Hsin Hsin Ming -01

When you understand the relationship

of subject and object

thinker and thought

and how they create each other

you recognise that these are not two,but one

Sosan

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del.icio.us Tags: Sosan,enlightenment

Fairness..........?

Following the entry about confused and/or conflicting moral and ethical

standards (Dignitas Personae etc.) I endeavour to attempt to be fair

by now showing this item of news:

It appears that the Saudi court - enforcing Shia law - does not have the right to protect the child either!

Oh dear.You would think that any major religion would by now have realised

the universal repulsion of ordinary people at such activities.

(source:Daily Mail)

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del.icio.us Tags: saudi_courts,shia_law,child_abuse,slavery

Christmas Myths...the real message

Clearing the record about things like donkeys and wise men doesn’t show us the real truth of Christmas. The power of the Christmas story has little to do with who did what and when. It doesn’t matter if Jesus was born on December 25 or on Flag Day. What matters is that he came into the world as a fragile human being, a baby boy in the care of a teenage girl with a skittish husband. God showed us that humility and grace mean so much more than power and glory. Once we clear away the decorations and the subterfuge, we see God revealed in an impoverished infant. I don’t know the mind of God, but it seems like he was making a point.

from an article by Stephen W Simpson

HERE

Love that phrase 'humility and Grace mean so much more than power and glory'

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del.icio.us Tags: Christmas_myths,Christ,manger,wise_men,donkey,Mary

"DIGNITAS PERSONAE" or Dignity of the Person

Well, it must be getting near Christmas I guess. How do I know? Not the snow on the ground,that's melted. Not the upsurge in 'help your neighbour' scenarios,that's digitalised. I know because the Vat has come out with a 'pro-life'(translated-extra members::translated - more money) document this last week with the above title.

SUPER grandiose

quote"the Vatican yields to no one in its pro-life commitments. In effect, “Dignitas Personae” is a reminder that there will be no “truce,” no strategic silence, about the defense of human life from the moment of conception.

end quote: source-http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/opinion/19allen.html?hp

NOW THERE'S AN INTERESTING CONCEPT

So, for the benefit of those with short memories excuse me for reminding you of.........

Crimen Sollicationis

as 'Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith ' aka inquisition,, Ratzinger's 2001 letter “Crimen Sollicitationis” which clarified the confidentiality of internal Church investigations into accusations made against priests of certain crimes, including sexual abuse, became a target of controversy during the sex abuse scandal

Cardinal Ratzinger is better known as Pope Benedict XVI - the present pope.If you want to read about excommunication for Bishops,et.al, who disclose details of clergy/child sexual abuse to the Police, read it here

http://ito.blogspot.com/2006/05/crimen-sollicationis.html  

Now what was that about specks in eyes?

And what was that about millstones around the neck of those who abuse 'my little ones'?

Truly, I tell you, as a business the Vat may have some time left - but in a spiritual guidance

function,the Vat is drowning!

(this entry dedicated to the memory of Liam Mercier - and all the countless others sexually and/or physically abused by Catholic Priests, the latter of which had their Personal 'dignity' protected for so long by this organisation)

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Eid al-Adha

It was very much a tradition and the expected thing to

do in the society that circulated within the differing 

cultures of those days. Sacrificing your first born or 

your most loved. Human sacrifice.

Ibrahim and Ishmael or if you prefer the other variant

of the story, Abraham and Isaac, enter into this

sacrificial scenario only to discover that the One God

does not require human sacrifice, so a goat is sacrificed

instead.

Of course, there could just as easily be another

interpretation of the events which is no less holy,

namely, Ibrahim(Abraham) understood that it was 

not in the power of a human being to

destroy God's gift of life to another whatever the 

religious or philosophical arguments!

What a problem! To honour tradition or to honour

the sanctity of life.

Well if these stories mean anything at all,they 

most surely mean that to honour a tradition in 

the knowledge that we destroy another God 

given life...... is about as far from holiness and

the One God as it is possible to get.

Upholding tradition has it's limitations in respect

of respect for God and respect for God given life!

Better to sacrifice the cantankerous goat of

inhuman tradition.

