What I Told The Kids

What I told the kids was this:
God is Love.
God is as vastly impersonal as outer space (I said)
and as up close as a lamb's snooter;
as grand as galaxies
and as intimate as your next breath.

I told the kids:
God is as male to the core as it gets,
and as deeply, unspeakably feminine as well –
while not necessarily either-or, certainly in their creative union.

God is Love, I told 'em,
greeted you on your arrival,
greets you on your departure,
entering and receiving you your life long
on every breath you take.

Forever isn't "a long long time," I told 'em,
but is outside of time altogether.
So God is here and is now, and in reality –
just eternally-forever that.
All else is suffering, all else is suffering.

And you are That,
whatever anyone else tries to tell you;
remember, you are That.

So you really can afford to show kindness, feel empathy,
have patience and consideration, and learn to trust yourself
to have faith.

If you can carry this on the tip of your tongue and give it a tune,
learn to sing it, God will dance there,
you won't ever be bummed out for long.
Yeah, God is Love, and your wildest source of joy.
Now just go be happy.

Well, that's what I told the kids.

I May Surely Get Whacked For This:

When gays or lesbians or bisexuals are simply permitted to be comfortable with their sexual orientation in an accepting society free of stigma or defamation, isolation, pressure to hide or repress this (or as in Muslim countries, murder or public execution) - that is a matter of human rights. That's it. I'm hetero, my sons and daughters all are as well. So? And I've always conveyed to them the inalienable recognition of human rights, whomever it addresses.

When, however, everything becomes glaringly, invasively, redundantly, unavoidably about the sexual orientation of Ls, Gs, Bs, Ts - and that they are somehow all "wonderful" for it - and YOU are sexist, homophobic and "white male"-fascist (wherever that one came from!) for even suggesting that you are perhaps becoming more than fed up with having a cartoony Rainbow ceaselessly shoved down your throat: this is Ideology. And, as I've often asserted and cannot stress enough: all good things turn rancid when they hit Ideology. Dogma kills, it deadens with the slow blows of a cudgel.
Fundamentalist or Fascist, Communist or Capitalist or Collectivist, Right or Left: it dries up all life with the same dumbing-down demand for compliance and obedience.

Are Jews "special" because there was a Holocaust or we all loved "Fiddler On The Roof"? No. They are Jews.
Are African-Americans "special" because of their forced immigration to serve "The Peculiar Institution" and enduring a century of Jim Crow? No. They are African-Americans.
Are gays and lesbians "special" because the overweening trend says so? No.
All three examples are human beings who have endured persecution and worse.
All three have also contributed vastly to our culture with their creativity.

Ideology is dictatorship over the mind, above all. It dictates what you may or may not think, what is "permitted" and what not - it is a "one-size-fits-all" dogma which holds you to a brain-sucking "political-correctness" and goads or intimidates or punishes you with propaganda and character assassination if you don't behave and get in line.

To introduce being gay as The New Norm would be like making Jewish or Black the "preferred" norm. If I run for office or am in some other public position, should I make being hetero the hallmark of my character or accomplishment? Why then must I know of someone's non-hetero sexual orientation as if that has anything to do with his/her actual values, judgement, competence, character, stability, suitability; am I homophobic for still considering the bedroom a private matter?

Here's another way of formulating this:
Ask a Jew what makes him/her "Jewish." You'll get a whole variety of possible responses, from biblical to philosophical to banal to humanistic, history and heritage, values and community. I'd wager that at the bottom of the list, if at all, you might hear circumcision or diet.
Ask a Muslim the same question, you get "no pork." That's it. A pork-abstinent Jew doesn't count, a vegetarian (from the Planet Vegan) doesn't count; only Muslims count, and without knowing squat really, most will give you as Number One Criteria: no pork. All else follows.

So I may get myself placed among the racists, sexists, homophobix, Islamophobix - please add antisemites - because the Ideologues and Lobbyists for the Cult and Culture of Political Correctness so dictate.

Still, I will maintain to my last dying breath at the ripe age of 150:
that every human being is to be treated with dignity and respect, kindness and empathy. Because s/he is Human. Not because s/he is special. No one is. But every One is divine in origin - no exceptions.

And that is what I pass on to the kids.

http://samuelinayatchisti.blogspot.de/2014/04/a-critical-look-if-one-still-may-at.html

http://samuelinayatchisti.blogspot.de/2014/05/reactions-to-my-lgtb-critique.html

Being Human

 (According to a report ... the Prophet ... said: “The Day of Judgement will not begin until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them. A Jew will hide behind a rock or a tree, and the rock or tree will say, ‘O Muslim, O slave of Allah! There is a Jew behind me, come and kill him!’ – except for the gharqad (box thorn), for it is one of the trees of the Jews.”)
(Compare with quite another Message:  "...And he answered and said unto them, I tell you that, if these (singing 'Hosannah') should hold their piece, the stones would immediately cry out."  Lk. 19:40)

If this Jew be an ape, then let me be an Orangutan,

as they are closer to being Human than what we see

passing for God's-own-choice in the form of Islam,

slaughtering and dominating, planning a reach from sea to sea!

Or let me be Hanuman, with Ram's Name in my mouth,

swinging through the demon stronghold, tail afire and with mace

in hand, serving my Lord and the soul of Woman, His Spouse –

striking dead the demon grip which tightens on the Human race!

If this Christian be a pig, then let us all be swine,

for this beloved creature is from God and intelligent –

the blood of innocents let Islam drink, we have another wine,

and far better – bonding us in Love, since the First Advent!

If women be low then let me be low, and if gays be forbidden

let me be that with them; if a single animal's slandered then I;

if "behind every rock or tree a sought Jew be hidden"

I'll remember that “every rock and stone praises God“ and cry

Loudly to the winds that it be carried to all corners:

"Wake up wake up!" find your Divine and praise that,

stand for what is yours, in your own land you're the foreigner;

resist – or else lose your multi-culture – through Islamic fiat.

These loathing all Nature, let them feel the Lion rising in me all the more,

in tireless resistance toward their intentions to crush and dominate

our very souls – not only culture and politic – I will Singh and I will roar,

stand firm in conscious Faith and leave nothing to uncertain fate.

A word to the "Caliphate":

There are of course many (and more widely known) Isis statues of iconography from the hieroglyphics showing her in the awesome ritual kneeling position on one knee. But for THIS purpose only standing would do, and I found only this one. She is standing there in all her Grace, open and feminine, sovereign as all get-out and divine: the very ANSWER to the Creepy-Caliphate-of-Cadavers!