REFLECTIONS

"I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and
endeavoring to make our fellow creatures happy.
I do not believe in the creed professed by the
Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish
Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any church that I know of.
My own mind is my own church."
-Thomas Paine -The Age of Reason 1792

Strangers in the Night

To do is to be - Nietzsche/Descartes/Socrates
To be is to do - Sartre
Do be do be do - Sinatra

I do it my way,
-Mary @agignesthai@yahoo.com

No method nor discipline can supercede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how wells elected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer.

- Henry David Thoreau, Walden "Sounds"

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sound of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.
-Frederick Douglas

The court acknowledges, as I suppose, the validity of the law of God. I see a book kissed here which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament. That teaches me that all things whatsoever I would that men should do to me, I should do even so to them. It teaches me further to "remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them." I endeavored to act up to that instruction. I say, I am too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done -- as I have always freely admitted I have done -- in behalf of His despied poor, was not wrong, but right. Now if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments. -- I submit; so let it be done!
- John Brown

Theodore Parker

The Transient and Permanent in Christianity
Delivered at the Ordination of Rev. Charles C. Shackford in the Hawes Place Church, Boston on May 19, 1841

Luke xxi.33. "Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my word shall not pass away."

In this sentence we have a very clear indication that Jesus of Nazareth believed the religion he taught would be eternal, that the substance of it would last forever. Yet there are some, who are affrighted by the faintest rustle which a heretic makes among the dry leaves of theology; they tremble lest Christianity it self should perish without hope. Ever and anon the cry is raised, "The Philistines be upon us, and Christianity is in danger." The least doubt respecting the popular theology, or the existing machinery of the church; the least sign of distrust in the Religion of the Pulpit, or the Religion of the Street, is by some good men supposed to be at enmity with faith in Christ, and capable of shaking Christianity itself. On the other hand, a few bad men and a few pious men, it is said, on both sides of the water, tell us the day of Christianity is past. The latter -- it is alleged -- would persuade us that, hereafter, Piety must take a new form; the teachings of Jesus are to be passed by; that Religion is to wing her way sublime, above the flight of Christianity, far away, toward heaven, as the fledged eaglet leaves forever the nest which sheltered his callow youth. Let us, therefore, devote a few moments to this subject, and consider what is TRANSIENT in Christianity, and what is PERMANENT therein.

There is a knock on St. Peter's door. He looks out and a man is
standing
there. St. Peter is about to begin his interview when the man
disappears.

A short time later there's another knock. St. Peter gets the door,
sees
the man, opens his mouth to speak, and the man disappears once
again.

"Hey, are you playing games with me?" St. Peter calls after him.

"No," the man's distant voice replies anxiously. "They're
trying to resuscitate me."

Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

UU's on Martin Luther King Jr.

http://www.uua.org/news/2007/070110_mlk.html

In a 1949 sermon,Martin Luther King Jr. asked God to "help us work with renewed vigor for a warless world, a better distribution of wealth and a brotherhood that transcends race or color."

King also sought a peaceful coexistence between science and religion and rejected a literal reading of the Bible, an approach he said had been used to justify slavery and other racial injustices.
By ERRIN HAINES, Associated Press Writer

The common dogma [of fundamentalists] is fear of modern knowledge, inability to cope with the fast change in a scientific-technological society, and the real breakdown in apparent moral order in recent years.... That is why hate is the major fuel, fear is the cement of the movement, and superstitious ignorance is the best defence against the dangerous new knowledge. ... When you bring up arguments that cast serious doubts on their cherished beliefs you are not simply making a rhetorical point, you are threatening their whole Universe and their immortality. That provokes anger and quite frequently violence. ... Unfortunately you cannot reason with them and you even risk violence in confronting them. Their numbers will decline only when society stabilizes, and adapts to modernity.

-- G Gaia

The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he
resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.
--Archibald Macleish

We learn from history that we do not learn from history.

-- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

CHURCH SQUIRRELS

There were Five country churches in a small TEXAS town:
The Presbyterian Church, the Baptist Church, the Methodist Church, the
Catholic Church, and the Jewish Synagogue. Each church was overrun
with pesky squirrels.

One day, the Presbyterian Church called a meeting to decide what to do
about the squirrels. After much prayer and consideration they
Determined that the squirrels were predestined to be there and they
shouldn't interfere with God's divine will.

In the Baptist Church the squirrels had taken up habitation in the
baptistery. The deacons met and decided to put a cover on the
baptistery and drown the squirrels in it. The squirrels escaped
somehow and there were twice as many there the next week.

The Methodist Church got together and decided that they were not in a
position to harm any of God's creation. So, they humanely trapped the
Squirrels and set them free a few miles outside of town. Three days
later, the squirrels were back.

But -- The Catholic Church came up with the best and most effective
solution. They baptized the squirrels and registered them as members
of the church. Now they only see them on Christmas and Easter

Not much was heard about the Jewish Synagogue, but they took one
squirrel and had a short service with him called circumcision, and
they haven't seen a squirrel on the property since.

Gators Blow Out Buckeyes

http://www.ocala.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070108/SPORTS/70109001/1053

Pat Does It Again!

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/01/07/PAT.TMP

A Letter to God
HumanistNetworkNews.org Jan. 3, 2007

There was a man who worked for the Post Office whose job was to process all the mail that had illegible addresses. One day, a letter came addressed in a shaky handwriting to God with no actual address. He thought he should open it to see what it was about. The letter read:

Dear God,

I am an 83 year old widow, living on a very small pension. Yesterday someone stole my purse. It had $100 in it, which was all the money I had until my next pension check. Next Sunday is Christmas, and I had invited two of my friends over for dinner. Without that money, I have nothing to buy food with, have no family to turn to, and you are my only hope. Can you please help me?

Sincerely,

Edna

The postal worker was touched. He showed the letter to all the other workers. Each one dug into his or her wallet and came up with a few dollars. By the time he made the rounds, he had collected $96, which they put into an envelope and sent to the woman. The rest of the day, all the workers felt a warm glow thinking of Edna and the dinner she would be able to share with her friends.

Christmas came and went. A few days later, another letter came from the same old lady to God. All the workers gathered around while the letter was opened. It read:

Dear God,

How can I ever thank you enough for what you did for me? Because of your gift of love, I was able to fix a glorious dinner for my friends. We had a very nice day and I told my friends of your wonderful gift.

By the way, there was $4 missing. I think it was those bastards at the Post Office.

Edna

The 12-stepper's (e.g. Alcoholic
Anon.)version of St. Francis of Assisi's prayer:

Lord, make me a channel of thy peace;

that where there is hatred, I may bring love;
that where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness;
that where there is discord, I may bring harmony;
that where there is error, I may bring truth;
that where there is doubt, I may bring faith;
that where there is despair, I may bring hope;
that where there are shadows, I may bring light;
that where there is sadness, I may bring joy.
Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted;
to understand, than to be understood;
to love, than to be loved.
For it is by self-forgetting that one finds.
It is by forgiving that one is forgiven.
It is by dying that one awakens to eternal life.