Fridge notes
June 26, 2005 by Bill
In the discussion time of my Sunday Symposium we have a small ritual. When anyone says something worth remembering, we say “that’s for your refrigerator door.” Everyone has a fridge door full of notes. Here are a few educational gems for the “religion” section of your door.
- Faith is to the human what sand is to the ostrich.
- The last time we mixed religion and government people were burned at the stake.
- Theology: The study of elaborate verbal disguises for non-ideas.
- If something called “God” is beyond human comprehension, then theology is a pseudo-science without a subject matter.
- “The Government of the United States is in no sense founded on the Christian religion.” President George Washington in the Treaty of Tripoli.
- “This would be the best of all possible worlds if there were no religion in it.” President John Adams in The Jefferson-Adams letters.
- “I do not find in Christianity one redeeming feature. It has made one half the world fools, the other half hypocrites.” President Thomas Jefferson
- “The bible is not my book…and Christianity is not my religion.” President Abraham Lincoln to the Washington D.C. clergy
- “A just government has no need for the clergy or the church. The fruits of Christianity are pride and indolence in the clergy…ignorance and servility in the laity…and in both clergy and laity…superstition…bigotry and persecution.” President James Madison…author of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. From his address before the General Assembly of Virginia, 1785
- “The first clergyman was the first sly rogue who encountered the first fool.” Voltaire
- “Religion is regarded by the common people as true…by the wise as false…and by the rulers as useful…” Mark Twain
- “The bible has some poetry…some blood drenched history…a wealth of obscenity…and upwards of a hundred thousand lies.” Mark Twain
- “Civilization will thrive when the last stone…from the last church…falls on the head of the last priest” Emile Zola
- “Reason should be destroyed in all Christians.” Martin Luther
- “If your wife is cold…call the maid…” Martin Luther in “Table Talk”
- “The source and cause of fights and malignancy…persecution…wars and all evil…is religion. Let it once enter our public schools and they would be destroyed.” Supreme Court of Wisconsin, Weiss vs District Board..March 18, 1890
- “FAITH…(noun) belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge…” Ambrose Bierce columnist for the San Francisco Examiner
- “There is one commandment I have never broken…I can assure you…I have never coveted my neighbors wife.” Ruth Gordon, actress. The Ten Commandments were written BY Hebrew men FOR Hebrew men.)
- “Buried deep in the heart of every Christian evangelist lies the wreck of a con man.” H.L. Mencken (Billy Graham, son Franklin and Robert Schuller, please take note.)
- “ARE WOMEN HUMAN?” a subject debated for two weeks at the Council of Macon in Lyons, France 584 a.d. Debated by 63 Catholic Bishops. The vote was finally taken and women were voted “human” by only one vote. The debate is still going on today in 2002 in the Catholic church…Southern Baptists…and all fundamentalist churches.
- “I pray with all of my heart for the day when we will not have any more public schools. The churches will have taken them all over and we Christians will be running them.” Jerry Falwell
- “It is fear…that first brought God and Gods into the world.” Petronius
The summer solstice
June 19, 2005 by Bill
My calendar of the soul fills me with awe at the miracle of the summer solstice. The dazzling, shimmering light of this solstice period balances the winter solstice. It is the Yin-Yang of the universe, the cosmic dance of complementary opposites.
The heat waves radiate out from the mountain rocks that jealousy guard our home. The animals find shade from the noonday sun and the flowers wait patiently for their daily drink. I live surrounded by miracles and I realize that we humans are only a very, very small part, a unit of one, symbiotically related and dependent upon all of the other billions of protoplasmic relatives.
How is it that we are all connected in some marvelous and mysterious way to this cosmic dance of solstice and equinox? This something unknown…doing we know not what.
I stand in awe and wonder gazing at the flowers outside the glass doors of my study. A long, long time ago there were no flowers. And then, just before the close of the Age of Reptiles, there was a soundless explosion that lasted over a million years. It was the emergence of the angiosperms, the flowering plants.
Spirit dance
June 12, 2005 by Bill
There has been a dance of the human spirit through millions of years of evolution. An anthropomorphic supernatural ‘being’, or ‘god’, was a part of that dance in more primitive and superstitious times, but the dance goes on evolving past these archaic images. There is the reality of a Mystery at work in evolution. It is the “something unknown doing we know not what” of Nobel physicist Eddington’s statement. To simply stand before this Mystery in wonder, astonishment and awe leaves us free to join the dance of spirit toward a more refined consciousness.
“will you….won’t you….will you…won’t you…will you join the dance?” is still the question today even as it was in “Alice in Wonderland.” But, to join the dance in this evolution of consciousness, it is mandatory that we let go of the past and become contemporary with ourselves and the world we live in. The inability to “let go” of archaic beliefs, no matter how cherished they have been, and the inability to give up pride and prejudice is the beginning of the countdown to death, either individually or collectively.
“At the still point of the turning world…there is only the dance.” wrote T.S. Eliot. To live fully in joy and daily celebration we must abandon ourselves to the dance of existence. Life is a dance, and the dance goes on with or without us. Life is in session….are you present?
Read more
