@Alan McDougall,
Alan McDougall wrote:What dear Fido do you mean? , maybe I am a air head but hpoefully an interesting one at that
The mystical church of light and love... Sure that is cool... While most churches preach a sort of defective morality, and for that reason are themselves shunned by many, still they are as successful as they are because they are a community that does a practical good for their members... They guide the young, and encourage them... They support and help the old... They make those in the middle feel connected and needed...
Part of the reason I do not go to church apart from the fact that our pope is foresworn to hitler, is that it does not do the good with my money that I can do on my own... I am steeped in religion and spirituality... I have a library on theology, and I always have a book going on the subject...I am even attempting to learn Greek so I can read the Biblos in the original...But I am not attended by spirits..It is a practical knowledge and a practical good I seek...All other purposes are like spirits in a bottle, bringing warmth and mirth, and a harder reality after...Last year, with some help, I collected over seven hundred pounds of clothing to ship to NAHA, natives in South Dakota... For every pound was given me a receipt estimating the value at 13 dollars a pound, which makes enough difference on my taxes to allow me to afford to do it again... All that is wanting in my life is the time and will... and it takes a lot of that... All that I need to help some one is to get off my assss... The money is money the government would take -regardless- from my taxes... All I have to do to divert that money from a government hell bent on using it for death and destruction is to spend it up front on my fellow man..--.I gave some reject clothes to the a church group... The woman knows my wife and said: I heard about your mission... What mission???
I love this place and we have stolen it from these poor natives, and left them in poverty... I don't preach to them, but respect their ways and beliefs... Their pain is mine, but I have the means to deny that pain its ache for both of us just by giving some of my time and effort...Why the government does not just help them, which it should be able to do more efficiently than myself so it can keep my taxes, I do not know....
Sorry about the digression...I don't give a rat for the mystical... If you do unto others there is plenty of spiritual fulfillment...When I can find something first rate to send to them, it would be cool to see their faces...I feel fortunate when I consider that I might see far more need than I could possibly supply, and that it would break my heart... I have known some poverty first hand, and known much more at arms length...I feel all good about myself, and yet I know moments of terror...What if there is a God who will judge me not on what I did, but on what I could have done, and did not do???