You know, sometimes we think we’ve found what it is we’ve been looking for. And then we find out it wasn’t what we thought it was. But most of the time, after we realize our mistake, we don’t quit looking. That doesn’t seem to happen with matters of religion or spirituality. It seems to me that many people follow a certain religion, any religion, and when they find that particular faith journey isn’t taking them where they want to go, they give up on religion and spirituality all together. Sometimes they even find themselves wondering why anyone would feel the need for a religion of any kind.

To answer that, I have only to point to all those lost people in the world. Everyone I’ve ever met seems to either be looking for something, or feeling as though they’ve found it. It begins when we become aware, when we begin to look forward to our lives, when our minds are no longer filled with childish pursuits and play.

At first, we think it has something to do with what we want to do for a living. Then we, if we are fortunate enough to find our life’s work, after a bit, we find there is still an empty feeling. Something is lacking. We are not complete. There is something more. We might believe that missing something is a life mate, a soul mate. And if we are lucky enough to find that person, we find, after a time, there is still something lacking. At that point, they may go off in search of a different partner, in the belief they have simply chosen the wrong person. Some people spend their whole lives looking for that something. Others, tired of searching, bury themselves in other pursuits in order to distract themselves. Keep busy, and you won’t notice the emptiness.

Samuel Becket, in his play, “Waiting for Godot”, points out we are all waiting for something, and that something never seems to arrive. The play is great because that feeling is so universal. We DO all seem to be waiting for something to happen. And what happens, happens while we are waiting for it to happen. Like those two guys on the road to Emmaus, we don’t recognize it while it is right there with us. It sort of reminds me of those times I’ve gone looking for my keys when they were right in my pocket.

Religions were born because people are looking for something. That is why there have always been religions. There is even archeological evidence to suggest that the Neanderthal had religion. Religion is the quest after that for which we hunger and thirst. It is not simply a moral code, or social code. Such codes are easy to find and easy to create. But the quest for truth seems a lifelong pursuit. It is true now. It was true two thousand years ago.

According to the Gospel of John, Jesus tells the Pharisees, “In truth, I tell you that whoever enters into the hall, not through the entrance, but from some other place, is a thief and a robber. But the one who enters through the entrance is the shepherd. To this one, the gatekeeper opens the gate and the sheep, hearing his voice, come to him and he leads them out. When all his own sheep come out, he walks before them, and they follow because they know the sound of his voice. But another one they will not follow, but will run away, because they do not know the sound of his voice.

This proverb, Jesus spoke, but they did not understand what he said.

Again Jesus said, “In truth, I tell you I am the gate of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door. Any who enter through will be kept safe and will go out to find pasture. The thief comes to steal and to kill and to destroy. I come so that you have life, and life more abundant.” (John 10: 1-10, translation from the original Greek)

Many times, these stories are hard to understand without the historical context of the time. One of the more interesting theories about different images lay in the tradition of the robber-marauder. In 165 BCE, Judas Maccabee led a successful revolt against the Syrians who occupied Palestine and violated the Temple in Jerusalem. The Maccabees used the tactics of the robber-marauder to strike against the Syrians and their sympathizers, like Robin Hood and his Merry Men, without the fashionable costumes.

After the revolt, the Maccabees proclaimed their family to be royalty and even claimed the power of the Temple priesthood. Both assertions had messianic overtones. In time, the Maccabean kings (AKA the Hasmonean dynasty) proved to be as corrupt as the Syrians. Fighting within the royal family was one of the determining factors that led to the Roman conquest of Palestine in 65 BCE and the rise of King Herod.
The image of the robber-bandit with messianic aspirations raised the dark shadow of the hated Hasmoneans. Their power led to heartache among the people and the eventual destruction of the nation. In this light, the robber-marauders who freed the nation from oppression acted as thieves among their own countrymen.

According to this theory, Jesus used this image of the thief-robber as a means to compare the Pharisees with the Hasmoneans. Both had aspirations of power. Both used the image of the Messiah to meet their ends. Neither would serve the people or their interests.

So in this story, the author of John is telling his audience that those people, the high priests of their religion, of any religion, really, were only interested in power and prestige (this is not to say that there are not sincere and compassionate clergy). They subjugated the people through a long list of laws and rituals, but offered no real comfort or hope. Shades of Karl Marx! It was, and still is, in the best interests of those who lead the various religions, to support the status quo. That was Jesus’ complaint about the religion of first century Palestine, and it is the complaint of many today, especially those who eschew religion.

But what Jesus said two thousand years ago is just as true today. Those who hear the voice of the divine, know it, and follow it. Those who look for the divine are not fooled by the thieves and robbers. Jesus says that those who listen to his message of love and service will find their way to harmony and justice. And the message that Jesus taught is not singular to the Christian faith, or to any faith. That which connects us to the divine is present in every faith I have ever studied.

So it doesn’t really matter if you are a Christian, a Muslim, a Jew, a Buddhist, a Hindu, or a Wiccan. If you are searching for truth, you will find it. That was the promise of Jesus, wasn’t it? Seek and ye will find. Religion is what you make it. So find the religion that appeals to you and follow it. But don’t ever make the mistake of thinking it is anything other than bullshit. Anything more than the simple message of love, service, and truth, is just so much bullshit. So why follow any religion at all?

For the same reason that orthodox Jewish men wear a prayer shawl or yarmulke, to remind yourself that you are seeking. It is easy to become distracted by all that is going on around us. When you are angry, when you are frustrated, when you are distraught, it is easy to forget that God, or whatever you want to call that universal divine energy, is there. So you go to a church, or a temple, or a mosque, or some other quiet place, and bring yourself back to center, to realize what is really important. But if you let yourself get wrapped up in the rules and rituals of that religion, thinking they are real, you are just as far away from the divine as the hooker on the corner, maybe farther. A carpenter uses a hammer to build something, not to worship the hammer. Religion is a means to an end. Religion, ANY religion, is the teacher. You are the student.

I have known many budding musicians who think they do not need a teacher. They think that they can learn to play their instruments by themselves. I can easily adapt a well-known saying regarding the law to that practice. Anyone, who teaches himself or herself, has a fool for a student. It is true that you can learn to make music on an instrument without formal instruction, but when you look at the masters, at the people who are truly great, they have always had formal instruction from a master. Teaching yourself is fine, as long as you don’t mind forever being mediocre. To learn something, you need someone to give you direction, some one to point out your mistakes and show you how you can improve.

At the same time, I have also known musicians, formally trained, who were unable to make music unless you placed a score in front of them. You could never just tell them that you were going to play something in the key of G and to just follow along. They had to have the notes there to read. They are just as lost. They worship the rules of music, without enjoying the song. Their joy comes from following the rules. When I was in a choir, I often concentrated on my own baritone part so much, that I didn’t know the melody of the song. In my desire to follow the notes correctly, I missed the music.

So I think religion does have a purpose in our lives. There is a need. Religion is the means by which we find the truth, as long as we focus on the search for truth, and not on the rules of the religion. And if you DO focus on the seeking, then the rules will help point you toward the divine, as long as you see the rules as a means, and not an end in and of themselves. No religion will satisfy that empty feeling we want to fill, any more than a restaurant will satisfy our hunger. So follow any faith that moves your heart and feeds your soul, but listen for the voice of the divine. You will know it when you hear it.

