sin... Eckhart Tolle, calling it "the primary error" , defines it as "forgetfulness of [God]...the illusion of absolute separateness that turns reality into a nightmare"... (A New Earth, p54)

we have talked alot about it over the past 6 weeks, not surprisingly since it was Lent, then Easter... especially at Easter when we praise God that we can be freed from sin and its consequences... i like Tolle's definition,though, for it seems to cover most of the ground of our sinfulness > we sin against God when we forget that we are a part of God's good creation, and act as if we did not need to care about the world around us.  we sin against our fellow humans when we forget that we are all connected by the Holy Spirit and by Jesus' saving death in the family of God's children... we sin against God when we forget that God loves each and every person, believer or no, with an all-consuming love, and that we are all connected within and through that love...

the Gospel lesson for this past Sunday speaks of Jesus appearing to his disciples in the upper room, which was locked out of fear.... when Jesus appears, he doesn't even acknowledge the betrayals of his followers, the falling asleep in Gethsemane, the running away when the soldiers took him, the denial of Peter, the abandonment on the hill of Golgotha... all he does is wish 'Peace"....  and right on the heels of the overlooking of all their shortcomings, Jesus tells them that if they forgive the sins of any , they are forgiven, and if they retain the sins of any, they are retained...

how can we not forgive others, and right away, when Jesus refuses to even reproach, as he righteously and rightfully could, those who had failed him?  that is exactly what we are called to do, to love everyone enough to be able to accept their shortcomings, their betrayals, as part of their humanity....

if you truly love someone, you are aware of their weaknesses, and you love them anyway.  so the call is to be aware of these weaknesses, and when they cause your loved one to betray you, you forgive them anyway, without reproach, without recrimination, without even mentioning it.   even if it WOULD make US feel better...

"and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us..."   in the same way that we forgive, so are we forgiven....

For the past several days, Dan's site has been discussing various aspects of Roman Catholic tradition and belief.  i have been amazed at the way many of these practices are perceived, both within and without that tradition.  i confess to feeling the way i did in seminary, during Church History I and II, when i often found myself in the odd position of defending and clarifying the theological bases for many of these things, even though i am Episcopalian, not Roman Catholic.

the vestry (governing board) of my church has questioned why i am teaching comparative religion to my 7th and 8th grade class.  when the Sunday School Superintendant and i defended the course, saying it was in the context of comparative Christianity, they said they didn't see why the children needed to learn why other Christians believe other things.

these series of posts on TheTheologiansCafe should show exactly that necessity.  as well as each person knowing why their religious traditions are the way they are...

please explain to me why the guys you don't want to be interested in you (married ones find me particularly fascinating) are, when the one you want doesn't have the time?  or why the one person you want/need to hear from just can't spare the time, but the others are clamoring for your attention?  i was never this fascinating when i wanted to be.... wtf????

and to the one w/ whom i share the and the music, many s

for Saturday, the meditation should have been:

Think about this day... what it must have been like for the apostles and early disciples of the Church.  Your leader has died, and not even a normal death or in battle, but crucified as a criminal  -- the nearest equivalent would be for him to have died in the electric chair.  All of your hopes for the coming of the Kingdom of God, a new world order of peace and truth and unity and harmony, have been dashed. crushed. destroyed. ground into the dust under the boot heel of Imperial Rome. 

no longer are you a part of a dynamic movement of spiritual revival among your people, but now just another Judean failure.  and your best friend is dead, too...

if you have ever lost someone you loved to distraction, someone you loved more than anything, and then broke up with them or they died , imagine that feeling, but perhaps even deeper.  imagine you watched that loved one die... there is no room for denial because you witnessed that death. they are "not only merely dead, but really most sincerely dead"...

how long a night must have been that friday night!  how long a Sabbath day.... and now another night to endure... and then another day... the rest of your life stretches out before you in loneliness and despair and in the servitude of Rome....

and then came Sunday...

On this day the Lord has acted...

If you hear thunder today, don't be surprised - that is as it should be, for on this day, Good Friday, God broke into our time-bound world with a horrendous crash, and we will never be the same.  A baby is born, poor like many, in a make-shift shelter like some, and receives preparations for a funeral (myrrh) as a birth gift like none other.  This baby was born in the shadow of the cross, human ibued with the divine, God incarnate....  only his mother aware at first of the awe-some and awe-ful nature of this child.

When Jesus accepted God's call to death, death on a cross, the death of a criminal, a death he did not deserve, he rewrote the human story of disobedience that had begun with Adam and Eve.  No longer are we doomed to languish in our sin, but now have a new paradigm, a new pattern of possibility.  And this death, this atonement, this rewriting is once for all -- every time we fall back into our disobedience, Jesus points the way out for us.

i am lonely and feeling a bit at loose ends.  Dj is going to lose his job by the end of the year, but not a resumé has been sent or a net worked.  i am supposed to go to school this fall, but i am having a hard time stepping out in faith and committing to $42,000 a year  when Dj might be out of work. 

he works so hard, and for what?  there is no time for much other than work , only tv and church. 

leaving me feeling lonely.

so ok, that was rather self-pitying.  i think i had better go back to working too hard myself or else i will sound like a true asshole.  perhaps i will feel better tomorrow.  after all, tomorrow is another day.

and i guess i have every right to quote miss o'hara since my name rhymes with scarlett....

they are tearing up our street.... two days ago they had a thing like a reverse zamboni come down the street, chomping up all the asphalt, and it was pretty amazing.  it breaks the asphalt up in front of itself, then vacuums all the debris up into a large chute which throws the debris out, over the top of the reverse zamboni, into the bed of a dumptruck that is driving in front of the reverse zamboni.... even though both vehicles are driving very slowly , it takes very little time at all.  again, i was amazed.

why does it take longer to create than destroy?  it took God six days (over millions of years) to create this lovely world where we live, and yet humanity will have destroyed it pretty much within the next 50.  even though we have never been a partciularly cautious race, it has only been since the Industrial revolution, the late 1800's, that we have made such a damaging footprint in nature.  we sowed the seeds of global warming with unrestricted development and growth, and now it seems as if we will finally reap our rewards.

it was destressing enough that the Republicans would not sign the Kyoto Accord, and now our current Republican administration says things like "it it our God-given right as Americans to consume as much energy as we like"...  just because we CAN does NOT mean we should. 

what gives us the right to do as WE please?  how are we better than the rest of the world?  it is fast coming to the point where instantaneous communications will have made borders meaningless, especially since many services, formerly taking place in this country, have been outsourced offshore.  if a technician in india is reading your x-rays for a doctor in this country, do borders really matter?  and if borders have less meaning, shouldn't we be trying to be better citizens of the world? 

americans seem to think of their pockets before morality.  this saddens me.