Eid al-Adha

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A Christmas poem - Visions 3 - can be found here

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If it doesn't speak of Love

If it says there is something more powerful than Love

If it talks of a vengeful,wrathful,angry God

If it judges,condemns,punishes....

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then you can be sure that such a book is written about a very much smaller God

than the One God who truly loves without conditions

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Visons 1

My answer to the terrorists.......with special empathy for all those affected

by the atrocities at Mumbai.

"Your eyes are brown,

mine are blue,

his are green

You have good vision, young and fresh,

mine is ageing, blurred a mite,

his is like yours, sharp and true.

You have precise colour seperation sight,

mine is confused on brown and blue hues,

his is genetically perfect.

Behold, the tree.

What do you see?

Do you see differently than me?

If so, is it any less a tree

or greater, maybe?

Behold, your God.

Does it matter how you see?

If you see differently than me?

Does it change the fact of sight

or lessen God's omnipotence that we differentiate?

Ah, but we can philosophise and speculate,

intellectualise and humanise,

from such activity we can grow to love or hate,

We can, ego-driven, minimise or maximise.

It all depends upon our eyes.

Or does it?

Is God any less God

for all our discourse, all our debate?

Is the fact of God

affected by our genetic code

or even indoctrinated load

Is not the fact that we can see

enough of a fact for you and me?

Shall you tell me

I cannot see

because I see differently?

Better, rather, you tell me what you see

for the beauty of your vision

when added to my own

gives extra dimension

depth, colour, form

to that which I have known.

The fact that you can see

does not take anything away from me

but adds to my perception

if you will care

enough to share

and I with you

that which we see as true."

gg

Technorati Tags: Mumbai,terrorism,unity

"Sometimes it is only when something appears to be absent in our 

reality that it is really present in our awareness".gg

(this blog,2001) 

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Wanderings in Wonderment - 01

Last Monday I drove for 250 kms. A beautiful early winter's sunny day.
I drove along pleasant roads with just light traffic in a far more luxurious
car than my childhood memories evoked. The journey was far from
uneventful as I travelled through the unending assault of magnificence
that is the nature of this,my adopted country, Sweden.

This journey began whilst the frost-fingerprints still lay upon the ground,
clothing everything in a mystical hue,hinting at the fine subtlety of nature's
intelligence.Most surely nature knows what she is doing and there is a
rationale of rest and rebirth that underscores all of her methodologies.

It was not long before I settled in to a kind of rhythm. It was like that
half-dreamy awareness that assumes dominance as you listen to some
great symphony or love song. A harmony enters into the consciousness.
The music of these meandering moments was a visual melody as,almost
at each swing in the road,new crescendoes of colour and form fraternised
with my feelings.

Half-toned frost shaded tree groups surrendered to large expanses of
sun-sparkled forests.Lush full autumnal green meadows capitulated to
white crested sunshielded slopes. From one forested area to the next
each forest seemed framed with it's own personality and within each
forest individual trees pronounced themselves with a vocabulary of
uniqueness that even as I travelled could not be ignored. Why was that
tree at that angle? Was that one Silver Birch flirting amongst that group
of Pine trees? The top two or so meters of that tree bent almost at right
angles to it's trunk?

Above me a clear blue sky to the west held that golden brilliance that is
the pivot around which all else functions.It's authority subdued by it's
lessened presence at this time of the year was nevertheless still evident
upon the small cotton-wool stranded clouds that dared to venture into
the western sky. Their timidity underscored by the grey-blue density of
the gathering storm in the eastern sky, creating a counterpoint, a descant
to the melody of the land.

The further I journeyed the more the rhythm and melody of nature rose
in volume within me. The feeling of not wanting this journey to end, of
somehow being adrift on a cloud myself, grew and grew within me.

I reached my destination quite a while before I reached the place to which
I was actually traveling. It was a recognition so powerful as to still remain
palpably present some 24 hours later.

We are surrounded,all the time, everywhere, with blessings of beauty
so enormous,so incalculable in their effect upon our inner self that it is
only whenwe have released the reality of their presence from our grasp
that we are overtaken by the sheer heavenliness of what we have experienced.

