A LOOK AT POPE FRANCIS

pope francis

The new pope, Pope Francis, came from out of the blue as a meteorite that happened to fall by chance in Rome, Italy. Kinda like Superman. Pope Francis has shown himself to be a kind of Superman in that he has stood up to multiple centuries of tradition moving away from the gospel in a steady progression to the point of the Church standing on the verge of losing its credibility by clinging to medieval traditions too long. The world changed around the church, the scientific method for one thing, and our modern tendency for fact checking. Until Francis, it appeared to me, on the outside with no experience on the inside, the Church was bracing itself against the people rather than paying attention to them. Francis comes along, applies the teachings in the gospels, and sends a shock wave through the church, welcome to some, and a horror to many. Overnight, the Church went from sheltering child-molester priests and public denial to open recognition of a problem and doing something about it. To some points of view, they don't punish enough, but that's the fundamentalist belief in a God of fear and punishment. It tells me the God Pope Francis appeals to is the God of love and compassion. 

I've paid attention to the popes in my lifetime, not close attention, but to see who they really represent. Money, like every position of power on earth. I was disposed toward John 23rd for his apparent humility, but he turned out to be another apologist for the forces that beat people down. Frances enters the scene and right away is saying the American fundamentalists, who call themselves Christians, are "ugly pagans." Just last week he noted that people who make their money in the arms industry are hypocrites and can't call themselves Christian. He had something to say about the rich taking resources to themselves. A rich American Catholic publicly threatened him with putting his tithe money elsewhere. The pope the same as said, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. He stopped the use of the Vatican Bank by the Sicilian mafia for money laundering. He was warned it could be a fatal decision. He responded, what's he got to lose? Shortcut to the City of God. He doesn't like to wear silks or gold or red shoes. He doesn't want a gold throne. He doesn't want a papal suite of dazzlingly expensive furnishings. He wanted a small room with a bed, a desk and a lamp. He came on so true to the spirit, I've watched him out of curiosity to see if it's an act or from the heart. I've become convinced it's from the heart. 

Now I like to watch a man with big power of influence among the Roman Catholic people of the world talking something besides bureaucratic smokescreen. He is a relief to the eighteen year olds of the world who grow up being taught about honesty and good behavior, aghast at the hypocrisy in the adult world they're stepping into. Some cut their wrists, shoot themselves, OD, over inability to commit to a fake life in a world that rewards hypocrisy. I don't mistake the pope for having too much influence. American fundamentalists think the pope is the devil himself. The pope says global warming is a serious issue and they dig their heads deeper into the sand. He is a negative influence. The pope says God is in the heart, it confirms for the fundamentalists that God is on the other side of the clouds. The pope says God is love, it confirms for them God is fear. I imagine some Catholics are freaking out, the ones who have given their lives to greed and want justification. He points at the needs of billions of really poor people around the globe, drawing attention to them in a time of turning backs to the poor. American police brutality is reserved for the poor and black, the people without recourse, too poor to hire a lawyer. If one can get a lawyer, the cop will lie in court, the judge knowing it, and that's the end of it. 

Perhaps the most interesting part of his influence I see is that he is inspiring the people who take the church traditions for granted to think about what they believe, think about it in relation to how they live their lives. Do you live what you believe? Like somebody living on stock dividends of munitions corporations, he'd recommend they sell the stocks and put the money in business not so destructive, like solar. I've an idea it will mostly amount to something else to feel guilty about, like birth control. Pope is, after all, a bureaucratic role. I'm sure he's had his fill of it by now and has learned how to flow with it. Francis has turned out to be a pope I admire unreservedly as I admire the Dalai Lama. I like seeing that Christendom has such a figure. The fundamentalists who usurped the word Christian to themselves have given all other Christians a bad name. I've wondered how long Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Roman Catholics, would put up with the gross misuse of their own identity as Christian. So far, I suspect it's been a matter of ignore them and maybe they'll go away. One thing about it, the fundamentalists are so far off the beam of what it means to be a Christian that I feel like they are inspiring the other people who figure as Christian to question their own commitment to love, compassion, understanding. Pope Francis has stepped forward to remind the whole world of Christendom, both Catholic and Protestant, that helping the poor is what Christians do. My feeling is il papa has caused serious thought to echo through Christendom for some time yet to come. Ultimately, he could be the cause of a welcome reformation inside the Catholic Church. He inspires people outside the church as well as inside. I can't help but find it curious why such a pope came forward in this time.

