Stop throwing rocks!

I’m just a dumb American sitting in my dumb lazy chair clicking through the TV channels and judging the rest of the world’s affairs, raising my blood pressure, working on a heart attack and doing my best to trigger the cancer my genes are supposed to kill me with, stuffing myself with GMO food, helping to evolve my progeny into the destruction of this lovely mother planet of ours. What do I know, right? I’m the problem! I’m the Zionist fool who justifies the rightful owners of this world to rise up in rebellion against our progress and fanciful dreams of comfort and lavish living!

Nonsense I say! And George Soros, you need to shut the hell up. Open society, schmopen schmesiety!

I couldn’t NOT say something here about what’s going on in Egypt after reading Soros’s column in the Washington Post, blaming Israel again for the unrest in the Middle East. That’s like saying the uprising in the inner cities of America in the seventies and eighties was a result of white authoritarian government policy designing and pumping crack cocaine into the fabric to keep them in their place in hopes that some genocidal civll war within that community would rid us of the issue altogether. Yeah, people actually believe that stuff!

Regardless of all the atrocities perpetuated by either side of the Israel/Palestine conflict, the reality here is that Muslim or Islamist ideology, the factions, the movements of ideology against Zionism and toward Muslim rule have got to be put in check. There is no place for it in this world.

Whether you agree with Zionism or think it’s a bunch of kooky mythology or whatever you believe Zionism means, don’t listen to the Muslim Brotherhood, and certainly don’t listen to the Islamist radicals and what they would tell you it means. They have a convoluted perception of EVERYTHING that goes on in this world. It astounds me that anyone would give sympathy to their cause (there is a difference between empathy and sympathy). When people sympathize with them, it feeds them to rise up and destroy what peace is already hanging by a thread. They are nothing more than a powder keg of malcontentious hatemongers looking for a reason to destroy any peaceful progress this world makes. They lack the ability to progress or prosper; to grow, to mend, to heal, to love, to nurture. All they know is destruction, anger, war, hatred and conflict. They want nothing more than to dominate those around them. They want to dominate women, children, any free thinking or creative energy that is produced anywhere; they create reasons to oppose it. And they don’t speak in reason, they speak in rhetoric. Their leaders will not answer questions, they will not address issues, they will only point fingers, spotlight anything they can find to be a seed of conflict and make it their cause.

And the worst part about this is that bleeding hearts around the world, as well intentioned as they are, fall for this rhetoric as easily as a moth flies into the flame of a candle and is burned to a crisp. Why? Because the foundation the bleeding hearts of this world have supported themselves on has always been from the causes of victims. And who are the biggest victims in this world? The people who cry the loudest. They blame everything that is happening around them and take no responsibility for what is happening within them. Because we are all responsible for what we create and it is up to us to take control and make things right if we stand in opposition of our environment.  That’s what living is all about! Fighting battles out of anger and revenge are not solutions. Fighting battles to stop a greater destruction than the one you are creating by getting into battle can be justified. But these malcontents don’t look for solutions, they look to destroy and create havoc around them because they know nothing else. They create their world of what they know, of what they believe, of what they feel. It is their reality and they believe it so strongly and their influence is felt by all bleeding hearts who, while they are well meaning, are founded on false principles.

There are many cliches and parables to describe what I mean. When you have nothing to stand for, you’ll fall for anything. If you don’t have a solid balance of spirit, mind and body then when things get dicey the lowest common denominator is conflict, and that’s where it ends up most times with groups who are on shaky foundation built on disagreement, victimism and rhetoric.

A man who builds his house on a foundation of sand, when the storms and tempests come, he loses his house, and all that he has built up, because the foundation never was solid. The sand is false principles. While well meaning and attractive in appearance, it supports structures while there is no opposition eroding it and it seem to do a fine job supporting everything built on top. But when real issues arise, that foundation cannot support against the eroding waves, stormy weather and earthquakes that concrete, rebar and steel can withstand.