But I have to confess that I have had that wish. I have stood in the shower and thought to myself how wonderful it would be if I could just wash those extra ounces, pounds, people, right off me and right down the drain. Then I could emerge from the shower a new person.

In fact, I don’t know about you, but when I’ve felt sick with the flu or something, and I’ve gotten up from my sick bed and taken a shower, I’ve always felt a little better…until a couple of hours later, anyway. There is something about washing that makes things better. Our favorite hotel has hot tubs, hot tubs mind you, not Jacuzzi baths, right in the room, big luxurious things. After a stay there, we always feel so rejuvenated. There is nothing like soaking in water for a while to make the world seem a lot friendlier. Water seems to be so healing. Indeed, whenever I’ve had my car washed, I always feel like it ought to run a little better.

Is it any wonder, then, that religions have used bathing as a sort of ritual cleansing since the times of Homer? The rite of baptism did not begin with Christianity, or even with John the Baptist. Although the practice was not called “baptism”, the Jewish faith had a ritual-cleansing bath. The practice was called mikvah and was used if a person came into contact with anything “unclean”, such as a dead body or a politician. People who converted to Judaism were required to be immersed in water as part of their conversion. So when John the Baptist called upon people to be immersed in the river, it was not such a new or strange idea. Both John and Jesus baptized their followers. Jesus was baptized by John. It is an event that is chronicled by each of the four evangelists. There are not many events from the life of Christ that are documented in all four gospels. We have been looking at Matthew, so here is his version of the story:

“Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan to be baptized by him. John tried to stop him, saying, ‘I need to be baptized by you, and yet you are coming to me?’ Jesus said to him in reply, ‘Allow it now, so it can be seen by all that righteousness is fulfilled.’ Then he allowed him. After Jesus was baptized, he came up from the water and behold, the heavens were opened (for him), and he saw the Spirit of God descend upon him like a dove. And a voice came from the heavens, saying, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.’” ( Big Daddy translation)

Now this is the part where a lot of traditional Christian thinkers (if you want to call them that) tend to shy away because there is something here that doesn’t make much sense in light of church dogma. For if Jesus was born perfect, without any trace of human sinfulness, then why would he need to be baptized? Those traditionalists don’t like it when people point out these inconsistencies because it tends to mess with their preconceived ideas about Jesus and God. But I won’t run away from this question at all. For I have an answer. The answer is who knows? Actually, there are a several possible answers.

Jesus may have simply wanted people to know that John’s message was correct. John had been preaching baptism for the remission of sins out there in the desert and Jesus may well have been saying by his actions, “My name is Jesus and I approve of this message.” Another view is that Jesus was ordained to stand in for the entire Jewish nation. Like the Hebrew children, he was at one time exiled in Egypt (by his parents in order to preserve his life from Herod), and that now, in accordance with Jewish law and tradition, he was cleansing himself, and thereby the people. He would then, after the baptism, spend forty days in the wilderness to be tested, much like the Hebrews when they were lead by Moses in the wilderness for forty years. Or, it could also be that Jesus was simply a person looking for the divine and that he went through the rite of baptism because he felt he needed it.

There are some schools of Christian thought that hold that it was not until that moment, the moment of baptism,  that the Christ spirit descended upon Jesus and that up until that moment, he was just an ordinary man. It is directly after this baptism and his sojourn in the wilderness that he begins his mission. Remember, he did nothing for the first thirty years of his life (which should demonstrate that there is hope for all of us). But there is yet another point of view.

If there is one message of Christianity, it is one of a new creation. That is what sets Christianity apart from the other religions, really. Christianity is not a religion of do’s and don’ts. It is about reconciliation. Through Jesus, God is reconciled to us. It was the belief (and still is, to many, most, really), that through our lack of faith and subsequent disobedience, we had lost our intimate connection with the divine. The life of Jesus is a righteous parallel to the children of Israel. And through Jesus, God has reconciled Himself to humanity. That is why it is called the “New Testament”. The old contract was torn up and thrown away, and a new contract was signed…in blood. So God is reconciled to us.

But we are not reconciled to God (or whatever you want to call the divine spirit, Jehovah, Yahweh, Allah, the Tao, the Atman, the Great Spirit, the Great Spaghetti Monster. I like to say God because it’s only three letters.). For centuries humankind has tried to reconcile itself to God by various rites and rituals, sacraments and blessings. But we never seem to succeed obviously, because we keep doing them over and over again. People even move from one religion to another in order to find that reconciliation. And because we never seem to do well enough, we begin to feel hostile towards God. We never seem to know just what it is that God wants. And so we fail. And then we get pissed at God for our inability to meet the divine standard when we never could meet the divine standard because of our very humanity.

We have to stop being hostile to God. God is already reconciled to us. We have to reconcile ourselves to God. As far as I can tell, all the people I know are unhappy with their own existence. Nobody is beautiful enough or rich enough or powerful enough or holy enough. We always want what someone else has. We always think somebody else has all the answers. That’s why the self help books sell so well. Of course, if they are “self” help books, why are we reading what somebody ELSE has to say? We are angry about our lives. God, why did you do this to ME? The whole message of all religions is to accept things for what they are. Reality simply is. It is the way it is because it is. So you have to quit trying to please God if you want to reconcile yourself to Him/Her. There is nothing that you have to do. You are already reconciled to God.

I once had a friend whom I had not seen for quite some time and one day he came to me and apologized for something he had done. He had felt, in his own way,  that he had betrayed me. But I was never angry with him ever. In fact, I missed him a great deal. I never saw his actions as a betrayal and had never held anything against him, and when he came to me, I welcomed him with open arms, glad to have him back in my life. All the walls between us had been of his own construction. And he was the one who had to tear them down. He wanted forgiveness from me. He didn’t need that. He needed to forgive himself.

Once we understand that we are already reconciled to God,  then we can begin to reconcile ourselves to ourselves. And then we can put away that old self, that old life, full of regrets and guilt, and become a new creation. I can think of no better time than so soon after the New Year for this message of reconciliation. There could be no better time to drop all that old baggage we’re carrying like so many bricks and become something new. And I can think of no better symbolic gesture than the rite of baptism to wash away the old self and to become that new being.

It is through reconciliation that reunion becomes possible. Jesus came to reunite us with the Godhead. That was his message. We can be connected to the divine spirit through love, love for ourselves and for one another. We demonstrate that love through kindness and compassion. What many consider weakness is more powerful than they could ever imagine. It is the power and the glory of the divine. And no particular religion holds the strings to that power. It is a mistake to believe that any religion is better than any other religion, or no religion at all. There are no requirements other than the two great commandments of Christ: love one another and love God. And those two commandments flow naturally out of reconciliation and reunion and lead to resurrection, not a resurrection from mortal death to eternal life, but from a spiritual death of anger and resentment to a divine life in love. This is how we come to peace.

