Now is happening right now

In fact you just missed it.

Uh-oh -- there it goes!

You missed it again.

See the problem? Much of the time, we are MISSING NOW.

We're living in the past: hating, resenting, regretting, trying to cause others regret. Or we're off in the future: wishing, hoping, dreaming, planning -- but not doing.

Usually it's some combination of the two.

With all that time spent in yesterday and tomorrow, when do we actually do today? How many of us are living, right now, as much as we could?

Even thinking -- neutral or beneficial though it may be in the immediate sense -- can get in the way of living. I know: I'm a lifelong thinkaholic.

The writer of Ecclesiastes warned us to "be not overwise." He warned us not to become caught up in the "vanity and vexation of the spirit" that comes with learning too much: "of the making of many books there is no end." (He ought to come back to life now and see a modern bookstore or library -- not to mention the Internet!) "The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing..." but " ... [I]n much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow."

Rather than the endless paper chase of pursuing learning, Proverbs (traditionally held to have also been written by Solomon) admonishes us to "get wisdom," which begins with the fear of YHWH and knowledge of his law.

Rather than encouraging us to embark on the road of "ever learning, but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth," the scriptures were really given us to lighten our learning load -- to make things easier for us by revealing to us all the things we'd otherwise spend our lifetimes learning the hard way, or would never discover at all. So in that sense, thinking is very worthwhile.

But even then, too much thinking is mistake. You spend time and energy that might have been spent doing stuff. Not only does the excess time spent in thought rob you of now; it also leads to regret of the things you haven't done, as well as lending itself to worry about the future because of the pickles you can get yourself into when you don't act -- which leaves you with even less now to live.

The Bible tells us that if we are in Messiah, our sins are not only forgiven but forgotten: there's no need to return to the past in guilt or regret.

And it tells us to "take no thought for the morrow," but to trust the Eternal to supply our every need.

So what do we do? We worry, worry, and then worry some more, about those very things, plus a great many other things that are less important.

"Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might." Reflectively, thoughtfully, wisely, yes. But you have to do it.

Bad F.O.T. pick-up lines

http://www.saviodsilva.net


Those of us who are truly spiritual come to the Feast with only one thought on our minds: spiritual edification. However, some few reprobate souls see Feast time as "mating season." So you won't fall victim to these predators, we list here some of the most common lines they use:

"Come over to my condo and we can ... [cough] er, study the Bible."

"Wow! Did anyone ever tell you your hair is like a flock of goats?"

"Want me to show you 'The Missing Dimension in Sex'? . . . the Herbert Armstrong book, I mean."

"No--no--you don't understand . . . I was staring at the spiritual glow AROUND your body."

"Oh dear . . . suddenly I'm feeling so faint . . . Would you please lay hands on me?"

"Forget the elders, baby -- you can lay hands on me any time."

"So is it true what they say about men with big Bibles?"

The anarchist Bible

HE ANARCHIST BIBLE

(From Messianic Troublemakers: The Past and Present Jewish Anarchism
Jesse Cohn, in Zeek April 05 http://www.zeek.net/politics_0504.shtml)

Indeed, Lazare believed, “anarchy” was implicit in the First Commandment: if we are to have no other master before God, “What authority can, then, prevail by the side of the divine authority? All government, whatever it be, is evil since it tends to take the place of the government of God; it must be fought against."
--19th-c. anarchist journalist Bernard Lazare

Consequently, from 1894 on, anarchists emphasized positive, constructive activism, organizing clubs, neighborhoods, workers’ cooperatives, experimental schools, collective farms, mutual-aid societies, and anarcho-syndicalist labor unions. Far from being allergic to organization, anarchists advocated a kind of organization “from below,” in the words of Voline. They sought to replace coercive institutions with cooperative ones, to find ways of building a working society in a democratic, egalitarian, and decentralized fashion, using frequent face-to-face meetings of small groups to make decisions – rather like a kibbutz.

Jewish anarchists “They carried a very Jewish sense of righteousness, and rejected the idea of a life organized in pyramids of power and status, with a few Pharoahs on the top and masses of slaves underneath.”

