Faith. . .

(from "Thelonious Monk:  The Life and Times of an American Original by Robin D.G. Kelley)

". . . Valerie W. [Journalist Valerie Wilmer]:  Do you believe in God?
Monk:  I don't know nothing.  Do You?
Valerie W.:  No. I do not.
Monk:  It's a deep subject, you know, trying to think about it. I kinda go along with you. . . "

What do YOU think?
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html

You can NOW download your
very own copy of Ray Jozwiak's
newest release:
AMBIENCE & WINE

Please visit
http://www.rayjozwiak.com

Tweet

Short, sweet . . .

. . . and to the point . . .

 On being 'saved', being whole. . . and just being. . .

 ". . . Christian faith has no place for a heaven with gates.  Being a follower of Jesus means that his concerns are our concerns, that his commitments are our commitments, and that his motives are our motives.  The God that Jesus called Heavenly Father desires that the whole world be healed and that every person be made whole.  That is what being saved is all about. . . "
(by The Rev. Howard Bess, a retired American Baptist minister, who lives in Palmer, Alaska.  His email address is hdbssd@mtaonline.net)

What do YOU think?
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html

 
Also download your
very own copy of
AMBIENCE & WINE
by Ray Jozwiak

Please visit
http://www.rayjozwiak.com

Tweet

Transcend. . .

. . . the repression and confines of narrow thinking, be it based upon pre-scientific religious teaching or fear rooted in a tribal mentality. . .

 

Maryland Governor, Martin O'Malley (a Catholic visibly transcending dogma) says. . .

Maryland's legislature ". . . came together around the principle of human dignity. . . "

“I believed that in my short service to the people of this state that the consensus point on this issue could only be reached around civil unions,  I was wrong. It became possible to reach a consensus on marriage equality. There’s been an evolution in the broadest sense among the people of our state. Initially, when this issue first became very visible, after Mayor Gavin Newsom conducted marriages in San Francisco [in 2004], I think initially a lot of people had a lot of fear -- and a lot of misplaced fear -- and over time I think people have come to realize that the way forward, among people of many different faiths, is always through the greater and broader respect for equal rights for all.”

“I welcome bipartisan cooperation wherever it happens.There were lots of people making lots of calls and I think that’s a good and healthy thing. There’s not a family among us that doesn’t have a friend or a relative who is gay. All of those stories come together around this issue and it transcends party.”

“I encouraged people to look at it through the eyes of children of gay and lesbian couples, and it is not right, and it is not just, that children of gay and lesbian parents should have lesser protections. It was about equal rights for all.”

What do YOU think?
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html

 
Download your
very own copy of
ANOTHER SHOT
by Ray Jozwiak

Please Visit
http://www.rayjozwiak.com

Tweet

Growth, maturity, evolution. . .

(From "Reflections on the Art of Living", A Joseph Campbell Companion, Selected and Edited by Diane K. Osbon, © 1991 The Joseph Campbell Foundation)

". . . When I was about sixteen years old, in prep school, and knew I was losing my childhood faith, I resolved that I would not quite the Catholic Church until I knew why I was quitting, that is to say, until I had dissolved the symbols and knew what they referred to and meant.  The whole thing wasn't over until I was twenty-five years old and in Germany.  I spent nine years working everything out, and then it just dropped off like a worn-out shirt.  That's the knowing thing.  If you don't know what the hell that symbol is saying to you, then it's just there as a command, and there is going to be more and more of this hanging on.  If you can't use your mind in this rather complex field, I don't know how you are going to work it out.

You become mature
when you become the authority for your own life.

What do YOU think?
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html


Download your
very own copy of
ANOTHER SHOT
by Ray Jozwiak

Please Visit
http://www.rayjozwiak.com

Tweet

Real change . . .

. . . we are all evolving. . .

(from THE SINS OF SCRIPTURE by John Shelby Spong
© 2005 John Shelby Spong)
". . . if change is the tactic to be adopted, the change cannot be simply cosmetic, an adjustment around the edges of our faith story. It has to be so total and so radical that many will think such a change is either impossible or will result in the death of the patient. It would be easier, some say, to start over by building an entirely new religious system than it would be to seek to reform this one so totally that continuity might be strained to the breaking point. . . Our task is not to build tomorrow's church. That is something into which we have to live one day at a time. Our task is rather to face the need for radical change and take the first, probably tiny step necessary to erect a totally new foundation. That step is found, I believe, in acknowledging our evolutionary origins and dispensing with any suggestion that sin, inadequacy and guilt are the definitions into which we are born. This also means that we rid ourselves of the idea that the world was created for the benefit of human beings, or even that the planet earth is somehow different or special in the universe. . . "




What do YOU think?
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html


Download your
very own copy of
ANOTHER SHOT
by Ray Jozwiak

Please Visit
http://www.rayjozwiak.com


Tweet


Top Stories

Let's all get 'raptured up'. . .

. . . paraphrasing a hitherto, unnamed blogger, but real nonetheless. (Is this like being 'ratcheted up'?)

"I can't wait to see what the Lord has planned for this world and my church. I love my church. It's something I can always look forward to. I can't wait to go to heaven. I wish there was some way to get everybody saved and then just go. I'm tired of this world. . . [Same guy. Apparently not well-adjusted.]

“I had a mother last night come up to me here in Tampa, Florida, after the debate, she told me that her little daughter took that vaccine, that injection, and she suffered from mental retardation thereafter.” [Presidential candidate Michelle Bachmann exhibiting a bit of gullibility.)

"Like so many of life’s varieties of experience, the novelty of a diagnosis of malignant cancer has a tendency to wear off. The thing begins to pall, even to become banal. One can become quite used to the specter of the eternal Footman, like some lethal old bore lurking in the hallway at the end of the evening, hoping for the chance to have a word. And I don’t so much object to his holding my coat in that marked manner, as if mutely reminding me that it’s time to be on my way. No, it’s the snickering that gets me down. . . What do I hope for? If not a cure, then a remission. And what do I want back? In the most beautiful apposition of two of the simplest words in our language: the freedom of speech." (Christopher Hitchens, journalist, author, philosopher, recently diagnosed with esophageal cancer.)

“I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail… There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark” (Stephen Hawking, educator, scientist, author)

"The best way to lose all is to cling with desperation to that which cannot possibly be sustained literally. Literalistic Christians will learn that a God or a faith system that has to be defended daily is finally no God or faith system at all. They will learn that any god who can be killed ought to be killed. Ultimately they will discover that all their claims to represent the historical, traditional, or biblical truth of Christianity cannot stop the advance of knowledge that will render every historic claim for a literal religious system questionable at best, null and void at worst." [Bishop John Shelby Spong, Episcopal (Anglican) Bishop of Newark, NY, in Resurrection: Myth or Reality?)




Download your
very own copy of
ANOTHER SHOT
by Ray Jozwiak

Please Visit
http://www.rayjozwiak.com


Tweet