We all have our little rituals, whether religious or otherwise. There are so many who look down upon religious ritual as superstition while they, themselves, perform any number of little secular rituals every day. In the long run, what is the difference between saying a little prayer to start your day and stopping by Starbucks for a non-fat grande mocha (hold the whipped cream)? They are all rituals, and we would be lost without them. A ritual becomes superstition when you believe that there something intrinsically magic about it. If you think your day will be bad without that mocha, then you’re just as superstitious has the most devout Catholic who buries St. Anthony upside down in his or her back yard. There is nothing wrong with ritual, per se.

Through baptism, Jesus became a new creation, a new being, the Christ. As Christ, Jesus reunited us with God and reconciled us to God. Through the baptism of Christ, we all became new creations. But you don’t need to go into any special church to be baptized. Baptism is all a state of mind. All those old feelings of anger and regret, those lingering resentments and guilt, let them go. Let them go and get a life, a new life. That is the message of baptism. I know I always feel better after a nice, hot shower.

And as I think about Glendaloch, I can’t help but think of Imperial Rome. Here was a civilization that lasted a thousand years. And our own culture still carries vestiges of that ancient culture. Our government, our language, our alphabet, owe a great deal to this ancient culture. But the grand buildings that remind us of what was once the majesty of Rome are little more than ruins today. The Coliseum is not much more than a skeleton of what it once was. At one time that empire seemed invincible. They ruled nearly all of the known world. Today, the Italians can’t even make a decent car (if you don’t count the ridiculously expensive custom made jobs like the Ferraris), or a comfortable pair of shoes. Nothing here on earth lasts forever I suppose.

This week the Gospel According to Luke finds Jesus still in Jerusalem. He is in the Temple courtyard and he hears someone commenting on the beautiful stones that adorned the temple and the votive offerings there. And Jesus speaks to the crowds and tells them that the day is coming when there won’t even be one stone left upon another of this grand building. And his followers, no doubt being scared shitless, ask him when this is going to happen. Jesus proceeds to tell them that they should be sure not to be deceived and that a lot of people are going to come along and tell them the end of the world is coming. He then gives them a number of signs to watch for so they will know the time is near. He tells them that they will be persecuted and some will even be put to death, but that they should stand firm in their faith.

Now this is a good time to point out how one Gospel affects another and how the gospel fit in with the events that were happening at the time. We know that Luke and The Acts of the Apostles were both written by the same guy, probably not Luke. Luke was volume one and Acts was volume two (and there was no worm on the shelf, either). We know they were probably written before 60-70 CE, because both Peter and Paul were martyred in Rome about this time and Acts does not mention this. Certainly and event so important to the early church would have been mentioned. So we can assume the text was written about this time. Luke borrows heavily from Mark and Matthew, which were written about 60 CE. Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in 70CE. So what Luke has done here is added some prophecy sort of after the fact. In other words, at the time Luke was being distributed, Christians were already going through a great deal of persecution. The Romans may have even already destroyed Jerusalem. Luke has Jesus predicting that this would happen. Whether Jesus actually said these things or not has been open to argument. If you were being persecuted, it would help you stay firm in the faith if you thought your teacher had predicted that would happen. And of course, he might have. But he may not have. That doesn’t really change the lesson of this passage.

Jesus, in the course of his ministry, often talks about the foolishness of building up a great store of riches here on earth only to die and leave it all behind. And that is the whole point. Nobody is going to remember us for the great house we had and the beautiful car we drove. When we shuffle off this mortal coil we will only be remembered for the kind of person we were. The temple in Jerusalem was a marvel of first century architecture. It was beautiful to behold. But the priests and officials were corrupt and Roman collaborators. They were more interested in outward shows of pious behavior, but lacked any true spirit of love and righteousness. And today, all that remains of that beautiful temple is one wall, the Wailing Wall, and on that site stands a beautiful mosque. And that too, will one day be gone. Nothing here lasts forever.

William Randolph Hearst built a beautiful castle here in San Simeon, California. I have toured that castle and it is beautiful, albeit over the top, to be sure. But nobody remembers Hearst for his castle, really. He is remembered for starting the practice of “yellow journalism”, for starting a war in order to sell newspapers, and for his numerous affairs with young actresses. He may even have gotten away with murder. His newspaper, The Herald Examiner, is gone today. Someday, even that castle will be gone. But history will remember William Randolph Hearst.

We spend so much of our time trying to get stuff. We work hard and we want the toys to prove it. We want the new phones and the new cars. And we put a lot of energy into getting all that stuff. But as I look back on my life, there’s not much stuff I had twenty years ago that I still have today. And when I die, I’m not taking any of that stuff with me. How do I want to be remembered? Do I want my kids to think of me as a guy who had a lot of stuff, or do I want them to remember me for being a guy who stood up for what was right, and for a guy who helped make the world a better place? Not that there’s anything wrong with having stuff. Jesus had no problems with rich people. Some of his favorite people were rich. But they weren’t owned by the possessions. They were willing to give them away. Even Zacchaeus said he would give half of all he owned to the poor, and he owned a lot.

But even as Jesus was pointing out the temporary nature of our lives, his followers were fixated upon the events that were going to come to pass. They wanted to know when everything was going to fall apart. And then Jesus reminds them not to be fooled. A lot of people are going to say the end is near. They are not to listen to them. When the end is coming is not important. It is not how the journey ends that matters; it is how we travel. Certainly the end of the world is coming for all of us someday. There is no doubt that we are all going to die one day and when we do, that’s the end of the world for us. What does it matter when the whole shebang comes to a screeching halt? It’s not like there’s anywhere we can go and hide. The end will come when the end will come. The only thing that is certain is that an end WILL come, either an end of everything for everyone, or an end for us. And when that end comes, what sort of temple will we have built for ourselves?

The great, elaborate temples and buildings of the past are all gone, in ruins. Even Saint Kevin’s simple well-built monastic community is in ruins and deserted except for the constant flow of tourists. Jesus knew, and warned us, that it is the good we do while we are here that is our real memorial. This view is not limited to Christianity. The Hindu and Buddhists teach the doctrine of karma. What we do creates our energy, our “soul print” on the sands of time. Do not worry about how your life will end, or when it will end, worry about how you live. And the good we do touches more people that we can possibly imagine, like ripples in a pond. Each act of kindness makes the world a little better in an exponential way.

William Shakespeare said in Julius Caesar that the good men do is oft interred with their bones. The bad men do lives long after. Shakespeare was wrong. All we do lives long after we are gone, the good and the bad, even after people have long forgotten that we ever existed. As a wise man once pointed out to me, we are all on the road to eternity; the only question is which direction we’re going.

Mozart was fairly unknown at the time of his death. How does the writer of all those operas become unknown? Yes, I know he wrote a lot of other beautiful music, but common people knew the operas. Only rich bastards who could afford the private concerts really knew the other stuff. How does the person who wrote “The Marriage of Figaro” become unknown? People today hold onto their fame better, I think, thanks to television. Even people who were only marginally famous for a short time hold onto fame better nowadays. How else could you explain Joey Buttafucco and Loraine Bobbit? But, for example, how does a guy like Nikola Tesla, possibly the greatest scientist of this or any other time, end up dying broke and unknown?

