As a 20-something I rarely attended church, frequency increasing upon the realization that there was a favorable ratio of women to men there. So, I poured myself into a pew two Sundays in a row, followed both times by a most attractive young woman, who sat right next to me. Then I thanked God for sending me the right one, not realizing my youthful blasphemy, as I secretly vowed to serve Him better and sit in that same pew until such time as the girl and I exchanged phone numbers. From week three on, I never did see her again and I quietly slipped out of church and into years of seeking the right one, finding her, losing her to divorce and finding a string of other right ones over the years.
Of course there is not really a right one, but there is a Right One, and He does not care to share the number one spot with the right one, no matter how attractive. I have shared my journey with the closest thing on earth to the right one as together we have done imperfect service to the Right One for the last 18 years.~CMA
Dear God
If there is a God
Save me from hell
If there is a hell
“But the new rebel is a skeptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it. Thus he writes one book complaining that imperial oppression insults the purity of women, and then he writes another book (about the sex problem) in which he insults it himself. He curses the Sultan because Christian girls lose their virginity, and then curses Mrs. Grundy because they keep it. As a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. A man denounces marriage as a lie, and then denounces aristocratic profligates for treating it as a lie. He calls a flag a bauble, and then blames the oppressors of Poland or Ireland because they take away that bauble. The man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite skeptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.”
~GK Chesterton, Orthodoxy
We believe in Marx Freud and Darwin.
We believe everything is OK
as long as you don't hurt anyone,
to the best of your definition of hurt,
and to the best of your definition of knowledge.
We believe in sex before during
and after marriage.
We believe in the therapy of sin.
We believe that adultery is fun.
We believe that taboos are taboo.
We believe that everything's getting better
despite evidence to the contrary.
The evidence must be investigated and
you can prove anything with evidence.
We believe there's something in horoscopes,
UFO's and bent spoons;
Jesus was a good man
just like Buddha Mohammed and ourselves.
He was a good moral teacher
although we think some
of his morals were basically bad.
We believe that all religions are basically the same,
at least the ones that we read were.
They all believe in love and goodness.
They only differ on matters of
creation, sin, heaven hell God and salvation.
We believe that after death comes The Nothing
because when you ask the dead what happens
they say Nothing.
If death is not the end, if the dead have lied,
then it's compulsory heaven for all
excepting perhaps Hitler, Stalin and Genghis Khan.
We believe in Masters and Johnson.
What's selected is average.
What's average is normal.
What's normal is good.
We believe that man is essentially good.
It's only his behavior that lets him down.
We believe that each man must
find the truth that is right for him
and reality will adapt accordingly.
The universe will readjust. History will alter.
We believe that there is no absolute truth
excepting the truth that there is no absolute truth.
We believe in the rejection of creeds.
And the flowering of individual thought.
If chance be the Father of all flesh,
disaster is his rainbow in the sky,
and when you hear
State of Emergency!
Sniper Kills Ten!
Troops on Rampage!
Whites go Looting!
Bomb Blasts School!
It is but the sound of man worshiping his maker.
~Steve Turner, 1980
You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. ~Simon Peter, Matthew 16:16
Yesterday I went for a drive, deciding to stop only at places previously unknown to me. I ventured upon a Chinese restaurant in Poway, California and was waited on by a Thai woman named Pauline. Pauline smiled brightly and looked me in the eyes, before asking my name, something few other waitresses have ever bothered doing before. The food arrived and it was above average, but Pauline was a five-star experience, sharing sustenance and joy with me and all her other customers. When she brought the check, I asked her the secret to happiness. “No secret,” she replied, “just be happy.” I paid my bill and as I walked away she came to the door of the restaurant and waved goodbye to me. In the car I cracked open my fortune cookie and read, “Turn off the TV and the computer and exercise your mind with a good book.” And so I read in my car on the hot asphalt of that altar/mall parking lot for half an hour, full of food and joy. ~Lucas Parable
