Dietrich Bonhoeffer & Religion-less Christianity
April 21, 2011 Leave a comment
Psalm of the Forsaken
April 17, 2011 Leave a comment
Narrator:
“Abortion,
The fear of life
Expressed in death.”
Mother:
“God, You don’t know what You are doing.”
“I am to blame for someone else feeling my pain.”
“It’s my choice!”
Narrator:
(Sowing-reaping nexus:
“My choice!” a woman expelled from the garden,
My choice!” a child expelled from the womb.
Mother and daughter, giving umbilical, severed.
Choose you this day: a lost embrace or
“Yet you brought me safely from my mother’s womb
and led me to trust you at my mother’s breast.
I was thrust into your arms at my birth.
You have been my God from the moment I was born.”
lost in embrace.)
Narrator:
“Abortion,
Flesh and blood,
Saline solution flood,
Disfigurement, mutilation,
The end of her days vacuumed away.”
“My life is poured out like water,
and all my bones are out of joint.
My heart is like wax,
melting within me.
My strength has dried up like sunbaked clay.
My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.
You have laid me in the dust and left me for dead.”
Narrator:
“Abortion, the audacity of hope
“Our children will also serve him.
Future generations will hear about the wonders of the Lord.”
They will proclaim his righteousness,
declaring to a people yet unborn:
He has done it!”
Discarded with your signature.”
© Sally Paradise, 2011, All Rights Reserved
Cartesian Circle
April 16, 2011 Leave a comment
Cartesian Circle? One man, a materialist, says that by reason, logic and objective science he can prove there is no God. This man assumes that his reasoning process and his human intellect, which he insists are products of chaos’ fine tuning, are both valid and adequate to determine such things. But, can material determine anything? If trial and error is the course corrector for materialism, how is the right outcome determined? Through survival? Can the author of The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins, a materialist, determine that there is no God by using survival techniques? Maybe he is really trying to salvage his atheism (stands to reason).
God is so Other from us that no one can reason him into existence or out of existence.
At some point in creation’s evolutionary process originated by God, God the Creator endowed man with intellect and a spiritual dimension. God then proceeded to make Himself clearly knowable through the Bible, through nature and certainly through the incarnation of His Son, Jesus.
In The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis, Christian apologist, speculated on evolution’s material process and on the origins of human beings:
“For long centuries God perfected the animal form which was to become the vehicle of humanity and the image of Himself. He gave it hands whose thumb could be applied to each of the fingers, and jaws and teeth and throat capable of articulation, and a brain sufficiently complex to execute all the material motions whereby rational thought is incarnated. The creature may have existed for ages in this state before it became man: it may even have been clever enough to make things which a modern archaeologist would accept as proof of its humanity. But it was only an animal because all physical and psychical processes were directed to purely material and natural ends. Then, in the fullness of time, God caused to descend upon this organism, both on its psychology and physiology, a new kind of consciousness which could say ‘I’ and ‘me,’ which could look upon itself as an object, which knew God, which could make judgments of truth, beauty, and goodness, and which was so far above time that it could perceive time flowing past. This new consciousness ruled and illuminated the whole organism, flooding every part of it with light, and was not, like ours, limited to a selection of the movements going on in one part of the organism, namely the brain. Man was then all consciousness.”
Freedom Apart from Faith?
April 16, 2011 Leave a comment
Vanity Fair, May 2011 issue, under the heading Five Things the Lamestream Media Won’t Tell You About the Constitution:
“2. The phrase “separation of church and state” appears nowhere in the Constitution. It was coined in 1975 by William Ayers.”
*****
Here’s something to ponder: a golf game is more important to Obama (who learned about compartmentalization while being around Ayers) than attending church with his family.
Obama has no problem deciding whether to play golf. The economy, Lybia and…? These issues don’t require faith or prayer or even a decision. For Obama, these things require golf (and campaigning for 2012).
2012: send Obama back to wherever he came from. Somewhere there is a community that needs his golf experience!
*****
In stark contrast to the morally filibustering Obama is the integrity and forthrightness of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan:
On the opposite side of the fence (or state border) from Obama is Wisconsin’s Rep. Paul Ryan. In the Sunday, April 17th, 2011 Chicago Tribune there is an article about Ryan titled Wisconsin’s Ryan is thrust into spotlight: Conservative’s plans put him at odds with Obama.” The article discusses some of the details of Ryan’s The Path to Prosperity budget plan. There is also this quote:
“Republican Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, in the news for his own budget battles, is an ally (of Ryan). “There are two types of people in politics, people who want to be somebody great or people who want to do something great,” he said Paul is among the latter.””