Landauer spoke for many when he wrote in 1907:

One can throw away a chair and destroy a pane of glass; but . . . [only] idle talkers . . . regard the state as such a thing or as a fetish that one can smash in order to destroy it. The state is a condition, a certain relationship among human beings, a mode of behavior between men; we destroy it by contracting other relationships, by behaving differently toward one another . . . We are the state, and we shall continue to be the state until we have created the institutions that form a real community and society of men. We are the state. We do it to ourselves, all of us, all the time, by obeying much and resisting little, by settling for a piece of the pie in exchange for our dignity, by accepting subordination in exchange for domination over the even less fortunate. If this ugly tangle of social relationships is “the state,” then all the gaudy regicides in the world can’t buy us our freedom. Revolution, these anarchists argued, begins in our hearts and in the space between us. Among the anarchist books translated into Hebrew and circulated in Jewish Palestine by the 1920s was Peter Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid, which argued that the dominant concept of Western politics, Thomas Hobbes’s vision of the “state of nature” as a “war of all against all,” was a scarecrow designed to justify the existence of the authoritarian state. Just as “natural” as competition for survival, Kropotkin argued, was cooperation for survival. Anarchism, in Goldman’s words, it is “the philosophy of a new social order based on liberty unrestricted by man-made law; the theory that all forms of government rest on violence, and are therefore wrong and harmful, as well as unnecessary.”

What Landauer calls “spirit” is not a supernatural force, but as the shared feelings, ideals, values, language, and beliefs that unify individuals into a community. The State only exists, he says, because the spirit that creates community has weakened: the community has fractured and turned against itself.

If Ram Dass can pray for his enemies, why can't the "Christian" Right?

The following appears on the site of Dr. Robert Svoboda, ayurvedic doctor, dated September 17, 2005. (Note: To those who don't know, "Ram Dass" (Richard Alpert) is a famous psychologist who he1lped popularize LSD in the '60s, then turned Eastern spiritual guru.

VISITING RAM DASS at his Maui home I noticed that (as had been rumored) he does keep a photo of George W. Bush on his altar. That photo reminded me, as it does him, that it is essential for all of us to pray that the current "world's most powerful man" will be guided to make the best decisions possible. In fact, it behooves all of us to strive mightily to entreat the Celestial Powers-that-Be to render astute our head of state.

Perhaps it would be too much to request Providence to encourage those of our "leaders" who actively identify themselves as Christians to actively follow the path that Christ laid out for his disciples, e.g. to sell all that they have and give the proceeds to the poor, to turn the other cheek at every slight, and the like. Jesus advised us not to judge, lest we be judged, and being myself no paragon of Christ-like virtues I have no business judging
anyone (even W). Of course, I also try to keep my personal beliefs private, rather than trying to drag Jesus into politics the way many of these "leaders" do; and this current politicization of Christ (a problem which has dogged Christianity almost since its inception) does I believe warrant comment.

For example, how can one simultaneously claim to follow the Golden Rule
("do unto others as you would have them do unto you") and also actively promote
the doctrine of "preemptive war" ("do unto others BEFORE they do unto you")?

Or, consider the words of Jesus as reported in Matthew 5:43-44:

"Ye have heard that it has been said, thou shalt love thy neighbor, and
hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you."

I freely admit that, as of yet, I have been unable to love all my enemies, and to do good to each of those who mean to do ill to me. I have however found it immensely worthwhile to set these principles as my goals, and try to live up to these high standards that Jesus instructed us to attempt to meet-norms that make it injudicious for anyone (even W) to condemn anyone else (even W).

Which forces me to ask the question of why, when we have been thus unmistakably directed to love our enemies, is so much hate being so publicly directed toward those who are currently our enemies? (Setting aside for the moment the issue of, if Osama & Saddam were so clearly evil, what caused us to support them as "allies" for so long.) If we pray for our foes, why have we not yet had a national day of prayer with an Osama focus? Why before Saddam was overthrown was he routinely demonized, rather than "loved" and "blessed"? Why is the "do good to them that hate you" option never even hinted at by the "Beltway born-again" in the context of fundamentalist Islam? Shouldn't
such a clear directive receive at least a public hearing among "public Christians," if only to offer counterpoints to the Muslim-baiting agitprop that has become so popular? Couldn't this option also present a positive Christian perspective that would be as comprehensive in its compassion as the ultra-sectarian Muslim world-view is comprehensive in its detestation of all non-Muslims?

How ironic that it's these non-Christians who, at least publicly, are embodying the message of Christ -- while those loudly claiming to speak and act for Christ are pursuing such anti-Christ policies.

The art of worship

YAHSHUA OF NAZARETH hung out with prostitutes and tax collectors. I hang out with a similarly disreputable group known as artists. In addition to making the more interesting gallery openings around town, I always enjoy parties in wackily decorated lofts or warehouses-turned-studios.

I love artist dwellings because they are typically so un-"adult"-like; they make me feel right at home. One can imagine the artists' moms being present nagging them about cleaning their rooms -- and what exactly are they going to do with all that junk, all those half-completed paintings or sculptures?

