Church of Lee February 12, 2006
Posted by Lee A Haynes in News and politics, Personal, Religion.add a comment
My mother wrote me an email last night expressing a bit of spiritual hollowness. I dashed off a rather flip response, something to the tune of, “beats the hell out of me what it’s all about”. I don’t want to seem flip about this but religions seem to be headline grabbing lately, all of it based on fire, death and hatred from Tehran to Texas. I am expressly concerned with the Iranian prospects of nuclear war over a cartoon. Everybody is going to hell tortured in eternal flame forever except for us. The only difference I’ve been seeing lately is that the Christians seem to be content with smugly trying to outlaw the non-christians on their way to hell while the Muslims seem bent on hastening the day.
Ok, here is the deal. I’m a closet Christian. When I read a bible I skip to the text in red. But I firmly believe that politics and religion have no place being interlinked. How exactly does “Give to Ceaser what is Ceaser’s and to God what is God,” reconcile with the neo-con’s assertion that Jesus is in favor of lower taxes? I’m also in favor of lower taxes but I don’t think these two subjects belong in the discussion. I like discussing politics, I don’t mind discussing religion but I absolutely hate they way they have become linked. I would like to say that this kind of politicizing peaked last May when the Pastor of the East Waynesville Baptist Church resigned amid a storm of controversy after he told his congregation that if they had not voted for Bush they were no longer welcome in Church. I fear that we will see more and more of this as time goes on. I have no desire to be linked in any way with these people. Spirituality is best kept to oneself. This habit among religions and the religious to make a list of people they deny, behaviors that they abhor and then ask for help removing them from society is not not Christian, it is not loving, it is the politics of hate and destruction. I reject this. I would rather keep my thoughts and feelings to myself than to identify with these people even a little bit. Their hypocrisy is the real evil in the world today.
So that’s my sermon for this Sunday. Knowing the way I evolve I will probably violate my own rule about keeping my spirituality to myself and keep writing on the subject in the future. Mine is a dynamic and evolving mind. Sometimes it is a struggle to remember that that is a good thing. Sometimes it is a struggle to embrace myself. But I keep pushing along.
The Rejuvenating Power of Sunday Breakfast February 12, 2006
Posted by Lee A Haynes in News and politics, Personal.1 comment so far
Breakfast out with coffee and The New Yorker can do wonders for breaking out of a rut. At least that’s how it feels right now. I’ve just returned from the restaurant that my apartment window looks out on. I’m feeling at ease for the first time in weeks. I just read Peter Hessler’s letter from China, “Hutong Karma, the many incarnations of a Beijing alleyway”. It is a nice account of living in a four hundred year old Beijing ally and the changes it has been through in the last thirty or so. Some seventy-five percent of the old city has been demolished for new development. The remaining neighborhoods are just now being “protected”. You can translate that into disneyfied. The architecture remains the same but the boutiques and cafe’s and trendy bars are coming in. I’m a sentimentalist and that makes me a little sad. Sentimentality has always taken a back seat to practically, as it rightly should, in this city of fifteen million.
My own city remains completely untouched by the ravages of practicality. Last night was the Chinese New Years Day parade. I did not go. I was close enough to hear the firecrackers from the parade start, and helicopters buzzed around the neighborhood all night. I had been turned off by the bickering of the pro-human rights/anti-Beijing lobby in the city, the intensely pro-Beijing Chinese Chamber of Commerce and of course the Falun Gong who were banned from the parade just like they were outlawed in China. Nasty stuff for an event that used to be my favorite in the city. I stayed home caught up with my blog and played World of Warcraft instead.
So what does breakfast have to do with China? Not much particularly. The point is that feeling like myself again. I’m writing about what is occupying my thoughts again. Today I’m not afraid of the blank page. Today the blank page is my friend again.
Braver Newer World 