I've been wondering a little, why I'm lurking on this list where the "G" word is evidently so unpopular, where everyone seems to think that "religion" = = "George Bush's mental disease" + "the opiate of the people"--except for a few strange folks who write in having just discovered that the secret of the universe was recorded in Such-&-such Sacred Book, and they've just figured it All out and want everybody to KNOW!
So. For the record. You don't have to "Believe" 6 impossible things every day before breakfast to pass The Exam. All that was a misunderstanding, a persistent misunderstanding but only persistent because human beings found it so appealing: "Just think! I don't have to THINK anymore! Oh boy!"
What we DO need to do is to "wake up." Does that necessarily mean disbelieving all the religious doctrines we've been given? Some people on this list seem to think so. Not only does this attitude leave us throwing out a major chunk of the human psyche; it's factually incorrect.
"What then," you ask, "is the True Secret of the Universe, oh Wise Guy?" I am not going to try to tell you, except to say that if you meditate persistently you will see for yourself quite well enough. Something in us wants us to wake up, and will do the necessary.
Anyway... I am going to put in one last plug for that Quaker pamphlet my group has been reading/discussing. My wife and I were talking this morning, and it occurred to her... "The reason we've been studying this is to prepare us for the collapse of our civilization!" And yes, that is why this account of life under the Nazis and after the fall of Germany has struck me so powerfully lately. We all know that our nation has been dancing on the table with a soup bowl on its head, for a very long time now, and we've been waiting on and on, wondering... What will it be like, when our collective foot drifts at last past the edge, and goes down, and down, and down... ? If you see some interest in that perspective, download pamphlet # 49, 'Christ in Catastrophe,' at www.pendlehill.org.
Does it take a prophet to tell you that our economy is ready to collapse? That it deserves to collapse, wants to collapse, is now enjoying its very last twitches before throwing a real fit? It wouldn't hurt to read a little history about the Depression... And maybe start thinking about this question: "When none of us has any money to give each other for anything, how can we and our friends help each other?"
Forrest Curo San Diego
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