. My wife feels loved when I provide delicious meals for our family. I get joy from providing hospitality for friends and strangers. Breaking bread with friends, family, and strangers is a spiritual experience.
My spirituality is a mish-mash, part Native American, part Christian, part Buddhist, part Jewish, part stuff that I've decided to believe entirely on my own. (The missing matter in the universe is comprised of Angels.)
Would Gandhi approve? No.
But I don't apologize for any of this.
I believe that God, the Great Father, the Creator, a power greater than myself, put me on this earth, here and now, because he wants my help to change the world for the better. Well, 'me' is all these things and more.
And the people, children, that I was put here to help don't want some ascetic who knows nothing of the world. They want people who can help them understand where they are, where they came from, what's going on around them, and the problems that they have to overcome.
And I believe in non-violence. Without reservation.
God uses me as I am.
*from the song The Fear by Lily Allen.
Showing posts with label Christianity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christianity. Show all posts
04 April 2011
29 March 2011
Last year we said, 'Things can't go on like this', and they didn't, they got worse.
"Politics, divorced of religion, have absolutely no meaning."- Speech on 'Ashram Vows' at the YMCA, Madras, Indian Review, February 1916, The Hindu, 16 Feb. 1916 (from The Essential Writings of Mahatma Gandhi edited by Raghavan Iyer)
By nature, I am not a political animal. The arcane and convoluted workings of my government, even my local city government, much less the national government, seem contradictory, hypocritical, self-serving, and tedious, not to mention ineffective, if not outright damaging, and meaningless.
My country has never lived up to its ideals and often is engaged in action that is directly and demonstrably against what we say we believe and this has been true since our founding. Genocide, slavery, persecution, and theft mark my nation's heritage, mocking the pretty words of our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution.
As I read Gandhi's words and consider my country's history of the 'separation of church and state' and the recent struggles in my country and around the world with conservative/fundamentalist religious radicals, I find myself frustrated. The elements in America that wish to bring 'religion' back into politics are largely intolerant and would love to impose a form of Christian 'Sharia Law.' The separation of church and state is one of the bulwarks against this.
But the immorality, the unethical behavior, the evil that my government and its representatives, secular or religious, conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat, perpetrate on their own people and the people of the world is wrong.
Too many people like me, see the problems and we tsk-tsk or we sit on our hands or we turn our heads away.
It's easier than screaming in rage or crying.
Got to be a better way.
Title from a quote by Will Rogers
By nature, I am not a political animal. The arcane and convoluted workings of my government, even my local city government, much less the national government, seem contradictory, hypocritical, self-serving, and tedious, not to mention ineffective, if not outright damaging, and meaningless.
My country has never lived up to its ideals and often is engaged in action that is directly and demonstrably against what we say we believe and this has been true since our founding. Genocide, slavery, persecution, and theft mark my nation's heritage, mocking the pretty words of our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution.
As I read Gandhi's words and consider my country's history of the 'separation of church and state' and the recent struggles in my country and around the world with conservative/fundamentalist religious radicals, I find myself frustrated. The elements in America that wish to bring 'religion' back into politics are largely intolerant and would love to impose a form of Christian 'Sharia Law.' The separation of church and state is one of the bulwarks against this.
But the immorality, the unethical behavior, the evil that my government and its representatives, secular or religious, conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat, perpetrate on their own people and the people of the world is wrong.
Too many people like me, see the problems and we tsk-tsk or we sit on our hands or we turn our heads away.
It's easier than screaming in rage or crying.
Got to be a better way.
Title from a quote by Will Rogers
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