il papa

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THE POPE AND THE UGLY PAGANS

Earlier, I set out to watch Kurosawa's 1961 film, Sanjuro, his take on a samurai slasher film. It started putting me to sleep. Took a nap. Watched an hour of it and couldn't handle it anymore. For one thing, maybe I've seen too many samurai slasher films, but that's not it. That just increases my appreciation for a really good one like 13 Assassins by Takashi Miike. I'd seen Seven Samurai and Yojimbo, the films of Kurosawa's samurai series before Sanjuro. This one just didn't click with me. I felt like it would have made a comic stage play with stylized pretend slashing with Star Wars light sabers. I'd like to see that. Sanjuro had too much running and hiding, a bozo bunch of sidekicks with the bold samurai that might have worked in 1961, but it doesn't hold my attention now. I turned it off and went back to bed to get out of the cold. I have heat, but the floor is cold and sometimes I feel like a barefoot Sherpa climbing a Himalayan mountain. I have on some warm sox and some warm houseboots that make a difference. I lay in the warm bed listening to an NPR hour-long show of three people telling experiential stories before audiences. It was an attention-holding hour of three people talking what we call some real shit. Wrapped up in my favorite blanket I thought of a few of my friends I saw earlier in the day, stories they could tell, stories I could tell, everyday life moments that matter for one or several of an infinite number of reasons.

 

O

 

I see trends in our television society that I often find heartening in that they acknowledge our humanity. We have well-intended political correctness as a regimen, the ABCs of popular self-censoring. I've realized the republican strategy of using people like Cruz, Palin, Bachman, and a host of others like them, worms that crawled out of the pit of ignorance to infect others with their disease, is based in the predictable rule of thumb that people of lower intelligence levels vote republican. Their appeal is  their ignorance. They appeal to the people of below average intelligence. It's sad to see, but it's always been that way. It's just that Karl Rove brought it to the surface and used it politically. Of course, Ted Cruz does not appeal to anyone with any sense. It's not what his role is about. He stirs up ignorance. So much activity is from the dark side in the capital of the nation and every state, it gives evidence that the only purpose is money, Mammon is worshipped. The new pope nailed it when he called wealth the new golden calf. He has spoken to the world that American fundamentalism is an illness. It is funny in a time when the police state of the world destroys governments and infrastructures of Latin American countries, impoverishing their people, to keep them under control. It was known at the time, and in all time since, that American's bombed Allende, the popularly elected president of Chile, in his office in Santiago, a bomb from a plane aimed at his office. The world looked the other way. USA put fascist Pinochet in power and destroyed Chile such that it will take decades to a century for it to come back, and killed Nobel Prize poet Pablo Neruda. For corporate interests.

 

 

 

Reading the public words spoken by the new pope, Francis, is so refreshing they make tears run down my face, tears of joy. The contrast with the force that has power over the American people is such that it shows our entire way of life, the American belief system, the American Dream, to be from the dark side, Mammon. The pope has even brought up Mammon. Our American government and media are coming so much from the dark side in this time that speaking the views of Jesus publicly has rich catholics threatening him with leaving the church out of their tax-deductible charitable giving. This pope might say something like, Get behind me Satan,  if pushed to it with such threats. He said that the people who call themselves Christians and accumulate wealth are "ugly pagans." He's sweeping out the trash. I never imagined in my lifetime seeing a pope as anything other than the top dog in the worlds original and greatest bureaucratic hierarchy. This one appears to have read the gospels. He's a pope who inspires with his truth. Whoever heard of such a thing? Every time I see a new quotation from him it takes my breath that someone in a position of international authority is talking anti-fascism. I don't even need to question what American fundamentalists are going through being called by the pope on the evening news an illness. The funny part is that from their point of view, he's the devil himself. For their sakes, would that he were.