And in the article:
“House Republican Peter Roskam (a Christian), of Wheaton (Illlinois), called him (Ryan) well-prepared and said, “He doesn’t overstate or oversell and he’s clear – that’s a gift in this town.”
And:
“”He’s very devoted to his family. He flies back for parent-teacher conferences,” said Janesville attorney George Steil Jr. who practiced with Ryan’s father.”
At the end of the article:
“Joe Van Rooy, who teaches government at Janesville’s Parker High School…takes his students to Washington every year and they meet with Ryan. He said the congressman, now in his seventh term, knows their families and remembers their names. Ryan lectures them about political civility.”
“He noticed, though, that one year Ryan was fingering prayer beads while taking student’s questions. The teacher asked why.
“He said, ‘I am so stressed out about the country.’”
(emphasis mine)
*****
It appears that for Obama, faith is just another tool to leverage himself and his constant campaign. He is more interested in power than in principle.
Obamians vs. the Common man
April 14, 2011 Leave a comment
The Democrat’s/progressive’s answers to any economic/political question: tax people more and give people a ration (bait-and-switch government); you need government’s help; the government has your best interest at heart, you are too stupid to know any better and government has deeper pockets than you, you won’t have a chance without government; the people’s pie needs to be divvied up; Fairness is better than justice; equal outcome trumps exceptional achievement; everyone who is not wealthy is a victim of unfairness; It’s every woman’s right to commit abortion; life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness can only come when others are forced to share their life, liberty and happiness; having a government-secured future is better than trusting in a God we cannot see; you shouldn’t have to reap what you sow.
The Republican response to a problem: let’s make the pie bigger so that we can all share in its increase; government, get off our backs; it is every fetus’ right to be protected; life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness comes when a person pursues life, liberty and happiness. charity profits from such pursuits; accountability is mandatory.
Embracing the Dark Shade of Gender
April 12, 2011 Leave a comment
I don’t worship at the temple of psychology. Rather, I do believe that simple common sense dictates that this type of action (pictured in the j-crew ad) by the mother is moronic and hurtful. Gender identity is rooted in a sexed body and becomes mentally, emotionally and socially defined within healthy relationships and communities. The ad relationship, as depicted, is not a healthy one. The child is not ambivalent to what is happening to him. What symbol is the mother painting on her son?
I have a very clear fifty-three year old memory from kindergarten: I am standing outside the elementary school stage with other classmates. We are preparing to go out on stage to recite some memorized piece for a spring play. Each of us, boys and girls, waits for our turn to speak. As we waited for our cue, a teacher’s aide walked down the line, stood in front of each child and cupped their face in her hand. She then applied red lipstick on each child’s lips. The aide did the same to me and I started crying. I did not want to be a boy looking like a woman. I walked away and I didn’t go out on stage. That wasn’t for me.
Born with gender-dysphoria, I was never encouraged to behave feminine in any way by my parents. I was never given a gender option. Yet, as an adult I decided to reconcile my mind and body to live as woman. I did this not out of hate for my body nor out of an anger towards my father nor out of a need for attachment nor out of separation anxiety. I did not make the change to be with a man. I simply understood that I was female and not a feminine actor from the very beginning of my life.
I believe that while I was in the womb my brain was dealt an overdose of estrogen, thereby increasing a need/awareness of being entirely female despite having a body that was sexed male. Common sense would say be a male and that is what I did for most of my life. I lived this role until I realized, after much reflection, that I could make the change as a way of healing and reconciling my whole person. Now, you should know that the hormone-on-the-brain theory is not proven and neither are any of the psychological diagnoses proffered about gender-dysphoria. What is known, by all accounts that I’ve ever heard or read, is that the need to make the change is fundamental and pervasive for the dysphoric individual, so much so, that some people would even attribute the dysphoria to birth trauma. I have written many posts about these issues.
No one should be promoting gender-dysphoria or gender confusion within children. No one. This is serious business. A person may come to realize later in life that they can make the change and do it with help. It should be done only after much serious consideration and not because it is the fashionable thing to do in a post-modern age.