Do I need to continue? This is just peeling back a small corner of the patch that covers the truth of what is happening in this world. You can ‘yeah, but’ all you want. I’m right. If you don’t like it I welcome your retort. That’s what makes America great. We can debate without it eroding into a fight. That’s what progress and education does for a society. Open minds can grow and breathe. Change can happen when people embrace knowledge and understanding instead of standing on false principles that result in discomfort, strife and do nothing more than support you in feeling angry and opposed to something.  But if you do want to debate, please don’t make me repeat myself.  I’ve said a lot in here.  If I have to repeat myself to argue with you then you’re not paying attention.

Stand for what you believe in, nurture it and spread that truth to make the world a better place. If it leads you to argument and conflict with others then you’ve found yourself at a dead end and you need to back up and find out where you got off course.

My religion is showing!

Alright, every once in a while the virtual soap box upon which I stand on the information superhighway becomes a platform for religious discussion. All my life I’ve been a pretty consistent rule breaker and I’m breaking the politic/religion rule here. I’m not trying to start a war or convert anyone, it’s just that there are some things that are so intimately woven into the fabric of my being that I have to express them, and that’s what this blog is all about.

Everyone knows by now that I’m one of those kooky Mormons. I’ve been growing my hair long to hide my horns and I have sixteen of my wives living secretly in a bunker west of the Great Salt Lake.

And most people know that we Mormons have this extra bit of scripture we call the Book of Mormon. I’ve mentioned it in other blog posts because a lot of what I think about corresponds to its teachings and it has helped shape my philosophy throughout my life. It’s a good book!

But there are some things about its coming forth that are somewhat extraordinary. They don’t prove its authenticity but they are things not to be merely dismissed and taken lightly if one is prone to argue against the truthfulness of the book.

Just to give a very brief synopsis of what the Book of Mormon is: It’s a record of a people who came from Jerusalem during the reign of King Zedekiah around 600 BC. They built a boat and crossed the waters, brought with them records of the ancient prophets, i.e. Jeremiah, Isaiah, Moses, Zenock, Zenos (guess they liked the Z names); some in the Bible and some not but for the most part they had the law of Moses and the writings of the old testament prophets.

This people kept records on plates made of brass and gold and hid them up with prayers to God and a promise from Him to them that the record would come forth in the latter days by simple and small means to bring to pass the work of righteousness for the salvation of their ancestry and the family of men. Joseph Smith, Jr. was the vessel directed by God’s hand to bring this record to light in these, the last days.

Here is a list of many factoids concerning the Book of Mormon and its translator, Joseph Smith, Jr.

1. He was between 23 and 24 years of age
2. He had only three years of formal schooling
3. The book contains 239 chapters; 54 of them about wars, 21 about history, 55 about prophecy, 71 about doctrines, 17 about missionaries, and 21 about the mission of Christ
4. The book contains the history of two separate nations, along with histories of different contemporary nations and groups of people
5. It describes in detail the religious, economic, social and political cultures and institutions of these two nations.
6. The book covers a period over 1000 years of history and was written in approximately 80 days
7. Since it was finished there have been no major contextual changes, only grammatical corrections
8. There is a challenge to the reader at the end of the book concerning its authenticity and truth: “And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask of God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Jesus Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, He will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost”
9. Millions of people have testified that they know the book to be true and correct because they put the challenge to the test
10. Many great men, intellectual giants and scholars have subscribed discipleship to the record and its movement even to giving their very lives
11. The descriptions of the cultures in the civilizations spoken of in the book were not known when it was published but have since been discovered to exist exactly as described
12. There are no contradictions within the book or with the words of the Holy Bible
13. Many of the facts, ideas, and statements given in the record were in direct opposition with the prevailing beliefs of the world at the time it was published
14. The translator invited the ablest scholars and experts to examine the text with care. He made great efforts to see that the book got into the hands of all those most eager to prove it a forgery
15. Thorough investigation, scientific evidence and archaeological discoveries for the next 180 years have verified the claims and proven many of the details in the book
16. After 180 years of extensive analysis, not one claim or fact in the book has been disproved
17. The translator, Joseph Smith, Jr., after suffering persecutions and revilement for 20 years after finishing the translation died as a martyr at the hands of evil men for his testimony that it is a true record given to us from God

You can read it online –> here

This guy’s take on ‘bury the hatchet’

I was thinking about making peace the other day with someone for whom I have created a bit of anxiety over the years; justified for the most part, but not cool and not necessary at all. In light of everything that’s gone on in my life over the past twelve months, and this amazing change of heart I’ve been experiencing (when it starts you think you’ve changed, but it keeps getting more profound), I decided to extend the olive branch or, in words I like better, bury the hatchet.

