Custom Search

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Post Holly

It is now February 5th and I notice that I haven't blogged on here for a while. This is the point where I wont mention how I really should bang out my thoughts more often than I do....although I just did.

I have thunk many thoughts since my last post.

What if I just said "I am?"

I fear that someone would accuse me of trying to be blasphemous, but that is far from my intent.

I am come to find that I am all and nothing.
I am a very smart fool. / I am a very foolish intellectual.
I am a very particular slob. / I am a very sloppy perfectionist.
I am a very spiritual naturalist. / I am very naturalistic in my spirituality.

I used to say "I am a Christian" and nothing else. Recently I was asked what my religious affiliation was and all I could do was look at the lady and say "yyyyeeeeesssssss.?!.?" It turned out that although we were not exactly on the same page that we were at least in what seemed like the same chapter of the same book. [as a side note, the answer "yes" really has much more to it than that; I find pieces of many of the major pillars to be agreeable to me, but right now they would mainly be anything between Taoism, Zen Buddhism, Vedanta and the religion that Jesus probably adhered to....see below for more of that one]

When I titled this blog, I did not actually enter anything into the text area for the actual "blog" like I am now. Rather I titled it, got distracted/confused/frustrated/finger-tied and then just let it sit. So now today, about a month later I come back to it....not totally sure what my motivation for it is.

Christmas had just passed when I titled this. I guess I probably started out with the intention of doing some kind of post-holiday summary but I don't think I'll do that now. I think I'll do something else.

I did reflect at Christmas on the man Jesus. It is hard to miss him amidst all the fanfare and hoopla. I reflected on his words [or at least what we believe were his words] and what was actually there verses what we are typically told from the pulpits that he said.

Poor Jesus.

I often feel like he was misunderstood as so many revolutionaries and gurus are.

As I see it, he never claimed to be a or the messiah or saviour. I would even argue against the traditionalist that he neither ever claimed to be God. I do, however, believe that in much of what he said that he did at least presume to speak on behalf of God; and from what I have spent over the last several months learning about the other various religions of the East...he very well could have been speaking on behalf of God....but was misunderstood as a result of it; just like we would probably do the same today.

I do not believe the fancies that Christianity imported into the Jesus stories- his virgin birth, his unique messiahship, his post-humus resurrection.....although, oddly I am beginning to be OK with believing the possibility that he may have actually done miracles. Bottom line is that I don't believe that he was all that he has been built up to be.

A very intriguing lecture that I have listened to on multiple occasions is from the Myth and Religion series by Alan W. Watts. The lecture is called "Jesus and His Religion." The audio has been broken up into 9 or 10 minute bite-sized portions on YouTube but they can all be found at http://www.myspace.com/science_prodigy/blog/472205675

It is a very distinguishing question- A religion about Jesus - Or the religion of Jesus?

The short story here is that, for me, this question and its answer really throw out the importance of celebrating Christmas.

So then, once you get the message of the first lecture you might wait a while and then take a bite of the 2nd course which is even harder to swallow at first but really brings the functionality of the universe into perspective.

The 2nd course is another lecture that he gave called "The Karma of Christianity." This can also be found at http://vimeo.com/15292358

I think that is enough for this post, but I am curious as to whether any of my readers would be interested in seeing some of my thoughts along these lines in a more formal format such as a paperback book? I'm not trying to be self-serving; I'm just curious.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home