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 Sheryl Crow. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sheryl Crow. Show all posts
04 April 2011
16 February 2011
Our Hybrid Lives
"I saw in the recitation, the beautiful recitation that was given to me, that God is with them whose garment was dusty and tattered. My thoughts immediately went to the end of my garment; I examined and found that it is not dusty and it is not tattered; it is fairly spotless and clean. God is not in me." Speech at Government High School, Bangalore, 1915
I'm a recycler. Yea, I put stuff in the can on the curb to avoid the dump, but I that's only a small, and I think insignificant, part.
My mother's mother died thirty or more years ago. My wife and I were recently married. We were poor and had little furniture. More than a bit of the furniture in my grandmother's home was shipped to us. We still use most of what we received then in our current home. Bookshelves, bed frames, a table, lamps, stuff I've forgotten belonged to her. I cherish this stuff.
My desk and my desk chair were bought second hand. I have my old desk, also bought second hand, in the garage.
I collect not just my old photos, but the old photos from my family and my wife's family.
I buy a lot of my clothes second hand.
We have used cars and furniture collected from family and friends. We have old dishes and old mismatched silverware and pots and pans and serving platters collected from family.
It's not that I hate wasting stuff. I do, but that's not it.
I know this will sound new agey. Yuck...
But I love going to the old places in old cities. I feel like I can feel all the people that have lived there. It's not like I see ghosts or can feel 'old Mrs. Grundy's' spirit, but these places have an energy for me. There's a heart beat, a soul in these places.
My tatters come second hand. I choose tatters. I don't earn tatters.
God is not in me. But I have decided to choose God.
(Title from Chances Are by Sheryl Crow. One of my favorite songs.)
I'm a recycler. Yea, I put stuff in the can on the curb to avoid the dump, but I that's only a small, and I think insignificant, part.
My mother's mother died thirty or more years ago. My wife and I were recently married. We were poor and had little furniture. More than a bit of the furniture in my grandmother's home was shipped to us. We still use most of what we received then in our current home. Bookshelves, bed frames, a table, lamps, stuff I've forgotten belonged to her. I cherish this stuff.
My desk and my desk chair were bought second hand. I have my old desk, also bought second hand, in the garage.
I collect not just my old photos, but the old photos from my family and my wife's family.
I buy a lot of my clothes second hand.
We have used cars and furniture collected from family and friends. We have old dishes and old mismatched silverware and pots and pans and serving platters collected from family.
It's not that I hate wasting stuff. I do, but that's not it.
I know this will sound new agey. Yuck...
But I love going to the old places in old cities. I feel like I can feel all the people that have lived there. It's not like I see ghosts or can feel 'old Mrs. Grundy's' spirit, but these places have an energy for me. There's a heart beat, a soul in these places.
My tatters come second hand. I choose tatters. I don't earn tatters.
God is not in me. But I have decided to choose God.
(Title from Chances Are by Sheryl Crow. One of my favorite songs.)
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