Then I started thinking about the phrase and where it originated. Obviously it has roots in Native American lore. So I did a little research and found some anecdotal evidence that some time prior to the arrival of Columbus, the Iroquois leaders Deganawidah and Hiawatha had convinced the five major tribes to stop fighting and form a confederacy, and as a sign of peace or a treaty of peace, to bury their weapons of war beneath the roots of a white pine. This tradition was carried on through history with tribes and with settlers from the east and the phrase ‘bury the hatchet’ that we use today eventually sprang from this demonstration of peace for settling disputes and conflict.

And I thought about it a little more. Just because this is one of history’s earliest recorded events of burying the hatchet it certainly wasn’t the first. Then it dawned on me that burying the hatchet is a peace keeping maneuver I’ve been taught about all my life through the scriptures in my church.

Yeah, I’m a Mormon. Throw out the word Mormon and you get all sorts of responses. The name itself evokes a myriad of images in the mind depending on your exposure to Mormonism or what you’ve heard. Ideas of polygamy, secret ceremonies, no coffee, no alcohol, for some it means family, charity, doing unto others. To me Mormonism is a culture. It’s more than a religion. It’s a way of life. But it’s far from a kooky cult or some brainwashing society of patriarchal overlords. And the Mormons have the Book of Mormon.

Now, this blog post isn’t going to be an exposition on the origins of the Book of Mormon or why I believe it is a companion to the Bible and another testament of Jesus Christ (had to get that in there), I just want to refer to a section of the book where we can read about our Native American ancestors first burying the hatchet as a covenant of peacekeeping. I said I wouldn’t give an exposition on the history or origins of the Book of Mormon but it’s important in this context to at least understand the setting I’m about to discuss, so I’ll give a very brief synopsis of the contextual setting of the Book of Mormon story.

About 600 years BC a group of Israelites, around the time of the destruction of Jerusalem during the 8th or 9th year of the reign of king Zedekiah (Old Testament book of Jeremiah 37-39), fled Jerusalem and built boats that sailed to the western hemisphere. They took with them ancient records of scripture, the books of Moses, writings of Isaiah, Jeremiah and other ancient, Old Testament prophets up to that time written on plates of brass. During their travails they experienced many things, prosperity, divisions, wars, etc. and they kept records. These records were kept and handed down from the beginning by those who had left Jerusalem and guarded as sacred, recording the dealings of God with men and the patterns of righteousness and sin so that they could come forth in the latter days to demonstrate God’s goodness and mercy in preserving his people and showing his arm is outstretched all the daylong to any of His children who desire to come unto him.

So, without going into all the detail and getting into the history of Mormonism and the idea that God didn’t just reveal Himself to the people of Jerusalem and that Christ taught that there are other sheep which were not of the fold at Jerusalem, I’ll just leave it at that. The Book of Mormon is an ancient record of scripture about the dealings of the family of men on the western hemisphere during the same time the bible was being recorded in the so called old world.

So there’s this people in the Book of Mormon, a tribe who has been uber rebellious and has committed heinous crimes and murders on the more righteous people of the land, and by the teachings of the judges and prophets in the lands round about these areas they come to the knowledge of God and find common ground with their enemies. When this happens they have incredible remorse for their murders and for all the bloodshed and destruction they have brought upon the people of the land. So they decide to make a covenant of peace with God and with the people and bury their weapons of war; or as they are referred to in the Book of Mormon account, ‘their weapons of rebellion’.