This makes me realize I'm not really a packrat, I'm just a maker of "found art." I collect and save stuff other people throw away. For one, something within me simply rebels at the stupidity of our society's habit of trashing things -- such as containers -- which are still perfectly good. I prefer to try to reuse them or to attempt to make them into something else useful. And by hanging out with other creative types I've realized some people just put a little more time, space, and decorative pizzazz into their collecting/recycling than I do, and then they call it art, and sometimes, they even manage to sell it to someone. (As I remarked to my friend Annabelle Echo, if have a house full of junk and you live in the country, you're white trash; if you live in the city in a refurbished warehouse loft, you're an artist.)

Since I'm a journalist as well as man-about-town, I've been trying to come up with an angle that I can write about for some local publication, preferably for the Tribune. Last week I got the idea to examine how much of the local arts scene is about making art and how much is about making excuses to party.

So, at the party on Saturday night, I turned to friend Vito for his opinion. (Vito is a middle-aged poet and teacher who's been around the scene a long time. He also knows where all the interesting parties are.) Sounding slightly wistful, Vito related how the collective behind this particular party, the Surrealist Ever-So-Secret Order of the Lamprey, used to be a somewhat serious group that got together and made and critiqued each other's art. Their house, an old white two-story with a basement workshop, a courtyard in back and a rooftop deck, is indeed a living museum of "junk" art. But now, Vito says, they mostly just throw parties.

Another local arts and media collective, Lumpen Media, has never been shy about the fact that it exists to throw parties and produce and publicize fringe art -- perhaps in that order.

But the thought is not so scandalous when you realize that art and celebration (or if you prefer, revelry) naturally go together.

First of all, artists -- despite what you've heard about angst and depression -- like to have a good time. They are playful people (many would seem to fit the classic "attention deficit hyperactivity disorder" profile). You can't produce much art of a truly creative kind without having a youthful spirit of playfulness, of curiosity, of let's-throw-this-against-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks experimentalism. You have to be willing and able to let go. These qualities make for unbridled creativity, and for better and for worse, also make for an insatiable hunger for stimulation of all kinds .

Second, when work does get really intense -- such as right before your show opens and you're feverishly working to finish, transport, install and show your pieces (or your band's gig or your play or whatever it may be), then you need to be able to let your hair down.

Third, galleries and other venues probably realize they'll sell more art when free wine, cheese, and beautiful people are present: it creates a certain atmosphere, and of course, the wine helps cloud the judgment and greases the way for the buyer to plunk down perhaps more than he should on a piece of art.

Fourth, it's likely that a lot of the artist personalities. being "ADD" and feeling slightly out of whack when sober, are drawn to alcohol and other drugs as a form of self-medication.

Lastly, partying is a time-honored tradition. Artists do have a reputation to uphold.

HANGING OUT AT SUCH events always gets me thinking -- particularly when they're all over and I'm heading home -- of my other life in that other world known as the world of church. The thing about that world is, I like a lot of the people in it, but its design and aesthetics leave much to be desired. The interaction between the two worlds makes me wonder why the church world isn't more like the world I hang out in for fun: full of color and life and vibrancy and ferment and creativity and wackiness for its own sake and invention. And art! And real music. And slightly cracked people like myself. Well, okay, there are plenty of cracked people in the church world too.

But the world of religion (or "churchianity") that I've inhabited since childhood -- and that includes church-of-god-ianity -- is as far from the art world as possible: a world of stultifying squareness, of primness and propriety and pretension, of tidiness, of everything having its place, of everything happening on time, of the human spirit struggling to burst out of that box of religion, and religion's attempts to force it and vacuum-pack it tightly back in.

Instead of cutting-edge art and music, it's a world of stained-glass sanctuaries and musty pews, or drab rented motel rooms and lineoleum-tiled school buildings where folks' idea of a good time is singing hymns written in 1908. It is a world of uniformity, at relentless attempts to make everyone the same, of the fear of art and creativity and innovation and deviation. It is a world of corporate business values imposed upon worship, and of the desiccated, lifeless result which is sold to people as "the faith once delivered," when it could hardly be further from that faith.

For me, participating in other communal rituals and other forms of fellowship with a whole different crowd makes me question and re-examine the need and importance of some of the cherished traditions and conventions of churchianity. For instance, the convention of "dressing up": Is it really about looking good for God (who tells us repeatedly that he looks not upon the outward appearance but on the heart), or is it about impressing men? Or perhaps also, about looking uniform, looking the same as everyone else, which is conducive to sameness of outlook and feeling and opinion? Does the attire favored in the church world have the same purpose in church as it does in business or the military -- to impose uniformity of thought?

When church convention frowns upon creative or whimsical or individualistic styles of dress, is it not also frowning upon creativity, whimsy, and individualism?

It's a shame to have to say so, but "the church" could stand to learn a lot from the world. In fact, I've come to the conviction that a lot of the artistic people I hang out with also are in the ekklesia: they just don't know it yet.