I might step on some toes with this post.  Most likely Catholic ones.  But I want to address the veneration of Mary, Jesus’ mom.

It seemed that no matter where we went in Italy, Mary was there, in all her glory.  We saw her in the Cinque Terre, in little altars along the trails (roads) we walked.  In Tuscany, she was prominently featured in every church we visited.  And in Rome and the Vatican, we found the same thing.

One reason I want to discuss this topic now is that yesterday’s sermon at church addressed Mary and the appropriate Biblical response we can have to her.  Our pastor took a nice middle road, one that doesn’t set Mary too high but also doesn’t neglect her importance as a wonderful role model for women, especially young girls. I thought it might be nice timing to show a little bit of what we found at Catholicism grand central.

I’m going to focus on one church in particular, out of the dozens we visited.  This one epitomized for me all that was problematic about the Mary veneration.

The parish church of San Lorenzo isn’t among the major tourist destinations in Italy. In fact, it’s a ways outside of Florence, about 40 minutes by train.  And it’s a decent walk from the train station (especially in 90 degree heat).  What makes it so special is that it’s old, really old.  It was built on an ancient Roman temple to Bacchus (that wine loving god) in the 10^th century.  Records indicate as early as 934 A.D.  Another special feature of the church is its collection of artwork.  For being a small parish church in a little town, it certainly has a lot of incredible art work.  Below, you’ll find our video overview of the sanctuary.

Among the works is a Giotto, that medieval artist who is considered to have ushered in the Italian Renaissance. Despite its illustrious attribution, the painting isn’t particularly noteworthy in appearance. However, it’s come to symbolize a lot of Italian church art for me.  The painting, from late in Giotto’s life (late 13^th century), is titled very simply: Madonna.  However, upon closer inspection, you’ll notice a disembodied baby hand touching Mary’s face.  That would be the missing baby Jesus.  Nowhere in the title do we learn about the child.  Today, because of damage over the years, we simply have “Madonna.”  And while once, Jesus probably played a larger role, now, it’s Mary who steals the show.  She’s enrobed in queenly garments, with gold filigree and details (not the humble peasant image we get from the Bible). And she appears to be in her late 20s or 30s (not the teenager that Joseph married). 

My beef with this painting is its putting all the focus on Mary.  She’s not the main attraction.  She’s important, but she shouldn’t get first billing.  That little child in her lap (who currently happens to be missing his body), is the one who should steal the show.  He’s the one who was miraculously born, he’s the one who stepped down from his throne in heaven to a humble life on Earth, and he’s the one who would grow up to die for our sins.  Not his mom.

And the Pieve di San Lorenzo (The Parish Church of Saint Lawrence) gives us one more work of art that signifies the wrong attitude toward Mary.  This work is by Matteo Rosselini from 1615 (I didn’t get to use flash, so the picture is a bit fuzzy).  Its highly descriptive name is “The Saints Domenico and Francesco Interceding with Christ.”  This painting bothered me a lot.  Here, you have two saints down on earth pleading with a very angry looking Jesus.  Jesus is poised with weapons, ready to hurl them down on the innocent looking men.  This is more like the Jesus image I get for the last Judgement (toward the unrepentant and unredeemed), but here, Jesus seems to have no concern for the saints.  It’s Mary, sitting at his right hand, pleading with him.  She’s the one who is merciful.  She’s the one who hears the priests’ prayers. What a messed up picture of grace! 

We don’t need to pray to Mary, who then cools down her angry son.  We have direct contact with God the Father through Jesus and the interceding work of the Holy Spirit (Romans 8:26, John 14:16-17, & Luke 11:1-4).  No Mary needed to talk with Jesus or The Father.  And if you’re a believer, don’t expect Jesus to strike you down with his wrath.  He’s out to save you, to do good for you (I John 2:1).  For heaven’s sake, he died so we might live.  Mary didn’t do that.  Jesus did.

But in my doctrinal clarification, I don’t want it to come across that I hate Catholics or think that Catholics aren’t Christians.  I love my Catholic brothers and sisters.  I just don’t want any unbiblical doctrines to get in the way of the true focus, on Jesus.

We should rejoice because we have free and easy access to the Creator of the Universe.  Don’t stick unnecessary mediators between you and God.  Worship him freely, ask of him without reservations, and have that one-on-one relationship for which you were created.

I’ve been looking forward to reading Toni Morrison’s latest novel for awhile.  Her books always shoot right to the top of the bestseller list, even though they are often very difficult to read: emotionally, thematically, and stylistically.  Anybody who can write like that but still get wide scale public reading deserves my attention.  Plus, with A Mercy, she took a different approach than she typically does, by expanding the discussion of slavery to the various forms of slavery our country has endured.

The narrative is often times difficult to follow.  It’s Morrison after all, so I’m not surprised. Interestingly, she gives these voiceless characters voices and allows them to tell their own part of the story, which often isn’t in chronological order. 