So this tribe buries their weapons deep in the ground to show that they no longer desire to shed blood and they covenant that they will never again take up arms against their brothers. And when the enemy comes upon them to fight they bow down before them in prayer to God while the enemy fell upon them and began to destroy them. At first their enemies thought they were bowing down in submission for fear but soon realized that they were giving praises to God and freely giving their lives rather than to fight and destroy. They wouldn’t take up their arms in their defense because of the horrendous atrocities and bloodshed they had committed previously. And some were slaughtered, but this demonstration of humility softened the hearts of their enemies so that they stopped destroying them as they saw that these people would not rise up in battle.

And in perspective, as the lesson of the story teaches us, those who were lost by giving up their lives were received into the presence of God and saved by their repentance, by their sacrifice to not commit any more destruction and bloodshed and by their demonstration of peace and change of heart. This seems quite extreme but in retrospect it is a priceless lesson we can learn from; the sacrifice of these dedicated people who had a clear understanding of the purpose of life, that there is so much more beyond what we can see in this mortal coil. This people did not only sacrifice their lives for their own salvation, but their demonstration carries endlessly forward to those of us who have the perspective to learn from their great sacrifice to be grateful to God for His mercies, for the gift we have of being able to truly change and be made clean after being some of the vilest of sinners.

So to me bury the hatchet doesn’t just mean to put our differences behind us, it means to put our differences behind us and to move forward with a commitment or covenant of peacekeeping. To never again take up arms, whether they are physical arms, mere words, thoughts or intentions against our brothers and work every day to create peace and harmony through compassionate service. Compassionate service, meaning to serve without regard for reward, to do it for the good of those we are serving and for no other reason, to uplift our brothers and to make the world a better place.

Of course it is extreme to think that we shouldn’t defend our lives in the face of certain destruction, but these stories serve as lessons, taken in context as they are told, to our lives that we can incorporate into who we are and who we wish to become. Once we have committed certain atrocities and have found true change of heart and forgiveness, it is critical that we don’t go back in any way, shape or form to that old behavior. To bury the hatchet means to put our old lives away, to bury them in the ground and to take upon ourselves newness, a new life, to be born again and become beings of light and goodness.

That sounds like new age, fruit pie, mumbo-jumbo especially in this day and age of the hustle and bustle of me-me-me, gimme-gimme-gimme, now-now-now, but it’s what I really believe. And it all starts with Christ, who is love and salvation, and creation, re-creation into newness of life, healing, being reborn into something great, to achieve our full potential as children of God. There are too many misunderstandings about who Christ is and what He expects of us, too much fear, too much of the fire and brimstone and not enough of the compassion and love of what He truly is and what He wants for us, and why He created this whole mortal plan for us. But once we begin to understand real, pure truth, the essence of what is real; we begin to understand who we really are and what purpose we serve in this world; that we are all one in Him and that to be healed and to be whole is to be in harmony with what science calls ‘The Field’ and what spiritualists call the powers of the universe and what I call God, my Father in Heaven, and what He calls the family of man.

There is much we don’t understand, because it’s not time for us to get it all, but it’s time for us to search. And if we search we will find, and as we begin to understand and incorporate that knowledge into our beings, into who we are, to help the world move forward into greater consciousness, greater things will be unfolded to our minds until we can comprehend all things.

Knowledge may be power, but raw power can be destructive. It matters what we do with that knowledge, how we harness it and how we transfer it into constructive creation of life and healing for progress toward the good of all mankind, never to control and subject others to our will. As we keep our minds set on things greater than ourselves, we are able to act as conduits for others in achieving greatness within themselves.

We will make mistakes. Others will make mistakes. But if we can bury the hatchet then we can love one another, and that’s when we start living.

