Coming, Going, Being

My two cents – for some no sense, for some nonsense, and others may become incensed., but that's alright with me.

With all due respect, I find there is a plethora of EndTimes-addicts and Revelations-junkies, which is their business to pursue as they wish. It may be that this or that prophecy of old, or these or those verses of the Old or New Testament canons, unduly impress for reasons which fail to inspire me. They may be impressive, but the key word here is: unduly.

My earlier experiences with people concerning their entire attention to faith vis-à-vis the evils of others, and with escaping the latter by getting tickets to The Rapture or just by Getting to Heaven altogether – is that what they tend to be taught in their Bible circles appears quite overweight in the Headroom, and altogether lean in the spiritual impulse of Heart. My later and current occasional contact with those hooked on this, on depreciating this world for some other - of which they're so certain - is that they miss out entirely on the purpose of this one and think and speak in one dimension only, maybe two. But not three – and four is strictly out - when I've encountered such simplistic absolutes in grown adults.

I'm not disparaging here, but challenging. I sometimes tell those at my workplace who just can't get through the shift fast enough and be done with it: "We don't come to work to get home, we come – to work." And you didn't become Human to go to Heaven. At the age of five, out playing with my mates, I suddenly had a re-call: that we are there, we are in it, we need only to acknowledge it and have it in our consciousness, it never left us.

Why are you here, why did you take form in a Human life? To get somewhere else? To go to Heaven? What will you do when you get there – if you weren't satisfied being here in this world, why would you be satisfied there, why? If that were where you should be, why did you leave it – providing you actually know, as you claim what Heaven is, what it is like, so to speak. Or is this all some bad accident, a dream you can't handle? It is a dream, but it is real while you are in it. Do you know that you came from there, and it is already your destination and your destiny – so why sweat it? Your sweat is needed here, and your ease and repose, your faith is needed most here. Are you an investor, or a lover of God - which is it?

One doesn't have to be a Buddhist to be a bodhisattva, many Buddhists aren't, and many bodhisattvas aren't necessarily Buddhists either. We just have the term from there. If this world were a house burning to the ground, the Seekers of Heaven would already be on the next train out. The bodhisattva would be in that goddamned house getting every last sentient Being possible – man, woman, child, pet, livestock – outa there, he'd be singed and coughing, but taking any intelligent measures to save those lives.

If it's Heaven you're wanting, without knowing the dimensions of its penetration in this very world you reject, you're just in it for yourself – a shadow-self which is still petty and wanting. Easy answers, easy concepts, easy presumptions, all there on the pages in black and white. Saved/unsaved, heaven/hell, rapture-and-revelations/sin-and-judgment. A Muslim can do the same with Qur'an – and does.

Never heard of grace? Being good, living the good life, good works, won't take you safely over when you do go, memorizing and quoting Scripture also not. Fitting in, sitting in, going or not going to the right church. Definitions definitely not. Head head head, talk talk talk, think think think.

Nicodemus knew about all that. Christ told him, "How 'bout that wind, eh? It listeth where it will, one knoweth not from wence it came, nor whither it goeth – such are those born in the spirit." Or to the Samaritan woman at the well, "God is a spirit, and will be worshipped in spirit."

Life in this body is good. Life in this world is good. It all came from Him, it all goes back to Him. To a lover of God this is already clear.

 

Reformation Day

For all non-Catholic Germans, i.e., German Protestants, Reformation Day is akin to our 4th of July. The excesses of the Roman Church were confronted by Luther, calling for reform and a return to Christianity’s most sacred and valued roots. He had but this in mind, written into 95 blazing talking-points. He called out the Pope and challenged the brazen authority of Rome in questions weighing in for the authority of the original Message and Teachings. He translated the Bible into the German of his day, so that the already literate or learning no longer had to rely on the priest’s Latin. He brought the Word into the home.

What came of this exceeded Luther’s own intentions, a break with Rome and the birth of a fully new denomination which would establish itself in the Christian world. (A discussion of Protestant-Catholic wars has no more place in this short accolade of mine, than does remembering our American Independence Day from British rule necessarily merit a diatribe over American history with its wars and conflicts since. The operating word here is: Reformation.)

Reformation is the oft and wishfully expressed conception of a future for the much courted ideology calling itself “The-Religion-Of-Peace” (TROP). Wistfully considered of course by moderate Muslim neighbors when you ask them, and by Western academics who will not consult with the Ex-Muslims, nor consider seriously the Hadiths and the Sunna of Muhammad as handed down through history by universally undisputed sources such as Bukhari and Muslim chiefly, and some others. These pundits of today, in the universities, in the media, in politics, in friendship-societies - will not look history in the eye, 14 centuries of it. They should, though.

They will not pay attention to the sheikhs and scholars and Salafi imams making unmistakeably clear for the public in Arabic with subtitles, or in plain English or German, that a Reformation of TROP means one thing only, allowing for no contradiction: to push the limits at all times and anywhere, everywhere, toward world domination by TROP - be it by jihad, be it by infiltration and takeover, be it by riding the population flood into a fatally naive and welcoming Europe (driven by Brussels and led by Germany under Merkel).

For in Qur’an as well as Hadith and Sunna, and throughout history since its inception - the fundamental guidance and practice of TROP is to be understood as directly from God and unalterable, above challenge or criticism or interpretation, and not to be translated from the Arabic ever - notwithstanding that nothing could prevent these from being done or attempted - on pain of being designated for apostasy, stoning, hell-fire and damnation.

Germany today is prepared to loathe itself as a “damned nation” and welcome TROP and its Shari’a into its fold as “one of its own” - the German Protestant Church has entirely taken leave of Luther who is turning in his grave as I write.

Judaism and Christianity understand what reform is, they have grown with the ages. TROP has not and cannot. So long as one means Reformation as we know it.

TROP indeed is going through a Reformation before our eyes however, and it looks like this: Baghdadi. Wahhabbi-Sunni, Da’esh or Islamic State, Caliphate. A Reformation challenging Saudi excesses, challenging its bloody competitors among the Shi’ites, challenging all notions of “moderate-islam” in the Muslim world, promising a return to Caliphate, a return to roots, to the Prophet’s intention, to all that was spelled out in Qur’an, in Sunna, in Hadith.

A Reformation in Christianity means nothing more nor less than just this, as it is all that suffices: Jesus Christ, his sermon on the mount, his guidance to the 12 (okay, minus one) at table before his arrest (John 13-20:all of it).

Yes, yes, I’m afraid there is more at stake on October 31, than just Halloween handouts.

Union Without A Mission

Be a magnet.

A magnet doesn't run after metals,

nor concern itself with those non-attracted.

It magnetizes, the metals come which belong.

Let evil hate me, it will run its course,

as will those who embrace it, these

may find me abrasive, I'm not concerned.

Others before me – and much greater,

have seen it all before.

Am I good? Only God is that, read your Bible.

Am I bad? There're worse.

Don't concern yourself with wasteful

self-conscious worry – there goes your life.

Reflect on the Self in all, conscious joy

in your belly is like soul on fire, a sun

penetrating, embracing, drawing.

Be a magnet, don't go to the world,

let it come to you.

Be the Union, not a missionary, we've so many of those.