The story begins with a farmer named Jacob Vaark, who is working to create a life in the new world, circa late 1600s.   He colonizes his farm with a variety of people: black, white, and Native American slaves; indentured servants; and a wife, purchased from England.  The main theme of the book is slavery in its various forms and how our country in its infancy turned to slavery for its growth. 

Lina is a Native American slave who is purchased by Jacob after her family is ravaged by smallpox.  She becomes the friend and confident of Mrs. Rebekkah Vaark, a woman in a new country, working to make a new life and escape the evils she found in England.  Vaark also purchases a young black slave named Florens, whose own mother asked Vaark to take her daughter away because she believed Vaark would offer her a better life.  Sorrow is a mysterious character who is a white orphan who lived at sea with her family, only to be shipwrecked and taken in by Vaark as another servant. 

The action of the plot arrives when a free black man, a blacksmith, works on Vaark’s grand new home, only to win the heart of Florens.  The blacksmith demonstrates a talent for healing, and when the Rebekkah falls ill with Smallpox, Florens undertakes a long and dangerous journey to find him.

Morrison addresses many powerful topics in this book, but the idea that slavery exists in many forms was the most resonant and applicable for me.  Not only were black people enslaved by our country during a particular time period, slavery extended to all skin colors.  Not only that, but slavery isn’t always the purchased labor of another human being.  It extends to the many ways we contract ourselves to others.  Such a broad understanding of slavery allows us in the modern era to conceive of how we might be slaves.

Are we slaves to our jobs? Have we signed on the bottom line and indentured ourselves to work that is beneath our own honor, or are we serving a worthless master, a false idol that has entrapped us?  Our hearts can be enslaved by passions that disable us from freedom in Christ. 

Never is the concept more powerful in the book but when Florens declares her love for the blacksmith, by telling him, “You alone own me.”  To the free black man, this statement is repellant. “Own yourself, woman,” he answers. “You are nothing but wilderness. No constraint. No mind.”  He’s telling her that she isn’t free because she has enslaved herself to her emotions.  The blacksmith has become a false idol, above all else, and she loses the freedom to be herself.

Fortunately, it’s a short book, one of Morrison’s shortest.  If you haven’t read Morrison before, this might be a good place to start, especially if you pair it with her Nobel Prize winning Beloved, another book that addresses slavery in our country.

I like to argue.  It’s not exactly a positive character trait, but when you’re good at it, it’s something you tend to do.  In college, all the career placement tests told me to be a lawyer.  I ran far away from that one and chose the much more lucrative career of teacher.

But with the desire and skill to argue comes some pretty annoying downsides.

The main one is when I argue for my own defense, what many people wisely call “being defensive.” If someone calls me on a sin, I have about 200 arguments at the ready to combat the accusation…and most of them are pretty dang good.  This knee jerk reaction causes me to avoid that still, small voice that’s saying “Hey, she’s got a point.”

But when I respond defensively, I’m not really fooling anyone.  Because if there’s anything that signals a problem, it’s the urge to stridently defend oneself.  I think the author of How People Change describes it best by explaining how people respond when their idols are threatened (what the book calls applied “heat”).  They get all huffy and argumentative.   If someone is calling you on a sin, and you throw a ton of counterarguments against them rapid fire, it’s basically just proving that person right.

You know that line in You’ve Got Mail, where Tom Hanks is telling Meg Ryan why his quick tongue is a curse? He says that even if you know the right thing to say at the right moment, inevitably you’ll regret it later.  It’s a curse, believe me.

In addition, when you’re good at arguing, you like to “go for the win.” It doesn’t matter if it’s a friendly discussion about the shape of a particular cloud, you have the best evidence to present, and therefore, that cloud is what you make it to be. You go for it, like a dog with a bone.  No matter the relative importance of the discussion.

Oh, and I might be in a minority with this one, but I like to play the devil’s advocate for argument’s sake.  An argument is a safe turf for me.  So I’ll strike one up when the mood suits me.  “You say that exercise is good for you, but don’t you know that it’s the leading cause of heart attacks over the age of 60?”  See what I mean…pointless…and often not very productive  (By the way, I’m pulling that statistic out of my butt, another “good” skill I have.).  It’s sort of like if a gymnast suddenly started turning cartwheels in the middle of traffic.  Pointless, a little showy, and dangerous to her and everyone else involved.

I don’t mean this to be an exercise in self loathing.  But in the name of the full disclosure I typically have on this blog, I thought I’d spill a little about the not so pretty side of my personality.  I’m in hopes that others share my problem and are willing to confront it as well.

And no, I’m not saying that debate is a sin.  A good sparring round with someone who has a similar proclivity can be an iron sharpens iron experience, a battle of wits and wisdom.  I’m a fan of debate tournaments for this reason.

