Gene's Blog

Just a couple thoughts

I’m not quite ready to cut loose. It isn’t that I’m stuck so much as it is I’m waiting. It is hard to explain but I know exactly what I mean so it is all okay. I’ve got some random thoughts I thought I’d drop on the universe tonight while I wait. It isn’t all waiting, exactly, there is some doing and some being and some just living mixed up in all this so maybe sorting is what is going on within. I have dumped in an incredible amount of new information, things new to me I mean, and that always mimics the biologic process of creation. First we ingest, then we break down and assimilate that which is needed, store that which is not or which is excess, and excrete that which is of no use to us. This, by the way, is not excretion, giggle. I think of it more in terms of determining which nutrient goes where only I also care, in this instance, why it goes there. So putting a lot of raw material into me requires internal digestion before I am ready to make use of it. That is what I’ve been engaged in over the past weeks. The end result of that, well, that is yet to be determined. We’ll see what comes of it later, or I will.

Anyway, I was thinking about the middle east. It really isn’t much different now than it was 6000 years ago, in fact, I think some of the revenge killings going on now go back that far, or nearly so. But as I think of it, and the NRA is going to hate me for this, but I can’t think of a better argument for gun control. Not just gun control. Weapons control.

When I was a child I was raised in the Lutheran faith. There was an internecine war of sorts and Lutheran’s split into two camps, the ELCA and the LCA. I “think” they have made peace, of sorts, but I also think they still use those acronyms. It was a liberal/conservative split as I recall. Not at all unlike that which came when Martin Luther translated the Bible into vernacular German, in order to make it available to the masses whilst the Catholic church preferred it remain in Latin and therefore unavailable to the unwashed masses. Nor when he nailed his 95 theses to the door of that Catholic church challenging the Papacy and more or less calling the Catholic church anti-Christ. His assertion that the Bible be the ultimate authority, not the pope, is what led to the rise of Protestantism. Which, let me tell, is not something I agree with, the Bible as ultimate, literal last word on life or anything else. It is far too “loose” to be taken, or used, literally. What brought this to mind, why I thought of it, was that I saw today, or maybe yesterday, in the paper that Muslims now outnumber Catholics in the world. So I got to thinking what that might mean.

When I think along those lines, I wonder what sort of people have stockpiles of automatic weapons, mortars, anti-tank and anti-aircraft armaments stored in their church basements. Or mosque basement. What would the United States look like, today, if under every church, there were caches of weapons, large caches of weapons, and every male member of each church an active member of that particular church’s militia? What would happen here if whenever the Lutheran’s down the street did something that annoyed the Presbyterians two blocks over, they began shooting at each other? Or, when our Congress passed a law or considered passing a law with which one of our myriad sects disagreed, they just took to the streets with automatic weapons, fighting our army and our national guard, bombing and killing our police? What sort of world would it be if the world mimicked what is happening this night in Basra?

What would our world look like if each of those Sunday Morning warriors for God on television, actively recruited not only for dollars, but weapons and men with the will to use them. What if the “Winner’s Way” was the way of the gun or the strap on bomb? Could our national forces fight all of us? Could the church across the street stand against the one on the other side? And when the police showed up because of the shooting and were themselves shot at by both sides, who would they fight? Both churches? Do you have ANY idea how many churches of various faiths we have in America? A quick google search says that this organization claims it can provide a list of 380,000 American Churches as sales leads. Other search attempts show that Wiki is actively seeking the answer and the few places that claim to know want me to pay them for the information, giggle. Unlikely, that. Virtually every town of any size has multiple churches, not to mention those like the one in which I was raised which is not in a town at all but out in farm country built by my family long ago and supported by the local populace. So, if there are 380,000 churches which can be purchased on a list as sales leads, I think we can safely say that is the low estimate. What if they were all armed? What kind of world would this be?

Is what is happening in Muslim countries acceptable to the world at large? Is it not a danger to the world at large to allow such things? When we leave Iraq, even if after John McCain’s unfortunate 100 years, and those mosques are all still there and still well-armed, what do you suppose will happen? How can the world be safe for any when we are so cavalier with weaponry? And there are those who would, seriously believe – and MANY of these are members in the American Congress – that what the world needs now is not love, sweet love, but more guns, bombs and planes to deliver them with. And this in a “Christian” nation. What of those nations without our sterling principles of freedom for all and equal treatment under the law? Might it not be even more dangerous there? Isn’t it now? We can still sit a sidewalk cafe and have a cup of coffee or a meal and feel pretty safe. It isn’t that way in many parts of our world. It certainly isn’t that way in the Middle East. Will it ever be?