As our spirit sighs with the extravagance of all this individualised caress
of creativity we are simply left in wonderment.

"a problem is a solution awaiting it's time of birth" gg

"It is time to change and our problems can facilitate our solutions"

Neil Young

see also sister blog archive 2001   (24th May 2001)

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Technorati Tags: Neil Young

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Oh, those teenagers and kids.....

For those of you who have an insatiable appetite for BAD NEWS and a

pessimistic outlook for the human race----read no further.

"If your image of a philanthropist is a stout, gray geezer, then meet Talia Leman, an eighth grader in Iowa who loves soccer and swimming, and whose favorite subject is science. I’m supporting her for president in 2044.

When Talia was 10 years old, she saw television clips of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and decided to help. She galvanized other kids and started a movement to trick-or-treat at Halloween for coins for hurricane victims.

The movement caught the public imagination, Talia made it on the “Today” show, and the campaign raised more than $10 million. With that success behind her, Talia organized a program called RandomKid to help other young social entrepreneurs organize and raise money.

At randomkid.org, young people can link up with others to participate in various philanthropic ventures. On the Web site, Talia has organized a campaign to build a school in rural Cambodia, backed by children in 48 states and 19 countries.

Likewise, she’s working with schools in seven states to provide clean water for rural African villages. She is a frequent guest speaker at other schools, although she acknowledges she’s just a bit intimidated when she visits a high school.

“I’m only in middle school, so I see high schoolers as the big kids,” she said. “When I go to high school to pass out Unicef boxes, I see them as the big, scary ones.”

At a dinner a few days ago in New York, Talia was honored by World of Children, an organization that encourages youth activism and calls its awards the “Nobel Prizes for children.” If kids like Talia can accomplish so much, without credit cards or driving licenses, just imagine what adults could achieve."    (source:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/opinion/16kristof.html?hp

and if you want to watch a good film about youthful enthusiasm/innocence/determination in the face of life's trials.....

"Saint Ralph"  with Adam Butcher  is another superb film from Canada

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Technorati Tags: Saint Ralph,Kristof,New York Times,Talia Leman

The 'real' DaVinci Code type scandal

Nag Hamadi,1946 Those scrolls are found.

How many have found their way to the secret vaults of the Catholic Church?

How many of the Scrolls have been allowed to be studied by modern academics?

Does 'The Gospel of Thomas:the secret sayings of Jesus", and other such scrolls, really threaten the fundamentals of the church - or do such documents more adequately reflect the way in which Christianity has been manipulated from within?

Can the institutionalised Christian Church survive the open study of ALL the scrolls documents from Nag Hamadi or must these remain 'protected from public view?'

"Unless drastic measures are taken at once,the greatest and most valuable of all Hebrew and Aramaic manuscript discoveries
is likely to become the academic scandal par excellence of the twentieth century."
-- Geza Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls: Qumran in Perspective (Fortress, 1981), p. 24.

All that which is hidden shall be revealed (St.Mark's Gospel)

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Technorati Tags: Thomas,Dead Sea Scrolls,DaVinci Code,Nag Hamadi

Superior religions......... ?

 

........................................see post below......................................

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Flickr Tags: Saudi Blasphemy laws

Be aware of religious "rights"

"They undermine the standards codified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the keystone of the United Nations, by granting greater rights to religions than to individuals, including those who choose to hold no faith – or who would seek to convert.

Another stark irony hangs over the UN special session this week. Saudi Arabia is one of the world's worst abusers of religious freedom, a fact recognized by the Bush administration when it named it a "country of particular concern" under the International Religious Freedom Act in 2004. The king couldn't hold such a conference at home, where conservative clerics no doubt would purge the guest list of Jews from Israel, Baha'is, and Ahmadis."

"The Saudis' dubious interfaith agenda at the UN" is the name of the article which discusses repressive and inhumane religious laws...and the rest of the article is here

It should be read regardless of what religion - or none - you hold.

But control-freak rules have always been the domain of insecure   "faiths",and especially those sects,

religio-politico orgs that seek to control a state, a country....or a world

Personally,I think that religions should earn the loving respect of the world community. This they can do by upholding modern standards of human rights and by so demonstrating their LOVE for humanity as to be a catalyst for lovingness.