Tesla was born in 1856 in what is now Croatia. He is one of the most important inventors (if not the most important inventor) in history. His influence can be seen anywhere in modern civilization wherever electricity is used. He contributed to the fields of robotics, ballistics, physics, electromagnetism, and nuclear physics. He became famous in 1893 after his demonstration of wireless communication. In other words, forget Marconi; it was Tesla who invented the radio, the credit for which he did not receive until 1947.

When Tesla came to the United States in 1884, he had nothing except a letter of recommendation to Thomas Edison. Tesla went to work for Edison for the princely sum of $18 week. Tesla quickly proved his worth to the Edison company by solving some of Tom’s more difficult design problems. Edison offered Tesla the sum of $50,000 (worth a million today, adjusted for inflation) to redesign the company’s direct current generators. After finishing the task he went to Tom for the cash and Edison told him in true capitalistic fashion that Nick just didn’t understand the American sense of humor. Tesla quit after being refused a raise to $25 a week.

He formed his own company, Tesla Electrical Light and Manufacturing Company, based on using Alternating Current (AC) in contrast to Edison’s Direct Current (DC). Tesla’s investors were so dubious of his ideas that they relieved him of his responsibilities in essence firing him from his own company. Nikola worked as a common laborer for the next few years to raise money until he went to work for George Westinghouse. Westinghouse liked his ideas on Alternating Current. It is interesting to note that this battle between Direct Current and Alternating Current would lead to the electric chair.

When the electric chair was invented, Thomas Edison pushed for it to be run by Alternating Current, which may be surprising since Edison’s electricity ran on Direct Current. Edison felt that the chair, being an instrument of death, would make the public afraid of Alternating Current and lead to the eventual preeminence of Edison’s Direct Current. Edison’s move backfired on him and the public became enthralled with the new lethal furniture and Alternating Current eventually won out, which is what we use today in our homes.

In 1887 Tesla began working on x-ray technology and discovered that the rays could be harmful to humans, although he did not see that the harm was caused by radiation believing it was due to ozone. In 1891, at the World’s Fair, he was able to ignite Vacuum tubes wirelessly, thus proving the possibility of wireless energy transmission. He invented the fluorescent light. He invented the spark plug. In 1897 he demonstrated the first radio controlled robotic boat, believing that there could be a demand for such devices. He set up a laboratory in Colorado where he would prove that the earth was an electrical conductor. He would produce artificial lightning. There, he worked on wireless telecommunication. He would also claim to receive radio messages from both Mars and Jupiter, which came as a series of “clicks”. In 1900, the lab would be torn down and sold in order to pay debts.

This was just the beginning of his money problems. In 1904, the patent for the radio would go to Marconi in a reversal of an earlier decision, so Tessa would receive no more income from that invention. World War One would cause him to lose money for all his European patents. He had a difficult time finding investors because many of his ideas were just to far ahead of his time. Indeed, later in his life, Tessa would come to be seen as a mad scientist by many, and respected scientists largely disregarded his views.

In general, Tessa was opposed to war, and developed a weapon, which he believed would put an end to all war because of its destructive capability. It was a death ray (although he called it a peace ray) or sorts. According to Tessa, it could bring down 10,000 enemy aircraft at a distance of 200 miles or kill an enemy army in its tracks. It was based on taking electrical energy out of the air and using it as a repelling force. He tried to interest the United States War Department in the device and several European countries as well. None of the governments purchased a contract to build the device.

When he was 81, he developed his theory of gravity. He also claimed that Einstein’s theory of relativity was fraught with errors. He did not hold that space was curved. But we will never know about Tesla’s “Dynamic Theory of Gravity”, because he never published it. And his beliefs were considered laughable by serious researchers and scientists. And yet, upon his death at the age of 86 in 1943, all of his papers were seized by the United States government and declared top secret. I find it ironic that before his death the American Institute of Electrical Engineers awarded him the Edison Medal, considering their life-long feud.

Tesla’s personal life was a trifle odd. He developed an obsessive compulsion about the number three. He would walk around the block three times before entering a building and demand three napkins at his place setting. His friends were mostly artists, as opposed to other scientists. He was a very close friend of the American writer, Mark Twain. A life-long bachelor, he believed in genetic engineering and that women would one day become the dominant sex in America. In the future, he said, humanity would be run by “Queen Bees”. He was fluent in Serbian, English, Latin, Italian, Czech, Hungarian, and German. He held bachelor’s degrees in mathematics, physics, mechanical engineering, and electrical engineering.

There are many conspiracy theorists who suggest that Tesla also invented technology that is in use today by the government. This technology consists of an “earthquake machine” which, using the electrical current generated by the rotating earth, can cause an earthquake by the touch of a button. Tesla is also credited with creating technology in the area of weather control which conspiracy theorists claim the government is using now. Others claim that he was able to create ways to gain free energy by using the power of gravity and the earth’s rotation thus making fossil fuels unnecessary. This knowledge, according to all theorists, is being suppressed to protect the oil companies. There are even some who claim he experimented with time travel and invisibility and claim he was involved with the infamous Philadelphia Experiment.

It certainly wouldn’t surprise me if he had invented some free form of energy, and that form of energy was somehow squashed by the government. I do find it very interesting that the government seized his papers and materials, although he was a United States citizen. They wouldn’t have done that if there wasn’t something there, I’m sure.

Today, he is quite famous. He has been a character in any number of films. There is a rock band named after him. There is a crater on the far side (appropriately) of the moon named after him. His face use to grace the former Yugoslavia’s currency. Today, in Serbia, there is an airport named after him. And the Tesla Award is the most prestigious award given by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He has his own Manga comic book in Japan. But on January 5^th, (my birthday, by the way) in 1943, he died of heart failure in a small, cheap hotel room, and his death wasn’t even noticed for three days, until the 8^th.

I guess Nikola Tesla is like all those other amazing people who change the world and then die penniless and forgotten. I wonder what his theory of gravity entailed. I wonder if that was amongst the papers seized by the government and declared “top secret” by J. Edgar Hoover. I don’t know. You would think if there were anything there the government would be using it. But then, who knows, maybe they are.

I had practiced kung fu for a good many years before, but an injury has forced me to stop for a time.  I started to focus my attention in other pursuits, such as music and writing, and gotten very, very fat.  I won’t say exactly how fat I was, but the post office was considering giving me my own zip code.  Marlon Brando would have said, “Dude, you need to lose a few pounds!”  I was that kind of fat.

Anyway, I started the Weightwatchers “ TEE-EMM” program, dropped about a hundred pounds, and then, as I say, I started thinking about working out again.  So when I saw the guy giving away free karate lessons, I jumped at it.  Besides, I got a free gi (karate suit), and who couldn’t use a good karate gi?  So I went to my four free private classes.  The guy said that I moved perfectly.  He said my stances were spot on.  On the second lesson, he had me spar with him.  He could not hit me.  I hit him.  He asked if I always blocked and hit at the same time.  I said that was the way I had been trained.  I did okay, in other words.