 

 

Now he's saying that hell is a concept of the past, that a loving God would not have such a place. He's speaking from papal infallibility, which he actually may be instrumental in changing. It seems like something he'd do. I won't even let my mother talk to me about it. Hearing it would be a repeat of what I already know. It's Satan, himself, talking. That's all. I don't see the American fundamentalists being moved very much by what the pope said about them. They will wear it with pride and  become even more so, because the devil called them an illness. I don't know and don't want to know, but I see them in my mind's eye making this pope out to be the anti-Christ. I don't want to hear the preaching on the subject, because I already can. He says they can't call themselves Christians and continue to refuse to help the poor. He points out that helping the poor is what Christian is about. Not this side of the Atlantic. I don't think it is that side of the Atlantic either. Won't it be fun to see helping the poor American style. Corporate logos everywhere. This box of instant oatmeal brought to you by Calvary Bible Church in association with Exxon, sign here that you've never had an abortion. I've never held the pope up high, as I did not grow up Catholic, but I've paid attention to the papacy because it was so visible and so in free fall in this time. Pope Francis is something like a parachute opening. I'd like to see a world-wide grassroots trend creep into action everywhere of Catholics reaching out to the poor. I would never anticipate American fundamentalists  doing something the pope said is the Christian thing to do. 

 

 

 

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CHRISTIAN THE POLITICAL PARTY

shroud of turin

It seems like I've come to a place where I want to change my ways of thinking, but know I won't, because, for the most obvious reason, I'm too lazy. My thinking is changing, though. It changes all the time, from cosmologies to everyday life details. A few days ago talking with my friend Crystal, I suspected somebody in particular of an act of meanness. Between then and today, we learned otherwise. Instead of just letting it go, something I would have done in the past, I fessed up and apologized for my suspicion that turned out inaccurate. It was not a problem, at all, but I felt better about owning up to my mistaken lack of confidence in somebody we both knew. I had spoken opinion without knowledge, just like Faux News. Expressing my regret that I'd misread this individual felt like that was the way to go, like using an eraser. I had caught myself doing something I don't like when others do it. I made a conclusion on a subject I knew nothing about. I know better. Hearing myself say it, I remember hesitating within, pointing out to myself I don't know what I'm talking about. I went ahead and said it because it sounded good. I regretted it ever since. Not a big regret, because it doesn't matter, just a misspoken sentence that has fallen into the nothingness of all sentences ever spoken after they're spoken. The dead sentence void. I'd have gone on thinking about it, adding to it failure to apologize and regret over that in addition to the initial regret. Fessing up erased all of it. That's a pretty good example of a recent change in my thinking, an ability to freely open up and say I made an error.

I'm happy to see at the age when men tend to lock down in their opinions and beliefs to where they're carved in marble, I am able to change my thinking at least a little bit. I see men I know my age and avoid extended conversation, because I really don't want to lapse into White Man mind dead set against this, that and everything else. I can't stand there and say, "Right...Right...Right," on Obama not being an American citizen, government's gonna take our guns, women shouldn't have abortions. I recall a time in my store, a couple in late 70s I was having friendly conversation with, suddenly asked if I'm a Christian. I thought: Oh no! Ruin a good conversation.! I did not want to go there, because they'd already identified themselves fundamentalists. I said, "Christian has become a political party and I'm not a member." That didn't work. They had to explain that's not what they meant. I had to explain my distrust of people calling themselves Christians. Of course, they're Christians. They're white Americans, not from the Middle East. Only thing it tells me when somebody identifies self a Christian is they are absolutists who will soon find me wishy-washy because I don't clamp down on absolutes with the zeal of a preacher pounding a bible with his fist. I like to allow others their own beliefs without me believing it's my place to change them to my way of seeing. Not acceptable Christian behavior. People who make it an issue to call themselves Christian tell me at the start they are not.

I was talking last week with a woman who is a Baptist and she remarked about something God hates. I thought: we're not going there. To change the subject I said, "When did God start hating? I thought God was love." She explained that God really does hate, and I didn't want an explanation. I just wanted her to give it a moment's thought. I've come to a place at a certain age that I don't let somebody get away with making a remark about God hates one thing or another. They're just quoting preachers. They don't know what they're saying. The preacher sez. He doesn't know what he's saying either. Anybody who starts a sentence, "God hates..." does not know what they're saying. They've not thought about it for even a second, ever in their lives. The belief that God hates attributes to God the nature of what the Christians call Satan. It's Satan that hates. But the Baptist religion has become so focused on Satan over the last half century, or maybe I should say Protestantism has been obsessed with Satan and hate for several centuries, they've incorporated hate into God. Like the saying, you are what you eat, we also become the subject of our focus of attention. Like my mother, the Kansas fundamentalist, in the course of a phone conversation will say Satan several times and never once mention Jesus. Jesus is never a consideration except in the clichés, died for your sins, son of God, born of a virgin. Compassion is not given a moment's notice. That's woman stuff. Preaching is a patriarchal phenomenon. Patriarchs don't do love and compassion. That's for women and babies. What if somebody takes advantage of your compassion? And love is a four-letter word. That's how it was in the fundamentalist church I grew up in. I don't see it any different among "Christians" now.

