Absurdist. . .

. . . judge. . .

(based upon http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/18/15996725-fierce-debate-after-newtown-school-shootings-where-was-god?lite)
Have you heard what former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who is ordained as a minister in the Southern Baptist Church (and a possible presidential candidate in 2016), said about the horrible elementary school shootings in Connecticut?  He said that "we've systematically removed God from our schools."  And, "Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?" he asked.

Religious scholar Martin E. Marty of Chicago said, in reaction, that Huckabee "wins, hands down, the prize for his absurdist judgment that 'Newtown' should have been no surprise."  Steve McSwain, a former Baptist minister and interfaith activist, said, "With such remarks, you (Huckabee) not only show little regard for those broken by this tragedy, but you make God into some kind a cosmic psychopath — vengeful, sickeningly repulsive, one who takes out his madness on innocent little children. . .Your reasoning is repulsive: Because we have removed your god from our schools, this is how your god gets even?"

He reportedly said also, "God wasn't armed. He didn't go to the school," Huckabee continued. "But God will be there in the form of a lot of people with hugs and therapy and a whole lot of ways in which he will be involved in the aftermath."  Sounds like backpedaling to me.

James Dobson, the another evangelical loose cannon, said on his radio show, "Family Talk," that because "we have turned our back on the Scripture and on God Almighty, I think he has allowed judgment to fall upon us. I think that's what's going on."  He then, not surprisingly, (listen-up Santorum) blamed two issues in particular: abortion and gay marriage.

Possibly the prize-winner in the group, Joseph Farah, editor of the conservative news site WND says the U.S. should expect "more Sandy Hooks, not fewer," because of America's "secularism" and restrictions on guns. . . It's not that there are too many guns in our hands. It's that there is not enough repentance in our hearts."

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

The Devil. . .

 . . . you say???

(from http://www.revbilly.com/about-us)
". . . Let’s talk about the Devil. Corporate Commercialism has sped up to a roar, virtually unopposed. Consumerism is normalized in the mind of the average person, sometimes we even refer to ourselves as consumers forgetting that we are also citizens, humans, men, women, animals. We forget that we share many resources, public spaces, libraries, information, history, sidewalks, streets, schools that we created laws and covenants and governments to protect us,, to support us, to help us… The subjugation of these resources and these laws to the forces of the market demands a response.

We are a post religious church. We hold “services” wherever we can, in concert halls, theaters, churches, community centers, forests, fields, parking lots, mall atriums, and perhaps most importantly, inside stores, as close to the cash register as we can get, within spitting distance of the point of purchase.

We sing, we dance, we preach, sometimes we perform small “interventions”, invisible plays, acts of ritual resistance. We exorcise cash registers and remythologize the retail environment, we illuminate the Devil. We make media and send it out around the world. We get hassled by security guards and sometimes get arrested.

Above all we try to complexify the moment of purchase, to snap people out their hypnosis and back into the mystery of being human. We remind people that things come from somewhere, that products have a resource past, a labor past. Someone made It, and It is made of something, we trace the route a product took to get on the shelf, the life it might have when we throw it away. We animate the objects that surround us and in so doing we re-animate ourselves. We become citizens again. . ."

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

. . . and it's getting blacker. . .

Very soon, a tremendous number of the earth's population will observe a 'celebration' of the birth of a possibly historical Palestinian Jew over 2,000 years ago, to whom the origin of a mega-religious institution (and philosophy) is attributed.  This person, whether truly historical or not,  totally human or some combination of spiritual, human, super-human, affected all humanity in the civilized (or semi-civilized) world that followed in some way or another.

What better way to celebrate this occasion than to . . . go shopping?????!!!!!!

(from NBC News.com)
". . . To those who spend the Friday following Thanksgiving doing things like spending time with family, or working, or volunteering, or attempting to construct the world's greatest turkey leftover sandwich, Black Friday devotees are a mystery. Yes, an estimated 147 million Americans plan to go shopping sometime this weekend, according the National Retail Federation. But who are these people, what's the psychology driving them to rise before dawn in pursuit of a deal -- and have they really never heard of online shopping?

"The deals are part of it, but I don't think it's the bigger piece of it," says Jane Thomas, a professor of marketing at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, S.C. "This is the family ritual, as much as eating turkey and dressing is -- it's going shopping as the start of the holiday season together.". . . "

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

The modern-day Mecken. . .

. . . whenever convincing people to read Hitchens, I would say he was the H.L. Mencken of our age. By this I meant fluent to a fault, unafraid to think, and ALWAYS, whether you agreed with him or not, entertaining.

(from http://www.washingtonpost.com)
Published: December 16 | Updated: Saturday, December 17, 6:00 AM

"Christopher Hitchens, an English writer whose powerful, persuasive essays took on moral and religious hypocrisy, died at 62 in a hospital in Houston. As Matt Schudel reported:

Christopher Hitchens, a sharp-witted provocateur who used his formidable learning, biting wit and muscular prose style to skewer what he considered high-placed hypocrites, craven lackeys of the right and left, “Islamic fascists” and religious faith of any kind, died Dec. 15 at a hospital in Houston. He was 62.

He had pneumonia and complications from esophageal cancer, according to a statement from Vanity Fair, the magazine for which Mr. Hitchens worked.

