The Promise of Religion

The Promise of Religion: If Only it could Evolve with the Rest of Us (well... most of us...)

By Syd Gris

Easter Sunday made me think, as it often does, of my Christian faith, it's promises and perils. I say 'my' Christian faith loosely. I don't identify myself as a Christian in the average use of that term, but it is my cultural heritage and part of my family heritage as well and I have no qualms standing up for the teachings of Jesus as I understand them that I have come to respect and honor as I do other teachings from other traditions that feel aligned with my felt sense of Spirit.

Phrases such as: 'as I understand' and 'my felt sense' are a kernel of the problem Easter and other religious holidays make me think about. This whole enterpirse of knowing God and truth and purpose is wildly open to interpretation and speculation and subjective forms of knowing. The early Christian pioneers operated in an age of hostility to their message where you could literally die a horrible death for your beliefs. Add to this the fact they were trying to establish a teaching across disparate beliefs and cultures with slow forms of communciation, it's obviously quite the uphill battle. In their eyes, only in the uniformity of the canon, and the conformity of its adherents, could this new teaching take root and spread- the so called words of Jesus Christ.

(read on)

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April 28, 2007 05:19 PM, by Syd Gris

My New Age Pet Peeves

My New Age Pet Peeves: My take on the bullshit involved in 'You Create Your Own Reality' and 'Everything Happens for a Reason.'

By Syd Gris

If you know me or have taken anytime to read what I'm about and what Opel is about, you know I'm a huge proponent of reminding people of the 'spiritual' dimensions of reality, and the need to pay attention to that part of ourselves. When I say 'spiritual,' which is obviously a loaded word used in a variety of ways, I mean it as well in a variety of ways. One's relationship with that which they deem sacred, one's ultimate priorities of existence, a state of consciousness in which our individual concerns seem to melt away to allow access a greater connection with the present, or even our felt sense of Source, or God. All these can suggest shades of how spirituality can be regarded.

Within the post-modern landscape of America, it's a confusing picture. Intellectual, secular perspectives have disdain (rightly so) for popular religion's hold on mythic and out dated ways of seeing the world that contribute to oppression, ignorance, and when applied through a fundamentalist lens - murder and war. (That applies to many religions, not just the obvious examples of Islam and Christianity). On the other side, those with a strong spiritual orientation have disdain (rightly so) for the modern emphases on the accumulation of wealth, materialism, living without a moral compass, and the unhealthy trappings of pop culture devoid of reverence.

(Read on...)

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April 27, 2007 10:46 AM, by Syd Gris

One Day This Hell Will All be Over

It should never have happened.

But it did.

Twice. The world will be better off when this

pathetic misguided war mongerer is no longer

our leader.

"One Day This Hell Will All be Over" perma-link

April 26, 2007 04:14 PM, by Syd Gris

Opulent Temple's Evocation

Opulent Temple Presents...
Evocation @ The Porn Palace
Saturday, April 21st, 2007

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April 21, 2007 05:11 PM, by Syd Gris

US Government Ignorance & Arrogance

Insider: Missteps soured Iraqis on U.S.

By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP

NEW YORK - In a rueful reflection on what might have been, an Iraqi government insider details in 500 pages the U.S. occupation's "shocking" mismanagement of his country — a performance so bad, he writes, that by 2007 Iraqis had "turned their backs on their would-be liberators."

"The corroded and corrupt state of Saddam was replaced by the corroded, inefficient, incompetent and corrupt state of the new order," Ali A. Allawi concludes in "The Occupation of Iraq," newly published by Yale University Press.

Allawi writes with authority as a member of that "new order," having served as Iraq's trade, defense and finance minister at various times since 2003. As a former academic, at Oxford University before the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq, he also writes with unusual detachment.

The U.S.- and British-educated engineer and financier is the first senior Iraqi official to look back at book length on his country's four-year ordeal. It's an unsparing look at failures both American and Iraqi, an account in which the word "ignorance" crops up repeatedly.

(read on...)

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April 16, 2007 10:46 PM, by Syd Gris