But with all personality traits, there’s a sinful potential as well.  A shy person can fully disengage from community.  A talkative person can refuse to shut up.  A social person can continually claim the center of attention.

And with me, my strength can also be my greatest weakness.

“Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits”(Proverbs 18:21).

And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, and set on fire by hell” (James 3:6).

“There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing” (Proverbs 12:18).

“She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue”(Proverbs 31:26)

Be careful, travel is a dangerous enterprise.

You’re bound to encounter people who aren’t like you.  They smell different, look different, and they talk different. In most cases, they also have different political and religious views.

I got really annoyed by the smelly people who were joining me on the public transit system. I knew that stores in Italy sold deodorant…I made sure.  But for some reason, the marketing must not be very good.  Because it seems like no one uses it!  As someone very sensitive to smells (Dan calls me “the nose”), I learned to breathe through my mouth a lot.

And if you’re anything like me, and you worship the false idol of comfort, your idol is about to get a beating.  The coffee you rely on in the morning to wake you up and keep you going suddenly comes in different packages and requires strange ordering practices.

For example, in Italy, you drink your coffee while standing up, for the most part.  To take your morning coffee to a table means the price gets doubled.  And just try to find yourself a cup of coffee that resembles your morning cup of joe.  I dare you.  Also, if you’re an afternoon coffee drinker, don’t expect to get any milk in your coffee, because milk is only for the morning, apparently. (I tried getting an Italian to explain this to me and got a very confusing description of how milk congeals in your stomach if you drink it in the afternoon. Go figure.)

And finally, there’s the language barrier.  Even if you have a basic functional grasp of it, a lot is going to pass you by.  So, let’s say, a couple vacations in Switzerland during the Swiss national holiday and stumbles upon a marching band in the center of town.  Then, the army shows up, both the old and the new.  What do you do?  I submit to you the video evidence of this encounter.  Please excuse the shaky videography (thanks to yours truly). I was a little…overwhelmed.

You must wonder why I’d ever consider travelling again after all this.  Or why anyone bothers to travel. 

I think it’s because I need to break my idols, regularly, and travel, especially international travel, has a nice way of doing this.  Sure, travel itself can become an idol, to be worshiped as a means to happiness, something to make sacrifices for.  But outside of that dangerous pitfall, travel does wonders for those of us who struggle with bowing down to our own comfort, our own sense of national superiority, our gluttonous impulses, and our sense of self importance. 

There’s nothing like travelling to a foreign country to assist you in tearing down these idols, as long as it’s one of your goals.  You could fail miserably and continue to seek out your comfort in 5 star hotels, gorge yourself on familiar food as you find it (there are McDonalds everywhere!), and refuse to conform to any of the local customs. 

We stayed on a farm in Tuscany, where the owner had a strong grasp of the idol breaking potential of international travel (even though I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t use those terms).  She wanted to give us an authentic Italian experience, just like she’d want to have an authentic American experience if she went to the US.  She told us stories about people from various countries who stayed at her home, only to demand special treatment, just as they were used to at home, particular foods and accommodations.  It made me think about what sort of traveler I want to be, and how much I’m going to allow my idols to get in the way.

So the next time you plan a vacation, wherever you might go, consider what idols you are taking along with you, and how many you might manage to smash up and leave at home.

What kind of culture are we a part of, where whores and slags are worshipped, gambling is considered an honourable career, where kids are encouraged to give up education in favour of playing a schoolyard game, then rewarded a lifetime’s riches for an hour’s exercise, only to abuse their wealth by excess, leading to assault and manslaughter, wife-beating and public disgrace. Where those youths without goals and without respect are allowed to run riot without fear of retribution? Too many people idolise false idols and worship mother fame, seeing it as their only way out of mediocrity, while doing nothing deserve it, anymore than deserve the respect of the next generation….

Wired to Worship

Why do so many want to believe that Paul McCartney is Dead?

As a relatively simple species living in a complex world we are often tempted to cut corners to fill in gaps. The need to at least attempt to make sense of our surroundings is, I suspect, hard-wired into our brains and however miserably we fail the overall frequency of success is always rising. Hence we are constantly getting better at interpreting our world in more meaningful ways. Truth and untruth make up the whole and as truth increases there is less room for untruth; the stuff we invent in order to fill in the gaps.

It always amazes me the extent to which some will go to find meaning where there may not necessarily be any. Why are we so ready to make “sense” of Rorschach Inkblots whenever we encounter them?

Forty years ago western middle class youth had more free time on its hands than perhaps at any other time in history. Living off accumulated parental wealth came easily to those who could afford it and for the resulting hippy movement, just being became a worthwhile and “respectable” pursuit. Of course these post-beatnik beatniks were relatively few. The real working class youth, as opposed to the middle class pseudo working class, was too preoccupied with survival to break their shackles.