I had wanted to return to my kung fu club, but I was embarrassed.  I had forgotten all my forms, even the beginner’s forms.  It would be kind of humiliating to go back, having to learn everything all over, and seeing the same guys who were my junior while I was there before.  But the karate lessons gave me courage.  I hadn’t lost everything.  So I called an old friend and he worked with me and helped me relearn my forms.  After a few months, I knew enough to  not be so embarrassed coming to the regular classes.

So here is my one year progress report.  I’m doing great.  I’ve lost a little more weight, for a total of 130 pounds from my heaviest.  To be honest, I haven’t tried that hard to lose more weight because I feel good and I don’t want to have to replace my wardrobe.  We can’t afford to be buying a bunch of new clothes right now.  And since I’m uproariously happily married, I don’t need to be attracting any cute women other than my wife, so I’m good about where I am.  I could drop another thirty pounds or so, but then, who couldn’t?  I mean, other than Keira Knightly?

I have managed to re-learn all the empty-hand forms (and that’s a bunch—about 11).  I have finished the form I had only just started before, the most advanced form.  I have re-learned all the weapons forms but two.  And I’m working on those two.  I’m not so motivated by the weapons forms anymore.  I’m here for different reasons.

Before, when I first joined the club, I was enthralled with the idea of learning kung fu.  I fell into that trap that a lot of martial arts enthusiasts fall into.  I became Chinese.  My house was full of Asian pottery and scrolls.  I put on my uniform (patterned after typical street garb of 17^th century China) when I practiced at home…in private.  I put on kung fu like a jacket.  I was play-acting.  I may as well have been at a renaissance faire.

But now, kung fu is part of who I am.  Now I practice to be healthy, and whole.  I am strong again, and I mean to stay that way, at least, as long as I can.  I have learned to breathe again.  I’m not a westerner doing kung fu.  I’m just a guy doing kung fu.  I’m not Chinese.  I never could be.  I’m not trying to be a master; I’m just trying to be healthy.  I work out in sweats now.  I don’t care so much about the weapons anymore, because you don’t always have room to be swinging a spear around, but I can do an empty-hand form anywhere I have about nine square feet.

I know I’m strong again.  I see guys at the kung fu club who are twenty years my junior and they don’t have the stamina that I have.  They’re always having to stop and rest and I just keep on going.  This is not meant to be boastful.  I practice kung fu for a very long time, and in those years I wasn’t practicing, I didn’t lose the benefits.

I found, once I had returned, that my arms got very hard again very quickly.  I was a little nervous about that.  But it wasn’t very long at all before the newer students complained about how hard my arms were.  I found that I hadn’t forgotten how to breathe.  I found that, as that karate teacher had said, I did still have all my stances.  I could still move well.  I just needed to practice.

More important than being strong, however, is the other benefit from my return to kung fu.  I am more at peace.  I tend to be an anxious kind of guy.  I guess I get that from my mother.  Of course, the world is sort of an anxious place, and with all the talk about how teachers are the reason for our broken kids, and the downturn in the economy, and the destruction of our environment, and, and and…well, you get the idea.  The world pretty much sucks a lot of the time.  But when I practice kung fu, it calms my mind.  I focus on my forms and the world sort of melts away, at least for a time.  And when you spar (playing, we call it), you have to be right there.  Your mind can’t be a thousand miles away.  You have to be there.  When you play, you are there, right there, alive, totally, in that moment.  There is no feeling quite like it.

Of kung fu isn’t about working out.  It is a way of life.  I never lost that.  Kung fu is a way of living your life.  It’s about being there.  It’s about doing what you’re doing, paying attention to every detail, being aware of everything, seeing everything.  Kung fu involves you in life.  Practice kung fu and you are no longer a spectator, you are a participant.

So that’s where we are, one year later.  I’m stronger.  I’m more at peace.  I still have aches and pains, but that just means I’m still alive.  I don’t move they way I did when I was thirty, but I don’t expect to.  I’m glad to be back.  I still have a couple of forms to re-learn before I have everything back, but I’m in no hurry.  I’ll learn them as I learn them.  They are very advanced forms and I’m not likely to be asked about them by anybody any time soon.  Some folks think martial arts is about achieving goals, such as a black belt or something.  But I think that kung fu isn’t about the destination, it is about the journey.

I don’t know what I’d do without my EZ Grader 2.0. It’s just a wonderful thing. I even got one for my wife, Becky. One day she mentioned to me that EZ Grader 2.0 would also print out a progress report (in English or in Spanish) that can be sent home to parents. Wow! I didn’t even know that, not having read the manual, of course. I had used that program for more than ten years and never stumbled on that little feature before. It was sort of like having a totally new program. I liken it to finding money in a pair of pants that have been hanging in the closet or something. I mean, it’s not really new. You had it all along. You just didn’t know it.

Today is Pentecost Sunday. You don’t have to know anything about the church or religion to know that anytime a Sunday is given a special name it must be pretty significant and it is. Pentecost Sunday is the official birthday of the Christian church, although nobody was calling the church Christian, nor were they calling it a church. Nevertheless, we ascribe Pentecost as the day it officially began.

The word Pentecost is simply the Greek for “the fiftieth day.” Moreover, Pentecost was a feast long before the Christians. It is one of the three Mosaic feasts (meaning coming from Moses, not celebrating little tiles). On the fourteenth day of the first Jewish month, Abib, begins Passover. On the next day begins the Feast of Unleavened Bread (meaning bread without yeast-translate as matzos). This lasts for seven days, at the end of which, a sacrifice of “first fruits”, the first and best yield of the harvest is offered to God. Fifty days from this comes the “new meat offering”, otherwise known as Pentecost, consisting of two loaves made from new wheat, and a whole lot of farm animals, seven lambs, a young bull, one goat, and two more lambs.

So it was the Pentecost, fifty days from the feast of first fruits, and Jesus’ pals were all together in one place. Most scholars figure it was the upper room where they had that Last Supper together and where Jesus had come to see them after his resurrection, but it may well not have been. The Book of Acts just says they were all together in one place, when they heard this really loud noise that sounded something like a large wind. Then they saw this light anomaly, which to them looked like little “tongues of fire”. Who knows exactly what caused that, but they reported that the little “tongues” came to rest on each one of them. And then the account says they were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in tongues.

Now this being a rather holy time of the year, there were a lot of Jewish pilgrims in Jerusalem from all over the world, and upon hearing this sound, they went to where the disciples were and were kind of freaked out because they could understand what the disciples were saying. In other words, the tongues in which the disciples were speaking were not some bizarre mumbo-jumbo heavenly language, they were supposed to be just plain old human languages. And all these pilgrims were able to understand what the disciples, and Peter in particular, were saying.

Peter tells them all about Jesus, his death, and his resurrection. Then he tells them all about the ancient prophecies regarding the messiah and how Jesus fulfilled these prophecies. He calls upon them all to be baptized, and the people respond. According to the account, some three thousand people were baptized that day. And so was born the Christian church. According to the story, all these people sold their possessions and distributed the money to those in need, lived communally and devoted themselves to learning the teachings of the apostles.

