Redefining Christianity

I've long been put off by Christianity. It started when I was a very young though I tried to conform to its practices, dogma, and beliefs. I was sent to church, sunday school, and bible school by my parents, and taken by my great-grandmother with whom I lived for a few years while very young. We walked to church mostly, except in very inclement weather. We usually went to the nearest but every now and then my brother, sister, and I were invited to go to another church by some family, usually the parents of one of my sister's friends. We went to Pentecostal, Methodist, Baptist, Lutheran, Christian, Evangelical, and Catholic services so I pretty much had a broad exposure to most of the tenets, beliefs, teachings, and philosophies of Christianity in many of its forms. I went to a various churches in Southern Illinois as well as in the northern part. I attended Christian service while in the Army. I was baptized in the First Christian Church in Rock Island, Ill. after, at the age of six or seven, I walked down the aisle to be the only person to answer the call one Sunday when the church was about three-fourths full. I participated in communion after the baptism, partaking of the drink and the wafer along with all of the other Saved church members. But I never felt one whit different except for that sensation of being impelled to walk down the aisle to stand alone, looking up, at the base of the podium where Reverend Hoe was ready to close the Call, not having noticed the small boy at his feet.

I've felt that sense of being impelled, nudged, tugged, or pulled many times since then, but I've never connected with the message delivered from the pulpits of the Christian churches I've attended. There is too much unexplained and too many convolutions that can't be explained and don't make enough sense to be able to trust the supposed message. So, I've been looking most of my life for answers. I think I've found some and have begun to feel secure in what I've discovered and in the epiphanies that burst over me so many times that I can't begin remember them all, much less count them. And the thing about these epiphanies is that, when I explain my new insights to others, I invariably will see good changes in those people I confide in. They see the reason and the soundness in my insights almost always with just me simply telling them the background usually and then explaining the insight. No one has told me that my ideas are crack pot nor in error and all of this led to me applying for and receiving an ordination in the Universal Life Church. I'm now planning, along with two other people, the beginning of a church dedicated to teaching a redefined Christianity--Christianity explained in a way that makes sense gives a person much more security in himself as well as a cogent body of philosophy to work from and on which to base good sound morals and spirituality.

It's taken me a long long time to get to this point. I am much like any other person asked to teach spirituality. I asked over and over, "Me? Me? Why me?" It's taken since about 1965 to get the answer. It's because I have found some answers and they need to be taught to people who are searching for them as I was.

So, I am going to be a spiritual teacher, which is what Jesus was and was the way he viewed himself--as a teacher.

Walk in Peace, Love, and Harmony.

The White Man's Retirement Program

My wife and I own two acres near Hot Springs, AR tucked into a nice little valley just about two miles from town. In the summer, the temperature is at least twenty degrees lower than in town because of all of the trees and grass and in the winter it never receives even half of the snow that falls on the major intersection only about a mile away. While the valley, which we've named Peaceful Valley, never receives nearly the amount of rain the city does, we get enough to have green grass and to sustain the many many trees which surround us as well as those that populate our two acres. I've had time to reflect on a lot of things since we bought our land, especially on the necessity of mowing grass.

I can't think of a single exercise that has any less value or purpose than grass mowing. It's right down there with improving land which in real estate means to strip a piece of land of all of it's flora, build something on it, then go back and plant grass, or put down mats of grass from grass farms, or to cover it with asphalt or concrete. Strip the land of Nature and all of its irregular shapes of bushes, plants, and trees, ridding the area of the shade as well as of the foliage that purifies the atmosphere, then recover it with square or rectangular boxes and smooth-shorn grass or flat untillable concrete or asphalt, man-made materials. Then the owner gets to buy a mower, herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizer--all of chemical origin--and goes about taking care of that lawn, and maybe some flower beds, for the rest of his ownership, maybe his life. It isn't enough to just accept what's there and work with it. It has to be stripped, burned, and/or buried. The the white man's plan dictates that he work on it in whatever spare time he may have.

We have trees and weeds around us. I mow the grass because my wife more or less demands it. But I hate the entire concept. If the Creator had wanted me to mow grass, I'd have been born with something on my body that would facilitate the activity or It would have created something else to mow the grass instead. It did neither. Man invented the concept and I believe it was very probably a rich white man. I'd like to find him and apply some retroactive birth control.

I was sitting on a bench in our yard looking at the woods around us and listening to the quiet. Yes, listening...to...the...quiet. I know that you in the cities don't really understand what that is with all of the traffic twenty-four hours a day and you electronic devices that cut you off from the real world not to mention things such as air conditioning and closed windows and doors. You can try to imagine, but I know you won't be able to, sitting quietly in the middle of the afternoon listening to a quiet so profound that total peace washes through you. That's what happened to me. Then I looked at the small area of the yard I'd mowed and I thought of the uselessness of the destruction of all of those plants and insects. Yes, there were many wonderful insects living among that wilderness of what you in the city would call weeds.

I wonder what the Indians did before the white man came with his retirement plan.