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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