Every important event in the life of Jesus can be related to one of the traditional Jewish feasts. The Last Supper occurred during the Passover Seder, the meal which commemorates the Exodus out of Egypt. He rose from the dead on the Beginning of the Feast of First Fruits. He visits his pals a few times during that week, and then leaves. Then, fifty days from Easter Sunday, comes the Pentecost, the Feast of New Meat.

Those who are fundamentalists, who claim that everything in the Bible is fact, will point to this to show that Jesus is divine and the ultimate fulfillment of the law given to Moses on Sinai. One could also, just as easily, use the same references to show that the story of Jesus has been amended in order to more clearly point out the symbolic nature of the Christ, in order to show how the teachings of Jesus fulfill the Mosaic Laws. And of course, an atheist can use these references to show that the whole thing is just a well crafter myth. But then, there seems little doubt that Jesus existed, although the Bible is the only source we have for any of the particulars regarding his life here on earth. Regardless, Jesus is the first fruits. He was the sacrifice. And we, the church, are the end of the harvest. We are now called upon to carry out the teachings of Jesus.

It would be a mistake to think that Pentecost marks the gift of the Holy Spirit upon the church. Clearly, if the stories about the earlier prophets, Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, Daniel, are true, then the Holy Spirit has been around a long time. Pentecost is certainly not the first time the Holy Spirit moved upon the face of the earth. It is merely the first time that the apostles acted in faith and quit being scared, hiding out in the upper room, and proclaimed what Jesus taught to the people. Pentecost is about when they finally got off their asses and started to practice what Jesus taught.

And what Jesus taught is that we are all bound together, all of us. We are bound together by that Holy Divine Spirit. As the Apostle Paul puts it in the letter to the Corinthians, “As a body is one though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free persons, and we were all given to drink of one Spirit.” I would hate to have to diagram that sentence. Paul is soooo wordy. Suffice it to say that we are all one, one body, one spirit, one people. What you do to me, you do to yourself. We are one. As John Lennon put it, “I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together (goo goo ka joob)!” And when each one of us comes to that realization, we experience our own Pentecost.

Jesus told us that we are all a holy people. So often we look to people like Jesus, Ghandi, Gautama, Saint Francis, and Mother Theresa, and we admire them. Often we wish we could be like them. I so want to be like Jesus. And Jesus is here to say to me, “You can.” All those people were no holier than I am. They were not endowed by God with any special powers or perception. They were just people who lived their faith. They did more than listen to the teachings. They practiced the teachings.

Jesus, the church, did not just call upon us to believe any certain something about God, or the nature of the divine. He called upon us to go out and put that Holy Spirit that dwells in each one of us to work, serving one another. He called upon us to feed the hungry, to comfort the sorrowful, to visit the lost and lonely, to save one another. Yes, Jesus saves. So do you. So do we all. Being a Christian doesn’t mean that you go to church and sing your hymns and take communion and get all holy. It means that you go out and do the work of Jesus, because we are Jesus. The Holy Spirit makes us all part of the body of Christ and calls upon us all to do the work of Christ, to be the Christ to one another. We are called upon to love one another and serve one another. That’s why Jesus made the point of washing his students’ feet while he was here. Some may look upon Jesus as master, but even Jesus reminded his students that no student is greater than the master. If the master serves, than shall not the student also serve?

This day, Pentecost, is the day we should all stop being afraid, and go out into the world to serve each other in a spirit of love. That is why Pentecost is the birthday of the church, because isn’t that what a church is supposed to be? It isn’t a building with a lot of pews and an altar. The church is a people, bound together by the Holy Spirit, the spirit of the divine, the all pervasive creative spirit of the universe if you prefer (we shouldn’t get hung up on titles or words), the Tao, the Prajna. We are the church, each one of us. And whether the story in The Book of Acts happened the way it is written or not, it doesn’t change the truth of the meaning behind the events. We are all one. We are one body. We are all part of one spirit of love. Jesus didn’t give us anything we didn’t already have. He just showed us that we had it, just like that EZ Grade program. We had that Holy Spirit in us all along. And that makes me holy and you holy and all of us holy. As I have so often said before, you are so important. You are so powerful, more than you can possibly imagine. You are the hands of God. That’s what Pentecost Sunday means to me.

Let us take, for example, the popular expression—butt naked, as in, “We went swimming in the Jacuzzi butt naked.” This is incorrect, and will cause the citizens of Grammaria to laugh at you. The correct term is “buck naked”. This refers back to a time when a “buck” was considered to be a dandy, a pretentious, overdressed show-off of a man. The term was applied to black slaves as an insult. Thus, the term conjures forth images of African slaves, nude, on the auction block, being sold to the highest bidder. It would probably be better to use the term “stark naked” instead.

While we’re speaking of Jacuzzis, by the way, you should know that the correct term is whirlpool bath. Jacuzzi is a brand name. There are many brand names that we use for generic items. We ask for Kleenex, instead of for a facial tissue. We ask for Jello, instead of gelatin. Once upon a time, people said they wore Levis—not jeans. Some brand names even became verbs. People used to Xerox important papers. In England, the still Hoover the floor.

One of my pet peeves is “irregardless”. There is no such word. That would indicate a double negative, which creates a positive. The word is “regardless”. I am also annoyed by the phrase “at this point in time”. It is totally unnecessary. To what other point in time might you be referring, if not this point in time?

Another commonly abused word is the word “lay”. Most people are using the word “lay” when they really should be using the word “lie”. Verbs come in two flavors, transitive and intransitive (there’s that prefix in- again.) Think of the work “transfer”. A verb is transitive when it requires a direct object. Take, for example, the word, “hit” (in the clobbering sense, not the highly successful sense). You have to hit something. You say, “Joe hit the ball”, not “Joe hit”. The verb hit requires an object, something that was hit. Lay is a transitive verb. It requires a direct object. So you don’t “lay down”, you have to “lay YOURSELF down.” This verb requires a direct object. You can lay down your books. You can lay down your sword and shield down by the riverside. The other type of verb is called intransitive. These verbs don’t require a direct object. Take the verb “sleep” for example. You don’t sleep things. The verb “lie” is the intransitive verb. So you say, “I’m going to lie down.” You cannot “lie” things.

Another prime example is the oft mis-used phrase, “I could care less!” If you say this, you are indicating that it is very possible that you could care less about the issue-in other words, you care. What you want to say is, “I couldn’t care less”, which would indicate that it is not possible for you to be more apathetic about the issue.

According to the AP (Associated Press) stylebook for writers, people often believe the word “homicide” a synonym for murder. The word homicide simply means death of a human. It could be by foul play, or by natural causes. All human deaths are homicides. But this doesn’t come up too much for most folk. You can, however, now tell people you think the death of Anna Nicole Smith was a homicide, and you’d be right. She was human (I assume, although her brief reality show did cast some doubt on the issue), and she died. Bingo! Homicide.

The word hopefully is also abused frequently. Hopefully is an adverb. It must be used to modify a verb. It is NOT a conditional phrase. So, in other words, it would be incorrect to say, “Hopefully, we can bring our troops home from Iraq.” (See I can make ANYTHING political). It would be more correct to say, “We hope we can bring our troops home from Iraq.” The correct usage of hopefully would be, “Bob opened the envelope hopefully.” So, hopefully, you understood that.