In 1969 an extreme example of misdirected energy being used to find meaning was the so-called “conspiracy” of Paul McCartney’s death, a subject given extensive coverage in the Mail today. How was it possible for so many to have believed that the four Beatles on the now-famous Abbey Road crossing represented Paul’s funeral and where did the seed for such a theory originate?

I suppose that all it took was for one stoned hippy to latch onto the idea of John Lennon in a white suit at the front of “the procession”. From that germ of a false idea the creator and/or others might easily have extrapolated the rest. In a small hippy community an originator might not have been taken seriously at first but who was it who said “If you tell a big enough lie and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it”.

That so much “sense” can be made of nonsense is a truly amazing thing. Paul, a left-handed person, is holding his cigarette (a coffin nail) in his right hand and is out of step with the rest of the band. A line drawn through the right tyres of the parked cars passes directly through his head (thus signifying that he had died from a head injury in a car crash).

Abbey Road - Paul must "Die"

There are even some small indentations on the wall to the left of the Beatles back-cover street sign which some suggest, when joined together, make up the number three. This supposedly signified that there were only three Beatles left.

This is nonsense of course. It took my humble brain only a few minutes to find the “real” solution. The letter “B” is the second letter of the alphabet and Paul McCartney appears on the cover second from the left. The dots on the wall represent the numbers one to six which are the numbers on a “die”, clearly signifying that the real McCartney had died and that there was a conspiracy between the authorities, police and the remaining members of the band to keep this fact from the public.

Why is the human species so ready to join the dots and create meaning from thin air? Why have thousands of people made pilgrimages to see images of Jesus and the Virgin Mary on every imaginable object from bathroom doors to a piece of grilled cheese toast.

The phenomenon of the human mind creating meaningful images from nothing is called “pareidolia” and although fairly harmless when used by Beatles fans to “prove” that the real Paul McCartney is pushing up the daisies it is a phenomenon that has helped to perpetuate that evil of all evils, religion.

Why can’t we be content to know that we don’t know everything but that we are learning more and more about how our world works with each new day. Why do we so often feel compelled to have an answer even when sense dictates that that answer is the wrong one. How can any old answer be better than none?

The meek shall inherit the earth – Matthew

Something about my upbringing has infected me with this idea that some people have it and some people don’t.  It’s a Luther-esque thought that I am trying to shake off [like some dust on my shoulders]. We look up to these people, who we believe are gifted.  I can’t help looking up to these people; their miasma of kharisma grants them favors…

I wasn’t necessarily popular;  I just knew popular people.  I didn’t quite conceptualize fetish-izing their attention, but I achieved some level of perverse knowledge regarding their misdeeds.  I’ve read theories, like the ladder theory, and wondered what rung I’m stuck on.   I am all thumbs, so climbing can be very difficult for me.  Something inside me convinced my body to stop climbing, take a breath, and look around, it could be breathtaking…

I saw people climbing on top of each other.  I wasn’t gripping rungs, but the feet of another human being.  Wow, did that take my breath away!  Then I looked up to see spires of people.  Where did it end?  I suppose the sky was the limit, but can such a structure stay that high up?  My engineering degree tells me that someones going to try and build it.

I think of the lesson of the Tower of Babel when I see what I had help to create.  God wasn’t meant to be worshipped; he just can’t be.  We can’t worship those above us, trying to cling to their feet, they’re grasping at air!  We keep grasping, and grasping, because that’s what we were born doing.

But what use is it for me to grasp my way down when I can’t even see it?  [I've gotten lost chasing someone's tail before.]  Climbing down with these thumbs are as useless as climbing up.  I’m really afraid to ride this human wave.  I decided to be a better surfer, so I can find some solid ground.  When I found it, I thought I could be here for a while and made myself comfy.  In my shelter, I heard people knocking on my door.

I always wondered who it would be?  A friend checking in, a lost stranger, a lost friend.  I’d give them directions, before I realized I just settled in without knowing where the hell I was.  Everybody I met so far has been nice, I suppose that means I’m in the suburbs.  I can do this:  Be a waypoint for those around me.  This is my Tower of Babel.

I built myself up.  I put up walls and drowned out the knocking on my door.  And when I realized they had no regard walking over me to find their way still, I took to the road.  I remember where my cheese was.  It was my roots and I found some strength there to keep on walking [because these trees walk].

Queue Boyz 2 Men.

     Devotion (aka The Devotion of Father Teresa)    by Mark Nielsen, June 2009 

I’ve got this poem here—

says “Attention is the beginning of devotion.”

But what of obsession?

Compulsion?

If I pick at the scab of identity

attentively each day

for my entire adult life

is that a good kind of attention?

Is the Self served by attention to itself?

For example,

I dry flowers and save feathers

with the intention of using them

to remember, to craft, to resurrect…

to re-create an emerging vision,

and artfully attend to our mutual Father.