Mr. Hitchens, an English-born writer who had lived in Washington since 1982, was a tireless master of the persuasive essay, which he wrote with an indefatigable energy and venomous glee. He often wrote about the masters of English literature, but he was better known for his lifelong engagement with politics, with subtly nuanced views that did not fit comfortably with the conventional right or left.

In his tartly worded essays, books and television appearances, Mr. Hitchens was a self-styled contrarian who often challenged political and moral orthodoxy. He called Henry Kissinger a war criminal, savaged Mother Teresa and Princess Diana, ridiculed both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, then became an outspoken opponent of terrorism against the West from the Muslim world.

In 2007, Mr. Hitchens aimed his vitriol even higher, writing a best-selling book that disputed the existence of God, then enthusiastically took on anyone — including his own brother — who wanted to argue the matter.

His supporters praised Mr. Hitchens as a truth-telling literary master who, in the words of the Village Voice, was “America’s foremost rhetorical pugilist.” Writer Christopher Buckley has called him “the greatest living essayist in the English language.”

Hitchens became one of the most respected figures in the atheist community, partly because of his willingness to debate members of the religious establishment. As Susan Jacoby explained :

My old friend Julius Hobson, an unconventional Washington civil rights leader in the 1960s (he once drove a cage of rats to Georgetown and threatened to release them at the corner of Wisconsin Avenue and M Street so the power brokers would know how the other half lives), used to say, “I sleep mad.” When I mentioned this many years ago to Christopher Hitchens, who died of cancer Thursday, Christopher remarked, “What a great epitaph that would be!”

We have lost an irreplaceable person in this age of American unreason. By “we,” I do not mean only atheists (although Hitchens is irreplaceable in that respect too) but everyone who values rationality and the English language. Hitchens, whose obituaries are devoting equal space to his atheism and his support for the Iraq war (he once called me stupid to my face for disagreeing with him about the latter), was a great, scathing Anglo-American writer in the tradition of Thomas Paine, George Orwell and Jessica Mitford. We may not see his like again, because the respect for language exemplified by his writings is fading away."





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

Never discuss politics. . .

. . . or related topics with your family. I think, and hope, that although I ventured into that dangerous turf, I may have survived this ordeal 'relatively' unscathed. And I hope that I perceive correctly because I sincerely respect their points of view, although I am still entitled to my own and chose to defend it to the point where my loved one expressed some visible discomfort with the boisterous debate that ensued; even though she thoroughly agrees with me.

I don't understand why some of the 99% do not even realize that they fall precisely within that percentage.

Further. . .the significance of the Occupy movements could eventually rival the impact of the civil rights movement. Not only are many confused members of the 99% missing, priests, pastors and clergy of every kind are conspicuously absent.

The evils that sparked these protests are real and critical to the well-being of lots of people. Instead of feeling proud of giving turkeys to the poor, religious and non-religious alike should be joining in the protests against the haughty rich.

". . . The current crop of national bank leaders are being shown to be just as corrupt as were the temple bankers of Jesus day. If Jesus were present among us today, he would be moving from Portland, to Los Angeles to Kansas City, to Dallas, up to Chicago and on to Wall Street in New York City. He would join the protest in every city. . ."
(from Howard Bess)

Above inspired by writings of Howard Bess
[The Rev. Howard Bess is a retired American Baptist minister, who lives in Palmer, Alaska. His email address is HYPERLINK "mailto:hdbss@mtaonline.net" hdbss@mtaonline.net]




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

Oh God. . .

". . . Prayer, I would later surmise, was something like an experience of ritual hypnosis. While everyone said the words, no one was expected to believe them. Religious rituals, I was beginning to learn, were defined as part of the human need to deny, to cope and to pretend that all of these techniques are useful when reality presents us with something that is beyond our ability to manage emotionally. At this point in my life, I simply could not separate the human need to pretend from the human search for truth. Organized religion would also forever fuzz over that distinction.
(from Eternal Life: A New Vision by John Shelby Spong © 2009 by John Shelby Spong)




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

Coincidentally. . .

. . . it is Sunday. I'm no longer a conventionally-religious person, but on this Sunday morning a recurring issue crossed my mind
and I searched YouTube for some video from one of my heroes.

LISTEN TO THIS MAN. (I think he has the right idea.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XL8LvaJ9Rc

(Hear my music at http://www.rayjozwiak.com)

Some might think . . .

. . . it's a morbid thought. Some might just not want to cope with it. Others can't approach it unless they involve some religious or spiritual application. But it can't be avoided. Like the old saw says, the only certain things in life are death and taxes. And by now you've surely deduced that I ain't talkin' bout taxes.

Ah mortality. The concept revisits me each time I lose a friend or family member, or someone else connected to me or my loved ones. It revisits me with a much more definitive presence these days. I'm not preoccupied, mind you. I'm simply coping with life's challenges as they confront me. But the reality of the concept is much clearer to me now that I've past the half-century mark.

So I'll get through this weekend's two funerals. Comfort will be taken from friends and family. Monday, I'll move on. . . a changed person nonetheless. At least a little changed. Life goes on.

(Hear my music at http://www.rayjozwiak.com)