I mean, do you suppose the people of the Middle East will EVER be able to sit at a sidewalk cafe and feel safe? BE safe? Or will that poison which is currently killing people all over the Muslim world spread like a cancer to the rest of the world, as they have overtaken the Catholics will they overtake us all? That seems to be their goal, convert us all infidels, even if that requires killing us. Is there an antidote? One that people will TAKE? Because right now, were there a cure for the urge to kill those who disagree with you, a lot of the people in this world would NOT take it. They would rather die than be love. I mean, that really is the choice isn’t it? We either decide to be love, and live and act it, or we decide to kill all those who believe anything else. Tolerance is not a friendly word in these times. Not even here in America. Listen to right wing radio, read the newspaper, listen to the speeches, and sermons, given around our country every day and tell me they are all speaking of nothing but loving each other and understanding that being different from them is not only okay it is a good thing.

There are still those who would kill the Dixie Chicks for having had the effrontery to criticize the President while on foreign soil. Those are not “crazy” people from the Middle East, they are average, ordinary, run of the mill, American citizens who do not understand the first thing about our own constitution nor what freedom of speech means. There are people HERE who would kill, gladly, over mere words. Sticks and stones, we sang as children, can break our bones, but words can never hurt us. Hmmm. What if those words so incite someone that they pick up a stick and bash another with it. Or what if, in their church basement, they had access to weapons that could blow those Dixie Chicks right off the stage permanently. What matter that a few thousand infidels who proved they needed killing too because they were there at that concert happened to be there because they bought tickets to that concert also died? Small price to pay, right, for wiping out three young women who dared speak their mind outside the shores of our land. Does ANYONE really think it would have mattered had Natalie Maines said what she did at a concert here? The big criticism is that she did it on foreign soil. Not that she spoke her truth. Where she spoke it. And for that horrible crime, well, listen to her “Mad as Hell” and hear what the average, run of the mill, ordinary American is capable of saying to her and to anyone who might criticize this present administration, no matter where. Only that.

What kind of world are we building people? What kind of life form are we? And, if what we are being, is humanity at its best, does it deserve God’s salvation? Mightn’t a loving God, who created our form in His own image, look at what we have wrought and think, chit, THAT did not turn out the way I hoped!

Perhaps those among us who so quickly kill each other over words and ideas and who are so threatened by any idea that is different from their own are the real danger. Perhaps a country with a “defense” budget, including all national security requests, of 802.9 BILLION dollars could be considered a threat to the rest of the world? Mightn’t a country willing to spend that much money on death and destruction, in the name of National Defense, a country which has fought but ONE foreign war on its own soil and that more than 230 years ago, make the rest of the world a little bit nervous? They make ME nervous and I was born here, I served in our Army, and currently, this administration scares the hell out of me. I really do think they are capable of starting a shooting war with Iran as their final legacy. I am sure there are some who want nothing more.

In the immortal words of Walt Kelly’s Pogo, the wisest opossum what ever lived, “we have met the enemy and he is us.” All of us.

It is time we sat down at a table together and broke bread, not necks, and figured out a way to make this world a safe place for all of us. That we came to a reasonable accommodation that guaranteed freedom of speech, thought, movement, religion and the right to the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness to all. Not just to Americans. To all citizens of this one world we all live on? I think this is an idea whose time has come. I think this is an idea that must begin flooding the world. I think it is an idea that must spread like wildfire, like the best virus imaginable, that it must infect the very soul of every person on this planet, that it must make them all want the SAME THING, peace, love, freedom and prosperity for all, regardless of race, creed, color, national origin or anything else. It is time.

Just look around at the world we have made and you will know it is time we change. This is not an idea which can die, not one to be shunted aside in the name of religion, for it is religion that divides us, and spirituality which makes us one. We are one people on one world and it is time we began to act it. We’ll talk about how next. When I’ve done a bit more assimilating, giggle. much love, :^) gene

If today brings even one choice your way
choose to be a bringer of the light :^) gene