Category: religion

st emilion

Posted on by empty williams

Okay, St-Emilion was pretty cool. My daughter didn’t get to sit on the magic pregnancy bench, because it was in the lower village and well, as we’re discovering, France makes minimal effort at making things accessible to the disabled. Still, good wine, and there was some kind of mural for financing armageddon?

I’m not entirely certain what all that was about, but my wife and daughter did light a candle for their recently deceased mother/grandmother there. She wasn’t a practicing Catholic anymore, due to yet another local scandal involving a sick priest and children, which directly affected close friends of hers, but I believe she still took some comfort in belief. At least, I hope so, given the terrible number Alzheimer’s brought on her.

Hey, Catholics, maybe if you rethought that whole marriage/sex thing, you wouldn’t have so many fucked up perverts in your midst.

Just a thought.

Target: 1300 words
Written: 147 words, novel: Father Lightning

good friday

Posted on by empty williams

I mean, I’m not religious, so it’s just a day off for us to take our dog for a walk down a sideroad, but hey, it’s time off. Time for family, and that’s important.

Zombie Jesus isn’t that interesting, although as a metaphor for the killing of kindness, I can agree. Old Testament God is spiteful and hateful, a demagogue in all-powerful trappings. The ultimate masturbatory fantasy for wannabe fascists.

The New Testament is less angry, less vitriol. Less control. It’s like God’s rebellious son decided to buck his petty, authoritarian jealousies and become a straight hippie (with caveats, obviously – there’s still a power trip there).

Anyway, I’m pretty sure Jesus fucked Mary Magdalene and never actually died. They just went on a three-day bender of perversity and orgasm (and wine – you know dude was into it), before coming back and having to make shit up about dying and coming back to cover up their illicit affair and hangovers.

How’s that for a good Friday?

Target: 1300 words
Written: 1225 words, novel: Father Lightning

another week, another end of week

Posted on by empty williams

Thank goodness. Kindness. I use the words thank god and for Christ’s sake and things like that, but realistically, I shouldn’t. I’m not Christian. I’m agnostic at best.

Habit, I suppose. There’s no correlation between divinity and human religion, though I believe in the divinity of certain behaviours. Kindness, for one.

Perspective and understanding, another.

Total honesty, in the nicest possible of conveyance.

All things to strive for, and for which I repeatedly fail.

Target: 1200 words
Written: 444 words, comic: Bike #1

my bear

Posted on by empty williams

My poor baby girl, our 16-year old Cassie, had a real tough time yesterday. What was supposed to be a boring day at work due to the fact that our trainers weren’t going to be assigning us anything new over the holidays, just online courses, turned into a fretful day, waiting to see if our kitten would poop or eat.

Eventually, she did, but way to fill a day, lady. Nothing like terminal worries about a beloved pet to make the day fly by.

Now, it’s Festivus, so…

Target: 1100 words
Written: 1162 words, novella: The Mungk

tao te ching

Posted on by empty williams

I’m not a religious man. Christianity taught me early on that religion is just another bullshit way to control people, and while I still lean more agnostic than straight atheist (if only in acknowledgement of the finite nature of human understanding of existence and the cosmos), I would not join a formal religion for any reason.

That said, I’m drawn to certain aspects of religious theory. I like Jesus teaching people to be nice. I like the Buddha’s sense of presence. I admire the hopefulness of prayer and the stillness of meditation.

And I love the Tao. If anything, I would consider myself an informal Taoist. I’m certainly no scholar, but I do my best to understand.

I generally work off the Stephen Mitchell or Ursula K. Leguin translations. I try to read a passage each day, to remind me of the closeness the Tao tends to hew to my own beliefs about what life is and could be.

I am going to attempt to explain my attachment to each stanza going forward, not all at once, but in pieces. I will undoubtedly anger some Taoist scholars who will scoff at my understanding, but this is about a personal understanding and connection. If it helps someone else, who gives a shit if some academic somewhere disagrees with the interpretation?

Tomorrow.

Target: 1100 words
Written: 325 words, novella: The Mungk

pounding

Posted on by empty williams

Doing my best today, but my head is pounding. I see the United Church moved to an even more progressive and liberal stance regarding substance abuse, which justifies my use of them as a baseline for kind Christianity, as opposed to more toxic sects of Christianity like those that support Republicans (and likely the Inquisition, if it still existed).

Of course, I still don’t believe that kindness and religion are required bedfellows. To me, kindness chosen instead of suggested or enforced is more natural kindness. Internally generated kindness is better than kindness pushed from outside by an institution.

We shouldn’t have to be told to be kind; it shouldn’t be an externally touted mandate.

The kindness that comes from within, kindness we choose ourselves, is always of a greater quality than kindness dictated to us as actions by others. Not that there’s no value in “forced” kindness, only a less pure intent, which becomes easier to forget or twist.

Choose kindness for yourself. You don’t need a man in the sky to tell you that.

Target: 800 words
Written: 199 words, novella: The Mungk