But when does the memory –

the work of art (of science, of law) –

become an idol, a distraction,

a pale, unhealthy imitation

that expresses only its own idea

and veers too far from the real?

Yet if I do not humbly attend also to what is broken,

to what is still visible in the flow and glow

of the fading embers, in the moonless night,

to what is wounded in the world and in the heart –

Father Teresa tending to his wilting garden –

then who will?

(debts and apologies to Mary Oliver , whose line about “attention” in the prose poem Upstream inspired the above verses. And don’t miss the links above to other spirituality websites, including the Kent Keith/Mother Teresa poem Anyway, and the lyric to Bruce Cockburn’s 1999 song Embers of Eden. )

                                                                                                    Here we are pulling into Bangkok International Airport.                                                                                                  These HSBC ads are in many airports.  I really don’t like them.  “The more you look at the world, the more you recognize people’s different views”.  Then they put different pictures with the same words like you see here with the word “passion“.  They also put the same picture up but with different words.  For example, they put up 3 posters with the exact same picture of a Buddhist idol with the words “entertainment“, “souvenir” and “worship“.  They forgot to put up a photo with the words “false idol” on it.  How about that point of view from the Bible!  The reason I don’t like these ads is that they indirectly imply that “there are no wrong views-just different views” which is a “grey morality” that opposes the truths of the Bible.  Okay, off the soap box…more on this later!                                                                                                                                     This guy must love his job!  Seriously though, he was asleep there quite a while.                                                                                                                                                           My lovely Che just after we got our luggage.

Like that old 1980’s song says, we were “one night in Bangkok” before flying off to Phuket!!!  If you aren’t familiar with that song, here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnqj31VPNoE  Some of the lyrics to this song read “You’ll find a god in every golden cloister” which is both true and sad.  Idols are EVERYWHERE!  Jonah 2:8 definitely comes to mind as I walk around!

Baskeball Jerseys by Billie PartsnPieces From Flickr

My husband loves to watch basketball.  And the other day (while largely ignoring the game on the TV), I asked him why the players on the home court were wearing boring white uniforms and the away teams wore the “pretty” colorful ones.  I’d think the home team should be more fabulous looking, since they are on their own turf.  He said, “That’s just the way it is.” Obviously, sports fashion choices matter a little more to me than they do to him.  But I expect that most men don’t pay much attention to the jersey color, only enough to figure out which team they’re cheering for that game.

Bear with me on this analogy, because I’m still working out the kinks, but it seems like I wear different jerseys for different occasions too.  I wear my fancy, pretty colored jersey to church and with fellow Christians.  I boldly proclaim the team colors and show my allegiance.

But then when I’m away, at the workplace and hanging out with non-Christians, I wear the white uniform, the one that doesn’t show my team so clearly.  The team colors aren’t as easy to see, and I blend in with the crowd a lot better.    And I’m not sure sure that’s a good thing.

In both cases, I’m still playing for my team (God’s team), but I’m a different type of player.  When I’m playing away games (with unbelievers), I’m  less of a team player, harder to spot by my fellow teammates and more prone to hang out on the sidelines. Basically, my whole heart is not really in the game.

I’m going to take this one step further and say that when I’m outside the church, and sadly, sometimes when I’m in it, I’ll swap that team logo for my own logo.  Instead of playing for Christ’s team, I’ll go for my own wins.  So, speaking to an unbeliever, I’d represent myself, instead of representing Christ.  I might even put on another team’s logo, some idol that I’m fixated on and serving.  Instead of God’s team logo, I’ll stick a dollar sign or a chocolate bar in its place.

I realize that when I’m hanging out with Christians and when I’m hanging out with non-believers, I might behave a little differently.  You can still have integrity and learn to meet non-Christians where they are.  But I need to learn how to stay in the game, to boldly wear my team’s colors, even when my team is the underdog and is grossly unpopular.  Being in Seattle, with our long suffering home teams, this analogy is particularly applicable.

And the NBA really needs to rethink the white home team jerseys.  They are really boring!

I picked up this little book at a book sale recently, recognizing the author from The Five People You Meet In Heaven (a book I haven’t read yet but have been meaning to for awhile).  It seems that Tuesdays with Morrie is also fairly well known, so it warranted a read, especially since one of our local theaters is staging a production of a play based on it. 

The premise is very simple.  A beloved Sociology professor is dying from Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS), and a former student reunites with him in his final days for a series of lessons about life, love, and dying.  What sounds like a very morbid and depressing book is actually one of the more uplifting stories you can read because it embraces life.  The constant irony in the book is that only a dying man can teach us about living.

Morrie’s a great mentor for me as a teacher.  It sounds like he connected with his students in remarkable ways and taught them important lessons about life.  Students continued to seek him out long after graduation for his wisdom and companionship.  You can’t say that for many other professors. And teaching was his true vocation, one that he chose to pursue even with his dying breath. 

