Gary ~ May 14

 

God,, Death, Eliza and Jesus

 

Oh where to begin, they are all such weighty topics?

 

I'm gonna kick things off with God since that's Who prompted me to go off on a spiritual tangent today. rather than focus on more mundane matters, which, in the long run aren't very weighty at all.

 

It's like they used to say in AA: Don't sweat the small stuff. And it's all small stuff.

 

Yeah, I can't get too worked up- although I sometimes forget and get REALLY worked up about petty shit- about things that, as the Buddists say, have no inherent reality and that are mere fleeting appearances, and exist only in our mind's fevered imagination.

 

God, I dare say, is not petty in the least, although if you read the Bible, especially the Old Testament, the Big Guy does seem to be a bit of a whiner, getting all bent out of shape just because a few Israelites happen to like decorating their shrines with bright gleaming statues of golden calves and maybe they sometime combine milk with meat on special occasions. 

 

I mean, what's the big fucking deal anyway with these kinds of, I would say petty, things?

 

Much to His credit though, Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament, freely admits that He is a jealous God, full of wrath and vinegar, and willing to smite both His children and His children's enemies with all kinds of plagues and curses and leprosy and a whole lot of other shit, should they tend to piss Him off, even in the slightest way, and even in ways they know not of.

 

I admire the Old Testament God for being willing to recognize, if not totally willing to confront and deal with, His shadow side.  Maybe He should go into therapy, but it's not for me to say.

 

At the same time, let me add that even though I am definitely NOT a big fan of the Old Testament- and Hey!  I don't want to get into the whole anti-gay thing in Leviticus 18:22- maybe I'll do that tomorrow, or at some point when I'm in Boulder CO at the Colorado Chauauqua, we'll see- but anyway, .I just wanna say that I AM a big fan of the Book of Psalms in which you will find some of the most enlighening and beautiful poetry that you will ever find anywhere, no matter how hard you look.  Even William Carlos Williams and Pablor Neruda can't hold a candle to it,  and even Wm. Shakespeare and William Blake come up a bit short when you whip out a few of the Psalms, like Psalm 23 and Psalm 46 and go toe-to-toe with those guys and guys of their ilk.

 

Yeah, baby, I'm just a Full Gospel, New Convenant, tongue-talkin', prophesying, true-believing Born-Again evangelical Christian, baby, and like the woman lying dying on the hospital bed saying "I believe in God and I don't give a shit who knows it," I say along with her, Hallelujah and Praise the Lord!

 

Can I get an "Amen" here, somebody?

 

Yeah, I used to love going around, getting in people's faces and asking them, "Do you know Jesus? Do you know Jesus?" and watching the expressions on their face.  I could always tell when somebody didn't know Jesus because they would always scowl and give me looks of repulsion and derision.

 

I stopped saying, "Have you found Jesus?" after I got a few smart-ass retorts like, "I didn't know He was lost!"  Wiseguys.  I'm willing to bet that they didn't know Jesus either.

 

Well I USED to do all that stuff anyway, before I converted to Hinduism.  Which was before I converted to Mormonism, or maybe I converted to Mormonism before I converted to Hinduism.

 

Or maybe the whole Christian thing came about after I took the est Training in 1982 and after I did all that Nam Myho Renge Kyo  chanting for hours a day in front of my Buddhist shrine upon which I was very careful to NOT place a golden statue of a calf, although did make some food offerings every now and then but never milk and meat at the same time.  Just some rice and dal.

 

Holy Shit, I'm almost at 700 words already and I haven't even touched on Death or Eliza yet and I haven't really gotten into Jesus either, which was something I really intended to do this morning.

 

Oh well, Word Counter is starting flash Red, and its mini-sirens are starting to go off, so I'd better pack it in for now.

 

But I'll be back tomorrow, God willing, and if that creek running right by my house don't rise.