It might possibly be a new way I've come into seeing God that has started changing points in my thinking. Lately, I've been seeing God an invisible flow, like my own consciousness. Consciousness is not a thing. As far as I know, the scientific method has not yet been able to find it. It amounts to essence. Like an image of a hammer in my mind might be the essence of hammer. Merely a mental image: empirically nothing. Love. What is that? Almost everybody knows the experience, but nobody can put their finger on it. A warrior society based in the Hebrew wars of the Old Testament hasn't yet evolved unto love. They're still back in the old way Jesus said was "fulfilled." I think that means it's over. Actually, what I suspect most strongly is behind the "Christian" rejection of love is that it is anti-dramatic. Love is about inner peace. In America the word peace is political. It identifies one a liberal, a 'secular humanist' (whatever that is), anti-war, not a patriot (whatever that is), a hippie. Christians committed genocide on this continent over and over modeling and justifying themselves after the Hebrew wars of genocide. After Catholicism, Protestantism, Fundamentalism, I am unable to go with Christendom. The words of Jesus have been overtaken by belief systems one is expected to believe without questioning. I'll just go my own way seeing God as love, love as God, opening my heart to God to spray WD-40 on its hinges. If understanding equals love, and if allowing equals love, then understanding and allowing are God. This is how I find my perspective with God.  

 

 

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FUNDAMENTALISM ON THE LINE

          robert ryman, untitled

For the fun of it, I went to youtube and found INNOCENCE OF MUSLIMS, the short "movie" that is getting American embassies burned and people killed, threatened, maimed, Anglo people, non-muslims. The film really is outrageous. The most outrageous is that is sooo baaaad, and not a Pink Flamingos kind of bad. It is worse than those absurd Bible story films I saw under duress in summer Bible school, early 1950s in b&w. They were made by adults for kids and kids couldn't stand them. Anyway, I couldn't. A bunch of white people dressed up like Middle Easterners of several millennia ago orating simple sentences like they're the greatest words ever spoken, they're Bible. This film is one more bit of evidence that the Middle Eastern conflicts can be called the Fundamentalist Wars. Islamic fundies vs. Baptist fundies. Fox News represents Baptist fundamentalism that has left the realm of the Spirit and taken up politics with Rush Limbaugh the high priest. My mother tells me Baptist is not a "religion," which I already knew, but she didn't mean it that way. I call it a religion separate from Christendom, a religion unto itself as it has no connection with compassion, love, caring for the poor. Jesus himself said going by rules and regulations is not it. What do the Baptists care? The self-called preachers know better. To keep it clear, this is my own subjective experience, not somebody else's.


I saw on a news clip the guy responsible for the film has been taken into custody. Probably for his protection. He needs to be charged with being stupid. But in this time Stupid is a badge of honor, something to be proud of. The Islamic fundamentalists can't be any brighter than the American fundamentalists; they act the same where belief in absolutes is concerned. The hilarity is that if Islamists made a 15 minute video of Jesus as embodiment of the seven deadly sins and such a lout as this absurd film made Mohammed, the Christians wouldn't even notice. It's like: somebody white says nigger and black people hit the ceiling; somebody black says white motherfucker and nobody white notices. Of course, we've had something on the order of democracy where freedom of expression is the order, meaning we hear all kinds of things, pick and choose for ourselves and let the rest go. Islamists, like Baptists, think in absolutes: I'm right--you're wrong. Never any thought of questioning, searching, seeking, allowing others their own beliefs. That's what the mission field is about, teaching the heathens what they're supposed to believe. The Baptist religion still thinks in 19th Century colonialist terms; which is to say, the religion has no future. It is locked down in the past and will not make it through the transition from the Age of Fire into the Age of Electricity. These fundamentalist wars appear to be clearing out that old way of thinking that is not productive any more in constructive ways. The fundamentalists have taken on the role of the Destroyer.