People also abuse the word “verbal”. I wish I had a dime for everytime I heard someone say, “But we had a verbal agreement!” in order to indicate that there was a spoken understanding between two parties. The word “verbal” means “using words”. ALL agreements, spoken, or otherwise are verbal agreements. That is, I assume the agreement required some words, unless it was all done with eye contact. What they mean to say is, “We had an ORAL agreement.” meaning a spoken understanding.

But these are just small annoyances for the people of Grammaria. They’ve come to grow used to Americans mangling the English tongue. What’s really beginning to piss them off is the misuse of the word “Irony”. According to the dictionary, the word “irony” means, “The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning.”

Alanis Morisette had a huge hit song, “Isn’t it Ironic.” What is really ironic about Alanis’ song, is that none of the examples in the song are actually ironic, based on the definition of the word. In the song she mentions being stuck in a traffic jam when you’re already late. That is not ironic. That is a coincidence. It might be ironic if the guy in charge of improving traffic was caught in a traffic jam. Alanis also mentions a person afraid to fly who dies in a plane crash. That isn’t ironic; it’s just tragic (and again, a coincidence). Another example from her song is a person who wins the lottery and dies the same day. That is also a tragedy and a coincidence; but it isn’t ironic. It would be ironic if you bought a lottery ticket every week, and the one week you DIDN’T buy a ticket, your numbers were chosen.

Now I want to make it clear that I am not the first to criticize Ms. Morisette’s song. I have noticed a couple of newspaper articles about this. Her song is just the easiest example of the misuse of this word, and the Grammarians specifically asked me to bring this to your attention. They say the key thing to remember about this word is the concept of opposites. For example, on the news tonight it was mentioned that the head of security for Iraq in Baghdad was giving a speech about how the government had made the streets safer when two bombs killing hundreds of people exploded nearby. Now THAT’S ironic.

In the 1959 Twilight Zone episode, “Time Enough at Last”, a hen-pecked bookworm by the name of Beemis is the sole survivor of world war III. As he walks through the devastation he comes upon a library full of books. Now he finally has the time to read all he wants with nobody left alive to bother or abuse him. And as he ponders his good fortune, his glasses slip off his face and are shattered on the ground, and he is doomed to a blurry world, unable to read the books he loves so much. That is irony. He finally has time to read, and he can’t because of his poor vision. Here are some other examples of irony for you:

Adolph Coors III, heir to the Coors Beer Company, is allergic to beer.

U.S. Border Patrol uniforms are manufactured in México.

A 17 year-old Amish boy was electrocuted by a downed power line that became tangled in the wheels of his horse-drawn buggy.

ESPN used the song “How Sweet it is to be Loved by You”, sung by Marvin Gaye in a tribute to Father’s Day. Marvin Gaye was shot and killed by his own father in 1984.

The president of Zimbabwe gave a speech in which he promised to remedy the country’s chronic electricity shortages. Nobody saw it. There was a power failure.

So, it’s ironic that the great composer Beethoven was deaf. But the fact that Brad Pitt tore his Achilles tendon while playing Achilles in the film, “Troy”, is just coincidental. So, it would be ironic if this blog about the correct use of certain words were to include words that were used incorrectly. And I’m sure it does. I’m sure because I misused some on purpose to see if you were paying attention.

And now I have once again fulfilled my obligation to the people of Grammaria. I will be able to renew my linguistic license and pay my syntax. And I even used less words than I thought I would. So remember-Irony means opposites, like George W. Bush being made the president of Harvard. However, George Bush being president of the United States wasn’t ironic. It was just a tragedy.

It is a common misconception that Lincoln came from a poor family. This is somewhat true; however, the reality is that everyone in that part of Kentucky was poor by today’s standards and Lincoln’s family was better off than most. In fact, his family was in the top 15% of the county as far as wealth goes. He was born in a log cabin; however, it was a very nice log cabin…more like the Ponderosa than something you’d make with Lincoln Logs.

Most people know that Lincoln was a lawyer and have an image of him defending the rights of the people. The reality is that he was a corporate lawyer who often as not defended the rights of large corporations against little people like you and me. He was admitted to the bar, but was never terribly good at his craft. His partner complained of Lincoln’s lack of organization, noting that he had a stack of papers labeled, “If you can’t find it anywhere else, look here.”

Many folks see old honest Abe as the great emancipator. Lincoln, however, was no abolitionist. As he wrote to Horace Greeley in 1862, “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it” The truth is that he freed the slaves only to encourage insurrection in the south of the slaves there. The Emancipation Proclamation makes no mention of freeing any slave except in those states which had left the union. He didn’t even have any belief in equality or equity. “I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races,” he announced in his Aug. 21, 1858, debate with Stephen Douglas. “I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position.” And, “Free them [ the slaves] and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this. We cannot, then, make them equals.”

Well, he did hold the union together, after all, didn’t he? Well, yes, you could say he held the union together…geographically. But the type of government we had after the war was far different than the government we had before the war. Prior to the war our country was a voluntary union of sovereign states. After the war, there would be the strong central government we have now which holds little resemblance to the type of government our founders envisioned. Of course, that doesn’t mean it isn’t better. Still, many of Lincoln’s actions during his administration have led to the abuses of power we see in our government today. Lincoln also suspended the right of habeas corpus imprisoning hundreds of Americans without due process, without trial, for an indefinite period.

And I doubt the Native American/ Indians are celebrating much today. There is little to laud Lincoln’s policies (like my alliteration?) regarding the indigenous peoples. He was the author of the Homestead Act of 1862, which gave one square quarter mile free to any homesteader who could prove that the land had been improved and occupied for a period of five years. Unfortunately, that land already belonged to some other people who happened to be living there at the time, namely, the Sioux, who had been granted that land in perpetuity. The Sioux, as a matter of fact, had written to Lincoln to request that they be paid the 1.2 million dollars the government owed them for lands taken back in 1851. Lincoln informed them that he had no intention of paying them the money owed and sent General Pope to quell the insurrection there. Pope once said, “It is my purpose to utterly exterminate the Sioux. They are to be treated as maniacs or wild beasts, and by no means as people with whom treaties or compromise can be made.” Lincoln certainly did not challenge this statement.

The Indians were defeated. 303 male Indians were arrested and given trials which lasted an average of ten minutes each. All 303 were sentenced to death, although most were only guilty of inhabiting the land where the insurrection took place. In order to keep Europe from entering the Civil War on the part of the South, Lincoln pared the number to be executed down to 39. It was still the largest mass execution in American history. Lincoln promised to kill or remove every Indian from the state and provide Minnesota with 2 million dollars in federal funds. Remember, he only owed the Sioux 1.4 million for the land. So he would rather pay more money and kill the Indians, than pay the money owed them in order to avoid an insurrection.

Lincoln used much the same tactics against the Navajo. In 1863-64, General Carleton and his subordinate, Colonel Kit Carson, invaded the Navajo land, especially those concentrated in the Canyon de Chelly area. Crops were burned, innocents were murdered, women were raped and general chaos was rained upon these noble people simply because, like the Santee Sioux, they demanded from Lincoln what they had been promised; their land and to be left alone. General Carleton, believing there was gold to be found in the area, stated: “This war, will be pursued against you if it takes years until you cease to exist or move.” Again, there was no protest of this policy from Lincoln, his Commander in Chief.