The j-crew ad is a blatant attack on gender. It implies that gender is fashion – a fashion accessory to take on or off. And, the fact that a parent is involved in this ad as presenting her son as a false-feminine person is truly disturbing. Gender isn’t fashion and parenting is not for fools.
In fun, children will swap gender roles in role play but they shed those roles when they leave the playground of their imagination. Pink nail polish doesn’t come off as easily… from your body or your psyche.
****
Just a note: If you read Dr. Ablow’s post highlighted above you will note the many comments from the LGBT community. Many of the comments are angry words directed at Dr. Ablow. He is called homophobic.
You should know that homosexuals are very, very touchy about protecting thier homosexual lifestyle and the malignant narcissism that is behind it. Ablow’s article doesn’t mention homosexuality but the LGBT community is on high alert anyway.
The Bard and a Blustery Blowhole
April 9, 2011 Leave a comment
It is Saturday afternoon and I am listening to Wynton Marsalis playing Stadust on his horn. I am drinking Sofie, a tart Belgian Style Ale from Goose Island and I am reading the current (May 2011) Vanity Fair. I am suddenly struck by an off-handed pejorative comment in a VF article (again).
The current Vanity Fair magazine issue contains a column by contributing editor John Heilpern. The “Out To Lunch” one page piece is titled Avon Calling. This sounds interesting. But, wait.
The article relates Heilpern’s recent interview of Professor Harold Bloom at Bloom’s home in New Haven. Bloom, a professor of humanities at Yale for the past 55 years, is a well-known Shakespeare scholar. He has studied and read Shakespeare’s work in great depth. His latest book, number 39 in a series of scholarly works is titled The Anatomy of Influence: Literature as a Way of Life. (I am currently reading Bloom’s book Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human.)
In the interview Bloom’s talks about his respect for Shakespeare:
“If Shakespeare is not God, he told Heilpern, “I don’t know what God is.” And, regarding Shakespeare’s biographers, “Let me quote Ralph Waldo Emerson, best mind to come out of America: ‘Shakespeare is the only biographer of Shakespeare.’ In other words, don’t look for the man in the work; look for the work in the man. And stop speculating about his life.”
Further in the interview, Bloom: “All high concept Shakespeare directors should be shot a dawn,” Later, Heilpern mentions Al Pacino’s and F. Murray Abraham’s New York performances of Shylock (The Merchant of Venice) saying that Abraham is the greatest Shylock he’d ever seen. (Recently, March, Abraham was Shylock at the Bank of America Theatre in Chicago.)
The interview brushes on the topic of Falstaff. Bloom: “Sir John Falstaff…even more than Hamlet – and that’s saying something – he’s the most intelligent person in all of literature. He has the best mind, the best wit, the most beautiful laughing language. As my late friend the marvelous critic George Wilson Knight said about Hamlet, he’s the embassy of death. But Falstaff is life! Falstaff is blessing.”
Prince Hal and Falstaff’s banishment are mentioned and then Bloom says, “Falstaff sees through the all-powerful. ““He sees through everything. He’s the best possible guide to the state of the world today. Can you think of anyone more antithetical to the Fascism of the Tea Party than Sir John Falstaff?”
What?! Why the sniping Tea Party comment? Wait. I think I know why the old fart and gassy pontificator Bloom, learned disciple of Falstaff and urbane liberal, looks down upon the Tea Party from his ivory tower:
“He’s a drunk, a liar, and a cheat. Yet he’s been glowingly described as “the personification of England”. He’ll do anything with a debt but honour it, and makes light of accepting bribes from fit men and leading a troop of 150 decrepit soldiers to their deaths. Yet he’s also taken, at his own admiring estimate, as a great booster-jab of infectious liveliness: “I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men.” He has a spectacular obesity problem and he’s referred to – with epic freedom from euphemism – as “that swoll’n parcel of dropsies”, “that stuff’d cloak-bag of guts”, “this bed-presser, this horse-back-breaker, this hill of flesh” – a man who secretes sweat in such quantities that he “lards the lean earth as he walks along”. Yet his most prominent characteristic, according to many commentators, is his “jubilant brain”. Meet, if you will, Sir John Falstaff.”
O, the humanity!
The above quote from this web page.
Cindy Wity 