The Palestine Solidarity Movement

I found this blog post interesting.  It talks about the Palestinian/Israeli conflict and the fact that Palestinian Christians are more prosperous than Palestinian Muslims.  Food for thought.  You can read the entire blog at http://palestinesolidaritymovement.blogspot.com/

Friday, January 19, 2007

Palestine Solidarity Movement encourages Palestinian Muslims to convert to Christianity

While the Palestinian Solidarity Movement does not necessarily subscribe to evangelist Jack Chick’s theology, it recognizes that Christian culture–in terms of prescribing how people should behave toward one another–is totally superior to most forms of “Islam” that are practiced in Gaza and the West Bank. In addition, Lebanese Christians tend to have far better educations and far higher incomes than Lebanese Muslims, thus reinforcing the Palestine Solidarity Movement’s conclusion that Christianity leads to a far better way of life.As shown in Sky Lighter from Chick Publications, this is what militant “Islamic” mullahs and imams are teaching Palestinian children today. Note, of course, that the gray-bearded imam who is telling Palestinian children that they will go to Paradise to enjoy the services of 70 dark-eyed virgins did not get to be a gray-bearded imam by acting on the advice he is giving these boys.While mainstream Islam teaches the same lessons as Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, and all other mainstream religions–things like loving your neighbor, not doing violence to other people, and respecting the natural rights of all people–the militant “Islam” that is prevalent in Gaza and the West Bank teaches its followers to:

(1) Kill female family members for “adultery,” which includes being raped.

(2) Murder other people because of their religion or sexual orientation

(3) Commit suicide while murdering other people

(4) Engage in mindless violence that keeps Palestinians poor while their Judeo-Christian neighbors become rich through application of Judeo-Christian ethics and principles.

The Palestine Solidarity Movement accordingly concludes that conversion to Christianity and adoption of Christian principles would be in the best interests of the Palestinian people, and would result in an enormous improvement in their standard of living.

The Palestine Solidarity Movement (PSM) is an international movement committed to assisting peaceful Palestinians using legal and nonviolent public relations methods and principles. Founded by a small group of activists, PSM aims to support and strengthen Palestinian resistance against oppression by providing the Palestinian people with a voice to nonviolently resist terrorism and coercion.

posted by Winged Hussar 1683 at 11:30 AM

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The Israeli occupation?

This week George Bush said, “There should be an end to the occupation that began in 1967. The agreement must establish a Palestine as a homeland for the Palestinian people just as Israel is a homeland for the Jewish people.”

First of all, there is no “Palestinian people”. If anything, the Palestinian people are made up of Arabs and Jews together. The Palestinian people are those people who occupy the Palestinian territories. They are not a race and they are not a nation.

After all of the Jewish concessions to the Arabs over the last couple of hundred years, not to mention the last couple of thousand years, I don’t understand how any educated person can call the Jewish existence in Palestine an occupation. The bottom line is that the Arabs will never be happy until the Jews are eradicated from Palestine. The Jews want nothing more than to live free in their homeland. Yes, Palestine is the Jewish homeland and always has been.

Take a look at historical maps and see how the Jewish state has dwindled into what it is today. Jewish concessions and cooperation has given the Arab Palestinians more and more of what they ask for. What more do they want? We know what they want but for some reason the leaders of the world are unable to admit it and are continuing to try to solve the problem by giving away more and more of the Jewish homeland.

Not only did the Jews bring Israel back to life, which brought the Arab Palestinians into the area, but they are leaving and surrendering their lands at the behest of world leaders under the veil of “peace”. This is not peace, this is occupation by the Arabs.

Black is white and white is black in this ridiculous conflict. George Bush is fighting a war on terror. He absolutely understands what it is the blood thirsty and barbaric Arab Palestinians want. It is the destruction of Israel, the Jews and the west. He is complicit in feeding their blood lust while working to fight it on other fronts. Shame on President Bush for supporting the terrorism of the PLO and continuing to give in to their demands for destruction and occupation.

Give the Jews their homeland. The Arabs have more than 90% of the land in the area and they want the Jews to give up the slivers they have established in their quest for some sort of sovereignty. The right thing to do here would be to protect Israel and tell the Palestinian Arabs to take it or leave it, then prepare for war.

Nobody wants war but there will be war until the Jews are extinguished from Arab lands. The Jews deserve to exist. They are a peaceful people who welcome peaceful coexistence with other nations. The Arabs are the problem. The Arabs are the occupiers. Shame on George Bush for supporting them.