I'm still laughing over that yo-yo in the Kansas legislature, the state that voted to keep Evolution out of the public school curriculum, calling for assassination of the president according to the Bible. Is this not the most telling evidence that we are in the time of the Absurd. We laugh like crazy at absurd humor. I have a difficult time inside myself with my Kansas past; K-10 in Kansas City, Kansas, and 10-12 in Wichita, a city I never learned to like. Allen Ginsberg found something there in one of his major verses, Wichita Vortex Sutra. His world in Wichita was very different from mine. He hung with the college crowd, the dope smokers; I was in high school going to football and basketball games like they were important, church, barely able to read with minimal comprehension, getting through school like a donkey led by a ring in the nose. Keeping up with what's required. Just like a job. Just like everyday life. The churches I came up in were the worst. The church in KC, Calvary Bible Church, fundamentalist by self-definition. The preacher was an intelligent Baptist preacher. I respected him all the way along. Respected him more, as a man, than I knew at the time. The preacher at the church in Wichita by now I've forgotten his name and the name of the church. He was the greatest betrayer of my trust of my life. He taught me never to trust a preacher. I don't even make an effort to remember that time in my life. It is full of memories that make me remember why I was so happy to leave that city, and the state with it. These are entirely my own subjective (karmic) experiences. Other people have other experiences.


In Kansas, they think the South is backward. I went to Charleston, South Carolina, in the last years of the Old South, saw there the last days of the old ways, the same as living in the mountains, came here in time to see the passing of the old ways. In that way I feel culturally privileged. From South Carolina I looked back at Kansas as backward. From the mountains I look back at Kansas as backward. I made it through the Kansas period, alas the formative period, not without a lot of internal damage. Leaving Wichita and Kansas, I was leaving my past, erasing it as I went along like a math teacher's blackboard. I came to life in Charleston at the College of Charleston. Didn't do anything special, got the education I needed at a small school that didn't cost an arm and two legs, about two-thirds of the faculty incredibly bright and a third not so bright. The College was still in the OId South my first three years. I loved the opportunity to become acquainted with the Old South from the inside. In like manner, I love the opportunity to know the old-time mountain culture in its last years. In both places, seeing the new culture of television coming in was worthy of some sorrow, like watching Wal-marts come in. But I remember my attorney friend of several years ago, Lorne Campbell. He was one of my peep-holes into the world of the mountains before electricity. He said, "The mountains need new blood." They do.


I hear Kansas fundamentalism in the news and it gives me the shivers. The really funny part for me is that from the Kansas fundamentalist perspective, the old-time mountain Baptist churches, the Primitive and the Regular, are backwards, need to come up to date. My mother, after an experience in one, called it, "That ridiculous church you go to." My thought: I was thinking the same thing about yours. What she took for ridiculous was that it was not fundamentalist full of fire and hell to keep the flock from nodding off. Her religion made an atheist of me. At first, I thought it was by reaction. That must have been the initial boot kick to get me out of it. It had no life for me. No living spirit. Patti Smith just now sang in my head, "What's the church but rules and regulations TO ME, TO ME." Simply put, Kansas fundamentalism made an atheist of me because I simply did not believe it. I believed the core, the Jesus part, but from there on it was all false and negativity piled on top of negativity. Had nothing to do with love. I never once felt a pixel of love come from any of those three churches I was dragged through. And I came to see that God prefers an honest atheist to a hypocritical Christian. I know it is not this way for everyone. This is entirely my own subjective, karmic experience. Since I've lived under my own power, I am happy with the places I've lived. Loved Charleston, love the mountains.


My Baptist friends think I am brutal when I get on that subject. They say, "My church is not like that. We have a lot of love where I go." And they're right. I would like to say pretty things about it, but have none to say. So I keep up the reminder that this writing is only from the point of view of subjective experience. My experience is my own. Your experience is your own. We draw difference conclusions from our experiences. When I found myself a baby on Meher Baba's lap saying, "dada," I was happy the Baptist religion had spit me out. Therefore, it's a good thing, all of it. My karma. Looking back over the path of my life, it has all been a matter of self-healing. This is why I've never joined society or whatever it's called, because of my life's mission to heal the wounds from the Kansas era of my life. It wasn't that it was just Kansas or Baptist church, either. That was just the context. Venus is my guiding planet. It means I require beautiful surroundings where I live. I thought Charleston was beautiful, and the mountains the apex of beauty where I can hear katydids and tree frogs chirping in the trees outside the open door at night and bird song all day.


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