The Mandelbear's Musings

When I started -- more than a month ago -- to write a post about my spiritual beliefs and practices, I suddenly noticed that I was actually writing a chronological memoir. I changed course and prepended a fairly crisp summary of what I believe, then posted it separately. This is the remaining memoir. I tried several different verbs in the title, including staggering and stumbling, but, well, Yeats. There was never much uncertainty about the "destination" -- the concept of "awareness" comes from Reformed Druidism (which I'll get to in a few paragraphs). It is more ambiguous and has fewer connotations than "enlightenment" or "revelation". But in any case I don't claim to have arrived at it. I'm still journeying.

It's mostly about stories.

I'm not particularly happy about how this has turned out -- it's long, but leaves a lot out (meaning it may be too short), and it's somewhat disorganized. But I started it last month and haven't worked on it in the past week, so it's what it is.)

( Cut for length. Content warning: death (body count: four), and a little religion. )

Oops! Here, out of sequence, is the to.done for Thursday. Most of it was an LHH webinar on interviewing essentials -- hopefully I'll have a chance to apply that when I'm up in Seattle next week.

I had a burst of pain in my left arm, probably from twisting it and pinching a nerve -- I'd had my elbow resting on the buffet next to my chair in the living room; it's a little too high for real comfort.

Some links, mostly political. One to Wikipedia on Martin Luther King, Jr -- I found it startling and scary that younger people don't remember the time when many -- perhaps most -- churches were liberal. It seems to be pretty rare now. Of course, I also remember when "liberal" wasn't considered particularly far left.

( raw notes )

( raw notes )

Hmm. I spent most of yesterday feeling tired; I don't think that an under-two-mile walk contributed much to that even if it was the first in over a week. Also, my eyes hurt. Probably need to get new glasses.

Turns out there's a Trader Joe's only a mile from work. Easy walk.

I filled up the van and it cost me as much as a monthly bus pass. On the other hand, with a 17-mile round trip it's almost exactly even, and that's only if I always take the van and not the Honda, which gets 50% better mileage. I'll revisit this calculation in mid-March when I qualify for a senior discount. Um... Right.

A minor triumph -- I did something minorly stupid (I forget what) and actually said "Silly bear!" to myself, instead of the more usual "Idiot bear!" I thought "idiot bear", briefly, but I didn't say it. That's big. Bigger than it sounds, maybe.

That segues nicely into the link of the day, the Charter for Compassion and this talk by Karen Armstrong at TED (courtesy of liralen. It makes a lot of sense, this idea that "The principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves."

If more than a handful of religious people actually believed it, this would be a much different planet. Unfortunately, most religion right now appears to be in bed with politics, and when that happens you don't need to ask who's on top -- you know who's going to get screwed.

I'm a little surprised that I was able to come up with that last aphorism before going to bed last night and still remember it in the morning.

Tolerate:

1. Allow (something that one dislikes or disagrees with) to exist or occur without interference.

2. Accept or endure (someone or something unpleasant or disliked) with forbearance.

For the most part I do more than tolerate religions, and religious people -- I am fascinated by diversity, and by systems of thought and belief. I read about them for fun, and enjoy learning about them and discussing them. There are wonderful stories in there -- gods, heros, and ordinary people in difficult times. There is deep wisdom that has stood the test of time and adversity. There are cultures with fascinating traditions and delicious food. There are people with joy in their hearts, who love their fellow creatures without distinction because their religion teaches them that it's the right thing to do.

There's also a lot that I disagree with, some fundamental ideas that I simply can't bring myself to consider believing, and some ideas that are simply hateful. Those I tolerate. People believe these ideas, often the more passionately the more bizarre and difficult they are. I tolerate these people, too, and disagree respectfully, as long as they tolerate me and my beliefs in return.

When people come to my door wanting to convince me to join their church, or believe their beliefs, I politely turn them away. I believe in politeness. When people yell at me from a picket line, and hold signs that say my friends and I are going to hell, I may yell back or hold up my own sign. I believe in free speech, too.

When people try to write their beliefs into law and insist that I follow their religious practices, when they try to teach their absurd beliefs to kids who are too young to know better than to trust people in authority just because of that authority (my kids, when they were that age), when they incite hatred and fear; torture, terrorism, and war... I don't have to tolerate those people. I have to resist them.

I can tolerate their belief that their religion is right, but not their belief that they have the right or the duty to impose it on anyone else by force, or by propaganda full of hatred and lies. I don't have to tolerate hatred, or lies, or extremism. There may not be much I can do about them, but at least I can speak up.

 

Thanks to catsittingstill for the idea of Stand Up For Religious Tolerance Day.

"Obama is not a brown-skinned, anti-war socialist who gives away free healthcare. You're thinking of Jesus." - John Fugelsang

(from mia_mcdavid: Quote of the day)

From the archives of the awesome and amazing cadhla, we have The Commandments of Coyote.

I. Thou Shalt Have As Many Gods and Spirits and Personal Trainers and Gurus As You Like Before Me, But You Shalt Not Let Them Block the Exits, and More, You Shall Not Permit Them To Take the Last Beer, For That Beer Is Mine. Seriously. Don't.

II. Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor's Wife, But Thou Art Totally Welcome To Admire Her Ass When She Walks By, and If It Happens To Come Out That They Are In An Open Relationship, Dude, Tap That Ass As Much As They Are Willing To Allow. Same Goes For the Ladies. Coveting Is Sort Of Stupid, But Sex Is Just Plain Fun, Unless Thou Art Doing It Entirely Wrong.

So it seems that Jerry Falwell died this morning. Far be it from me to speak ill of the dead.

But if the afterlife he so fervently believed in really exists, I hope he has taken up residence in the appropriate section of it.

I am not a particularly religious person. Given a choice between a charity associated with a church with which I have no association whatever, and a non-secular one performing the same function, I'll take the non-secular one every time.

Enclosing a necklace with a crucifix attached is not going to improve your chances. Quite the contrary -- it makes me wonder what else you might be planning to waste my money on.

From lapislaz comes this post linking through this SFGate column to this article in USA Today claiming that

The federal government's "no sex without marriage" message isn't just for kids anymore.

Now the government is targeting unmarried adults up to age 29 as part of its abstinence-only programs, which include millions of dollars in federal money that will be available to the states under revised federal grant guidelines for 2007.

The government says the change is a clarification. But critics say it's a clear signal of a more directed policy targeting the sexual behavior of adults.

"They've stepped over the line of common sense," said James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit that supports sex education. "To be preaching abstinence when 90% of people are having sex is in essence to lose touch with reality. It's an ideological campaign. It has nothing to do with public health."

Well, that's one way of putting it. I will refrain from further comment except to point out that, contrary to what you might expect, The Onion is not part of that chain of links.

Reviewing some of the comments on my last post it occurred to me that, for many Christian science-fiction fans, fandom was almost certainly their first encounter with religious prejudice directed against them. And the present backlash against the excesses of the Religious Right, feeble though it is, represents the first time that I can remember public criticism of any sort being directed against Christians in the US (at least of the Protestant variety -- when I was growing up, Catholics were regarded in some parts of the country with almost as much suspicion as Jews).

I'm going to resist a number of temptations here, all of which seem likely to lead me into a swamp of bad memories and worse writing, and just drop the subject for now.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Muslim world divided over Pope's apology

Pope Benedict's admission that he was "deeply sorry" for offending the sensitivities of Muslims does not necessarily mean that the worst crisis of his papacy is over yet. Speaking in Rome yesterday, the Pope said that the views of the 14th-century Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaeologus that he quoted last week - describing Islam as "evil and inhuman" - were not his own.

...but presumably he wouldn't have quoted them if they didn't say what he wanted to say.

Now, it is possible to argue -- and I've seen several attempts over the last couple of days -- that Muslim terrorism has a higher bodycount during the last couple of centuries than Christian. Possibly even if you omit 09/11 and the IRA. I'm not sure about the crusades. But the former head of the organization once known as the Inquisition is hardly in a position to cast stones, and he damned well ought to know better.

From lysana, who contributed to it, comes this link to The CR FAQ -- An Introduction to Celtic Reconstructionist Paganism. If you prefer a brief, more narrative introduction, try this article.

I was particularly intrigued by the realization that the Reformed Druids of North America, founded at Carleton College in 1963, was mostly Celtic Reconstructionist at its roots, and very different from the neopaganism that many of its offshoots have become. (It differs from the CR family of faiths in being more like a pantheistic version of Unitarianism, and in Edit: not taking itself at all seriously being under no illusions about its lack of any continuity of tradition with the ancient Celts.) (See also Wikipedia: Neo-druidism.)

Note to self: self, you really need to update rdna.org. Aside to gmcdavid: hope you don't mind my ganking your icon.

Catholic News Service: Vatican says freedom of expression does not mean offending religions

The Vatican, commenting on a series of satirical newspaper cartoons that have outraged Muslims, said freedom of expression does not include the right to offend religious sentiments.

At the same time, the Vatican said, violent reactions are equally deplorable.

"Intolerance -- wherever it comes from, whether real or verbal, action or reaction -- always constitutes a serious threat to peace," Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said in a statement Feb. 4.

(From The Volokh Conspiracy by way of DocBug.)

Bad church: no cookie. Any deity that can't handle satire, scholarly scrutiny, scientific facts, and even consumer complaints is obviously not omniscient, not omnipotent, and in fact has a serious inferiority complex. The Jews have been poking fun at, studying, and even complaining about (and to) their deity for thousands of years, and He apparently hasn't abandoned them yet. Any religion that can't handle satire, scrutiny, hard facts, and skepticism is clearly inhabiting a fantasy world of its own making.

And any religion that claims to have a corner on religious truth, in spite of the obvious fact that every other religion has claims of roughly equal validity, has a very high probabability of being simply wrong. That's the essence of fanaticism, folks -- being so certain of one's own beliefs that you can use them to justify any action, no matter how evil. It's not the only excuse for terrorism, to be sure, but it's a common one.