Faith is a complicated issue in this book.  Morrie is Jewish by heritage, and he attended synagogue while growing up and was buried by a rabbi.  But he claimed to be an agnostic for most of his adult life.  In the 10^th anniversary edition, Albom includes an afterward which mentions Morrie’s potential conversion back to theism.  In his dying days, Morrie, when asked about death, says, “This is too harmonious, grand, and overwhelming a universe to believe that it’s all an accident” (196).

Most of Morrie’s lessons, which always take place on Tuesday, are very much in line with Judeo-Christian values.  But there are times he pulls from Buddhist thought as well.  Albom explains that “Morrie borrowed freely from all religions,” but thankfully, his advice ends up being rooted in his childhood faith foundation.

Morrie freely criticizes our culture for its excessive focus on materialism, its repetition of “more is good,” ad nauseum. He rightly calls this idolatry: “These were people so hungry for love that they were accepting substitutes.”

He discusses the importance of marriage and commitment to it.  He says that the most important value in marriage is “your belief in the importance of your marriage.” 

Morrie is right about a lot of things, but he’s missing the boat on the most important lesson of them all.  He doesn’t mention Jesus, the ultimate answer to all the questions.  His advice is filled with a lot of truth that falls in line with biblical practices, but without Jesus at the heart of it, it’s empty and self-seeking. 

Morrie is a wise teacher.  He offers a lot of insight learned from life.  But Jesus is the best Rabbi, who not only teaches you, but he transforms you into someone better, someone more like him.   He’s the one that satisfies our longings for false idols, giving us his true love that we seek.  And in our marriages, our greatest value is to love and serve him, and everything else will follow.

Easter is just a few days away and our kids will be with their respective other parents, leaving my wife and I to a quiet Sunday. This has caused me to do some thinking about what Easter means to me. Without kids around to celebrate a visit from the Easter Bunny, it’s just another Sunday to me.

I’m not sure what how to label myself. I’m not an atheist. I mean, I don’t believe in a Zeus-type God who sits atop Mount Olympus with his lightning bolt answering prayers from ants. But I do believe in some type of power. Of an energy. I guess it’s entirely possible that a bearded man created Adam and Eve (not Adam and Steve… zinger!), but it’s also a pretty ridiculous notion. So I guess I’m an atheist in the traditional sense of God but my belief in some sort of higher (or collective) power makes it hard for me to classify myself as such.

I guess you could label me agnostic. I don’t really believe in religion. At least not a religion that taxes its congregation and does what it wants with the revenue (socialism?). But I wouldn’t be surprised upon my death to learn that some human beings had it right. Maybe some lost Aztec tribe in the jungles of the Amazon or something. I think there is something to believe in. I’m just not sure anybody’s gotten it right yet.

I guess I’m just a guy. I don’t come with a fancy packaging or anything, but I think I know a thing or two about how things are. I’ll tell you this—a pagan ceremony to celebrate the resurrection of Christ that has been further bastardized into a commercial celebration of chocolate eggs and plastic grass is not spiritually moving to anyone. But it’s the same with Christmas. Nobody even realizes what it means anymore. It’s no wonder the Christian movement is in decline. They’ve fallen away from fire and brimstone and gotten all cute with bunnies and elves.

I’m not even sure that most subscribers of organized religion can tell you what they believe in anymore. They just fall in line and do as they are told. Jelly beans signify the resurrection? Where do I sign up? Flying reindeer remind us of the birth of the Messiah? Put my name on that list twice!

When you show me a person who will tell his kids from the moment they are born that Santa Claus is made up and the Easter Bunny is someone’s big joke and only celebrate the religious aspects of these holidays, I’ll show you a believer. But it doesn’t happen that way. The people who choose not to indulge themselves in the commercialization of holidays and instead pay respect to their beliefs are labeled as freaks. Everyone else just goes along with the crowd. Buy buy buy. Eat eat eat.

Me? My kids celebrate Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. And that’s ok with me. I don’t subscribe to any religion so they may as well worship the all-powerful dollar. Capitalism is God’s preferred system for the humans, right? What better way for them to not be martyred in their schools than to go along with the prescribed holiday rituals?

So what am I getting at? I guess it’s this—I’m tired of the hypocrisy of religion. I’m tired of people hiding behind their religious masks as they worship false idols. I’m tired of the “righteous” and “holy” who lie to their children with fairy tales that have nothing to do with their religious beliefs. And I’m tired of these same people telling me that I’m wrong for spending time with my family on Sundays rather than sitting in church.

Why do you hide your religion in fantasy? Why do you need candy to feel good about your savior? Why can’t you just believe without gimmicks?

It’s a mystery to me. But then again, I’m a man without a label, though I’m sure you’ve got one for me.