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Technorati Tags: Islam,United Nations,Saudi Arabia,Religious Freedom Act 2004

Obama on his Faith - 1

"And so, the biggest challenge, I think, is always maintaining your moral compass. Those are the conversations I'm having internally. I'm measuring my actions against that inner voice that for me at least is audible, is active, it tells me where I think I'm on track and where I think I'm off track. ...

Looking for, ... It's interesting, the most powerful political moments for me come when I feel like my actions are aligned with a certain truth. I can feel it. When I'm talking to a group and I'm saying something truthful, I can feel a power that comes out of those statements that is different than when I'm just being glib or clever"

You can read part of this interview which originally appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times in 2004 here

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Christian contradiction

just in case there are some folks smugly smiling the 'I told you so'

thing over my last posting,I thought I would update with another event

from yesterday

you can read more HERE

Islam struggling to survive

LiveJournal Tags: Islam,fatwa,Beslan,Darul Uloom,hadith,Qu'rn,Imam

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Comments have appeared previously in this blog concerning
the 'hijacking of Islam', and there is no doubt that the honour
and purity of Islam suffered a grievous wound on 11th September
2001.

The integrity of Islam,however,received a mortal blow at Beslan.

Throughout this blog,over these years, I have sought to demonstrate
the contradictions within faiths of all kinds and have especially sought
to counteract the amazingly distorted proclamations of many religions
that were based upon spurious and dubious interpretations of old
(and somewhat mystic) writings.

My main argument with Islam is the deafening silence of the Imams
and persons of high,even royal,influence within the Islamic world on
the subject of jihadist violence based,not on the Koran, but on extreme
interpretations of not always clearly translated hadiths. In the absence
of outrage at the murder of innocents, the imprisonment torture and
execution of even children..in the absence of that outrage,
silence becomes approval!

It appears that Islam is now beginning to understand it's loss of influence
in the lives of ordinary,decent,compassionate & peace loving Muslims
(which are,by far,the great majority of Islam and for whom I have love
and respect). In India,yesterday, 6000 muslim clerics issued a FATWA 
against terrorism. Amongst it's words were:

"Islam rejects all kinds of unjust violence, breach of peace, bloodshed,
murder and plunder and does not allow it in any form"......... the fatwa
written at the Darul Uloom Deoband, India's foremost Islamic seminary.
The Darul Uloom is one of the most revered Islamic centres in the world.

Here,at last, an authoritative and  respected centre of Islamic knowledge,
has made a clearly unambigious  (?) declaration...yet as with so many of
these 'fatwas' there is always an inherent stumbling block (as there also is
in many so-called Christian pronouncements). In this fatwa it is found
in the word 'unjust'


Why is it always so hard to simply say 'The One God is a God of
unconditional lovingness and violence against each other is a
denial of that lovingness,ergo,is not from God" ?

Is this too much to expect from any "religious expression" ?

In God's name........?

Researchers at Oxford University have compiled a list of the

top 10 most irritating phrases.

These are,apparently,as follows:

The top ten most irritating phrases:

1 - At the end of the day

2 - Fairly unique

3 - I personally

4 - At this moment in time

5 - With all due respect

6 - Absolutely

7 - It's a nightmare

8 - Shouldn't of

9 - 24/7

10 - It's not rocket science

(this list as published in the Daily Telegraph ).

 

Personally, the one that irritates me the most is that one

which implies that one person or another (usually clerics

of whatever faith,but occasionally politicians) has some

'special relationship', elitist position, unique insight, into

God's will for humanity.I find it irritating because,more often

than not, their claim is refuted by their actions!

If it isn't loving,forgiving,compassionate,enduring,......it almost

certainly derives it's origin from a human source that is somewhat

disconnected from it's divine linkage.

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Come fly with me...............

The other day I got an e-mail message saying simply this: Rosa Parks sat in 1955. Martin Luther King walked in 1963. Barack Obama ran in 2008. That our children might fly.

from an article by one of my favourites,Roger Cohen,NYT.