A Day for Play

St. Louis River Bay with an Ore Boat headed for Missabe Taconite Dock -

The Foreground are Superior Grain Elevators

The Big Falls at Gooseberry Falls State Park.

Looking Eastward from Silver Cliff -

The Encampment Tunnel entrance in the center of the picture.

Arly searching for Agates on Superior's Shore at Knife River.

Wave Spray on the East side of Stoney Point between Knife River and Duluth.

Religion

I have been challenged to think on the meaning of being alive, and whether or not we are but "goo by the way of the zoo", and what religion has to do with making life better.

So a couple of hundred years ago, an infitesimally insignificant amount of time in the existence of the universe as scientists now date it, there was a guy who said "Let's see, there is a three foot tall anthropod here, and a three and a half foot tall anthropod there, and a four foot tall anthropod over there, and they become progressively more erect, so therefore they must be evolved from each other." He was a poor little kid who actually had the wherewithal to sail around the world, and got this evolution idea while in the Galapagos islands. I know that is oversimplifying, but that is the pigeonhole in my head. And I don't even care. It doesn't matter to me if animals evolved. It doesn't matter to me what religions want me to think. What matters is that I have or don't have a relationship with The Creator of the Universe, not the way it was created.

Religon is 1. Human's rules to get along, 2. Human's attempts to reach god, 3. Human's attempts to control other people.

Christianity has been pillaged and raped and converted into a consumerism in Western Culture of Right Wing Reactionary Political Action or Left Wing Social Liberal liaissez faire. People go to church meetings to get their needs met once or twice or three times a week. I wonder if most North Americans know Jesus Christ know Jesus was a dark skinned Jew?

What about Islam? A lot of rules to follow for a chance to maybe go to heaven. Killing an infidel gives you a better chance. Being a martyr gives you an even better chance.

Where is Nirvana.

What does that have to do with Love.

Why are Turkish Christians considered traitors just because they are Christians.

The Churches of the first century in Revelation are all from Turkey.

USA is doomed, just like the Roman Empire, unless we quit being such arrogant, elitist, empire building, self aggrandizing, others diminutizing snobs.

Oh, and by the way, the "scientific method" evolved out of Christian Universities, I might even assert "Protestant" Universities established for the free pursuit of knowledge. Remember Galileo, excommunicated because of the flap of the world being flat?

How many of the most respected Universities in the world were founded by Christian Churches, such as Harvard, Brown, Yale, Georgetown.

Easter - What ?

Sunday - 10:26 a.m. I have been ill with strep the last 4 days. My natural immunity usually takes care of this but I guess there has been too much stress in my life the last year or two, so this time I used the fruit of the mold to ward off the icky little bugs. Right now is the first time I have felt even since last Wednesday.
So being under the weather, and not wanting to spread it to others, and being too weak to do a six hour morning list of Easter activities with the Danforth Community, where we now usually are to be found on a Sunday morning, and after listening to various news commentators on TV about the meaning of Easter and Passover, on the same day this year, and Religion, I feel like I must comment on my thought.
Passover is the celebration of a horrible event in Egypt during which the Jewish firstborn males were saved from death, while the non Jewish died. Being firstborn in our family, it gets very personal. Had I lived then I would have died. This is an historic event, as well preserved in tradition and writings of antiquity as is Babylon and the Wonders of the Ancient World. About 3,500 years ago.
Easter is what Christians celebrate. About 2,000 years ago Jesus, the Christ, an innocent of any sin, suffered a horrible death of crucifiction. But here is the difference. On the first day of the week after Passover Saturday, he rose again. Now no-one is mandated to die any more. Of course if you don't want to accept that gift, that is up to each person, but it is there for you. Jesus said the greatest commandment was to Love God, and the second commandment, To Love Our Neighbor as Ourself.
There is a problem with Jesus, according to Joe Stowell, MBI, and RBC ministries. The problem is that he said he was God. And that he was the only way to God. Jesus did not say, every other religion is full of all bad things, just that if it is God you are looking to have a personal relationship with, Jesus is the one way. The fact is, the Prophet Mohammed did not say he was God, Budda nor Confucious did not say they were God, Joshua, Elisha, Elijah, nor Moses nor John the Baptist said they were God.
If I did not believe that Jesus actually rose from the death in a human body and then ascended to heaven, I would follow Buddhism. The tenets of oneness, and peace, and love all make sense if there is not a supreme being over the universe.
But because I believe there is a supreme being, because nature cries out that it is so, and then believing there are realms of existance that are not apparant to our five senses, and with not understanding why the most intelligent persons as we measure it only use eight percent of their brain power, I look for this supreme being to send me a message. And on the first Easter he proved he was God.

I love my Wife, my Kids, my Grandkids, and my Kid's partners.
They are all wonderful people. And we don't all believe the same thing about God.

Catch up

I am such a bad blogger. But I have found out now that I prefer Blog to facebook, for what I want to say. So today, through the day i will catch you up.