And he said unto them, Follow me and I will make you fishers of men.

Matthew 4:19

Bobbing just on the periphery—A nuisance at first—What with its glinting—But finally I glance and—Good Glorious Lord—A woman wearing a crucifix floats by—I see Christ there—In Lilliputian scale—Golden as a calf—And brighter than an Aztec god—He hangs there—from her neck—His cross no longer planted on a hill, but dangling over a crevasse. –And she’s bouncing him—Jiggling him like a lure—the look on his face no longer sorrow, but nausea. And, of course, I am—In Awe—I am Enraptured—I am Reeling—I am reeled in—And fall in line with the other disciples. We trail her down the street like a tail, a wake of foaming men, frothing, a traveling chart of the devolution of man, backs progressively hunching, until my knuckles drag, and I grind my wedding ring into the dust from which it came.

"All these girls excited, ooh you know they like it. I'm so icccyyyyy."

I know this is old news, but Obama compared his bowling skills to the special olympics kids.  Basically saying he bowled like a mentally challenged person (read as: retard).  So that’s definitely something I would say, considering I just bashed whores, idiot people, etc.

So maybe Obama and I can be good friends.  He seems like a young enough dude that could make smart ass comments like myself.  I could teach him some one-liners, he could tell me some secret shit.

Unfortunantly some retards can spin the balls real good.  Kolan McConiughey is a consistent perfect game bowler and has challenged President Obama to a game.  Is that something this country needs?  Our President being put to shame by someone with a one-digit IQ?  I think not.  That would be like Bush beating Obama in an election!

Obama wants to have some special olympic athletes visit the White House to bowl or play basketball.  There you go Prez!  Beat them at your game!

So now spectators can watch retards play basketball with a guy that could be posted outside of a car dealership.

Yes, I just said President Obama looks like one of these when he plays basketball.

“And it shall be, if thou do at all forget the LORD thy God, and walk after other gods, and serve them, and worship them, I testify against you this day that ye shall surely perish.” – God

Those are some heavy duty words right there, and a person does not need to be a biblical scholar to understand them: Worship other gods, and you are going to spend all eternity in the place where the guy with the horns and a pitchfork conducts his business. Worshipping false idols is not just a sin, it is one of the biggies. Heck, it is probably the biggest of all, considering the fact that it is the number one sin on God’s top ten list. This leads us to Step 2:

Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

A person of faith would have no problem with Step 2, at least in terms of accepting God as their higher power. It might get tricky if that person believes in freewill, and that God is not manipulating them from above, but I won’t get into that here. Take a critical look at how this step is explained to a stepper, and you will find it full of everything from blasphemy, absurdity and manipulation – a regular trifecta of cult goodness. Below is what Bill Wilson wrote:

“At the start, this was all we needed to commence spiritual growth, to effect our first conscious relation with God as we understood Him. Afterward, we found ourselves accepting many things which then seemed entirely out of reach. That was growth, but if we wished to grow we had to begin somewhere. So we used our own conception, however limited it was. We needed to ask ourselves but one short question. – “Do I now believe, or am I even willing to believe, that there is a Power greater than myself?” As soon as a man can say that he does believe, or is willing to believe, we emphatically assure him that he is on his way. It has been repeatedly proven among us that upon this simple cornerstone a wonderfully effective spiritual structure can be built.” – The Big Book

In other words, ‘you may not be a believer now, but if you are willing to open the door to believing just a crack, that will do for now’. Once a person does their 90 meetings in 90 days, and are beaten down with thought stopping slogans and conditioned to believe that they are morally bankrupt, they are more likely to be converted to the real god. Sure, worshiping false idols is wrong, but in Bill’s mind it was justified, because he used it as simply a gateway drug to the ultimate objective, and that was a full conversion. “We had to begin somewhere”, he wrote. In his mind, the ends justified the means.

When dealing with such a person, you had better use everyday language to describe spiritual principles. There is no use arousing any prejudice he may have against certain theological terms and conceptions about which he may already be confused. Don’t raise such issues, no matter what your own convictions are. – The Big Book

Giving oneself over to a higher power is one of the most common objections. Either a person does not believe in a god, or they don’t believe that they are puppets on a string to a god who suddenly will guide them to sobriety, but did not give a shit about them before they joined AA. The answer to this objection is a simple one. Ridiculous, but simple: “Your higher power can be anything you want it to be – a rock, a doorknob, a Pez dispenser, a tree, a penis, a rock band – whatever you want it be. The sky is the limit!” The most common suggestion is to make AA itself your higher power, which is really the objective, anyway. Here is a true example of this in practice:

Jill made her cat her higher power. Let’s apply this to the steps, and see how this works in helping here to gain sobriety (the names have been changed to protect the identity of the person and the cat) -

Upon admitting that her life is unmanageable, Jill…

• Came to believe that Fluffy could restore my sanity. (step 2)

• Made a decision to turn her will and her life over to the care of Fluffy. (step 3)

• Admitted to Fluffy, to herself, and to another human being the exact nature of my wrongs. (step 5)

• Were entirely ready to have Fluffy remove all these defects of character. (step 6)

• Humbly asked Fluffy to remove my shortcomings. (step 7)

• Sought through prayer and meditation to improve my conscious contact with Fluffy, praying only for knowledge of Fluffy’s will for me and the power to carry that out. (step 11)

So, what Jill was told to do was turn her life and sobriety over to a house pet with the brain the size of a walnut. She was told this with a straight face from the other steppers that this was a great idea. In fairness to the others, I’m sure they felt this was rational thing for Jill to do. This is because once a person has been conditioned and beaten down by the group, the absurd seems normal. That is the very nature of a cult, and why it is impossible to reason with a stepper who has drank the kool-aid.

In a sad and predictable conclusion to this story, both Jill’s sobriety and Fluffy the cat were lost in the same night, when Jill fell off the wagon and left her front door open in a drunken stupor. Nobody knows where Fluffy is now. My guess is that she is no longer with us, which is not a bad thing. That would put her up in heaven, which is where a higher power really belongs.

There is laughter in this, but there is seriousness, as well. AA believes alcoholism to be a disease. Imagine this same form of treatment being applied to any other disease. How would you react if a doctor walked into your room and, with a straight face, told you that you did indeed have a heart murmur or alzheimers or clinical depression or cancer – and he told you that what was needed was for you to pick an object, group, person or or living thing of your choosing – to manage it for you. What if you objected, and he told you that was “stinking thinking” or “take the cotton out of your ears and put in your mouth”. How would you react? This happens in AA every day.

"Who's being that guy? I'm being that guy!"

Sarah Palin rejected nearly 30% of the stimulus plan offered to help the state of Alaska. The former running mate to Dr. Doom says she will, “Only accept funds without strings attached.” Which translates to:

“I want a baby daddy for my daughter who was recently broken up with, a boat so I can catch Free Willy and some cool ass bifocal things to see into the homes in Russia.”

Noted.  Now please tell Joe the Plumber to stop milking his former stardom. He stands out more than Michael Jackson at cub scout rally.

"My teeth are like a penis guillotine!"

Kendra Wilkinson, the one with horse chompers, has finally created her website.  We’ve all been waiting so long.  I won’t put up a link because I don’t want to have to clean her stable.

"Oh Em Jee I farted."

Holly Madison, the puffy faced one, looks like a mix between Gwen Stefani and Dolly Parton.  Plus she was screwing an 80 year old.  Why would men want to be the butt of that joke?!  Sloppy seconds, from your grandfather.

"I'm so close to menopause!"

Bridget Marquardt is the older woman who\’s still not married that you’ve been talking to all night at a bar and have to ditch when the lights come on.  Other than the fact she’s ugly, she’s 35!

Bridget, age 9 says, "When I grow up I'm gonna sleep with a guy twice my age!"

"I usually shoot up before I get dressed...duh."

Hey Roody Poo’s!  Do you smell what the crock is cookin’??  Pot roast!  Yessss!!

Dwayne Johnson, errr, “The Rock” admitted to using steroids as a college football player at the University of Miami.  But choosing small testicles over super human strength didn’t turn out as planned.  Ending up in the Canadian football league, he decided to try pro wrestling.  Then successful movies like Spy Hunter, The Game Plan and the newest addition, Tooth Fairy soon followed.  My bipolar father has more characters than The Rock.

So for 10 years he basically did some Live Action Role Play (LARP) garbage on TV and got paid to play fight.  So in reality, Dwayne is just like these guys, but with a salary:

What happens in the woods, stays in the woods

The miracle believers

Proof that the economy is indeed freeing up many peoples lives with unemployemt, “believers” flocked to a Roman Catholic Church on the French Indian Ocean island of Reunion to see jesus…

In a wrinkle.

The Jesus-Misericordieux church in eastern Saint-Andre’s Cambuston district claimed that this was a “divine miracle.”  Then people like me said, “the priest needs to stop farting in the chair.”

Now intelligent people such as myself think this looks nothing like jesus.  But I’ll tell you who it does look like:

Skeeter Valentine.  So now I understand why all these easily amused people are going to see this thing.  Seeing rerun’s of Doug would compel me to see it too.

Can you believe Antoinette, an 82-year-old parishioner, said the face was a “divine phenomenon” as she started to get teary eyed?  I guess I understand.  Everyone knows Skeeter’s dad was abusive and kind of an asshole, so this is just a good sign Skeeter is still out there.  Somewhere.

Next up on the “jesus is everywhere” travel list, my uncle’s home to view his dogs message from god:

worship closely