The Navajo were forced to march over 300 miles to Bosque Redondo in eastern New Mexico. Over 200 Navajos died on this march and, eventually, over 2,000 perished before a treaty was signed in 1868. While at Bosque Redondo, the Navajo suffered under horrible conditions; bitter water, no firewood and poor growing conditions for crops. The soldiers and the Mexican guards subjected the women to rape and humiliating treatment. Children born at this “concentration camp” were lucky to survive their first few months of life.

Well, he was at least honest, wasn’t he? Well actually, he most likely stole the election of 1864. He sent federal troops to areas where he was unpopular in order to intimidate votes to vote “correctly”. Even the Homestead Act of 1862, which was so bad for the Indians and supposedly so good for the little guy gave all the best land to the wealthy railroads.

But we like the fantasy. It is hard to imagine standing at the Lincoln Memorial and NOT being moved. I so want to believe that all those things he said in the Gettysburg address were real, and perhaps they were, but not in Lincoln’s heart. They are real in the hearts of Americans everywhere who want our country to be all it promised to be, because it is such a good promise. And just because the fantasy isn’t real doesn’t mean that we can’t MAKE it real. But that part is up to us. It is our job to make this country what its founders told us it could be. Maybe they were lying. Maybe they didn’t mean a word of it. But that doesn’t make the fantasy impossible. And when we finally get that through our thick skulls, then maybe we, the people, can build a government that is by the people and for the people. And when we do, we must continue to be vigilant so that government does not perish from the earth.

During medieval times, it was against ecclesiastical law (the only law that mattered) for one Christian to loan money to another Christian at interest. John the Baptist had said so. Actually, he said that loaning money at interest was bad in general; he didn’t mean just Christians to Christians (since Christians hadn’t been invented yet), but I digress (as usual). Later on, after the Romans got tired of killing the Christians and made the church of Jesus into the official law of the land, it was decided that those little things Jesus told us to do for one another only applied to other Christians.

So anyway, Christians couldn’t loan other Christians money for interest. They could, however, loan money at interest to Jews. Nobody cared what you did to the Jews; just ask Mel Gibson. Anyway, there was also no law that made it illegal for Jews to loan money to Christians at interest. Of course, the Jews had no money, considering the Christians wouldn’t let them buy or sell anything, so what a Christian in need did was to go to a wealthy friend and ask to borrow money. The friend would then loan the money to some poor Jew at interest, who in turn, would then turn around and loan the same money at even more interest to the Christian. That is how pawnshops got the reputation of charging such high interest on their loans. Moreover, if the Christian defaulted on the loan, he (since women didn’t matter in those days) would be home free, really. If the Christian failed to repay the loan, then the Jew would fail to repay the loan as well, and then HE would be in big trouble. This is another reason the Jews charged such a high interest rate, since the risk was so great.

But this isn’t about how Christians fuck people over. This is about how Christians are SUPPOSED to act. One of the best sources we have for how the early Christians were expected to behave back in the first century comes from the letters of Paul. Remember that back in those days there was no Christian bible. The gospels had not been written yet. The apostles, those twelve guys…well, eleven, anyway, went about passing on the teachings of Jesus. And very soon, Paul, who was Saul of Tarsus, would also go about teaching the message of Jesus. These guys went about converting people and setting up little communities (nobody called them churches yet), And they kept in touch with these communities by writing letters to them. Paul wrote a bunch of letters, probably because he was the only one of the twelve to be highly educated, being a member of the Sanhedrin, that learned council of temple priests and scribes.

Paul wrote most of his letters from prison. It all started in Jerusalem when Paul brought a gentile (non-Jew) into the temple. He was mobbed by the people there, because people get pissed when you fuck with their traditions (just ask a civil rights worker in Mississippi back in 1963). Some Roman soldiers came to Paul’s rescue by placing him under arrest. They took Paul to the governor of Caesarea, Felix. Felix threw Paul in jail for a couple of years hoping to get a bribe out of him, but died before he ever saw a dime. The new governor sent Paul back to Jerusalem, and you might have figured Paul was well screwed then, but he pulled the trump card and claimed his Roman citizenship. Paul’s father had been a Roman. This entitled him to a hearing in Rome. So the Romans had to schlep Paul across Asia Minor to Rome and he was put under house arrest there. And from his cell, he wrote many letters to the various churches which had been established. In his letter to the Colossians, he mentions, “I, Paul, write this greeting in my own hand. Remember my chains. Grace be with you.” In other words, “Hi, this is Paul. Excuse my bad handwriting, but it’s a little hard to write with these freaking chains on my wrists, you know.”

It is in this letter that Paul outlines how Christians ought to comport themselves. It should be remembered that these guys never expected their letters to be considered some kind of Holy Scripture. There were just letters, and often said the same kind of crap that any letter might say. In the case of the letter to the Colossians, Paul had two reasons to write to them. For one thing, he had heard that the people in that community had started some practices which he considered contrary to the teachings of Jesus. They had started placing ritual above charity and faith, and had started to practice a certain asceticism, denying themselves things in order to suffer deliberately. For another, Paul had met a runaway slave by the name of Onesimus. Onesimus came to Paul to become a Christian. Why he would do this, I don’t know, because his owner-master, Philemon, was also a Christian, but for some reason he came to Paul. Paul found Onesimus very handy for running various errands and just useful in general, so he wanted to ask Philemon if he might keep him around for awhile. So, Paul wrote one letter to the church at Collosse, and another to Philemon, and had them both delivered by a guy named Tychicus, who would deliver yet another letter to the church at Ephesus, another important community of believers. So, this is what he said.

“Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if one has a grievance against another; as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do. And over all these put on love, that is, the bond of perfection. And let the peace of Christ control your hearts, the peace into which you were also called in one body. And be thankful.” So let’s get the message straight. You can tell a Christian because they are compassionate, kind, humble, gentle, patient, and forgiving. And above all else, they are loving and peaceful. Okay. Well, it’s awfully hard to find those qualities abounding in people, especially at this time of year. Those wonderful folks who pride themselves so on being  born again Christians would do well to give this letter another read.  But of course, that’s the reason why being forgiving is so important, because none of us can be like that all the time. We’re bound to fuck up from time to time, like…all the time. And that was Jesus’ message, too. You want to be like God? Well this is what being like God takes. Think you can do it? No? Good thing God’s forgiving, too. Just do the best you can. Love God, and love one another, and try to have a little faith. Think you can remember that? Good.

But then, it becomes difficult to tell how much of the letter is the teaching of Jesus (which Paul got second hand to begin with), and how much is just the opinion of Paul in general. You know, you start giving people advice, and it’s hard to shut up. Paul also says, “Wives, be subordinate to your husbands, as is proper in the Lord.” Whenever we hear this reading in church, I always smile at my wife, Becky, and then she hits me. And as much as I would wish that I could find some alternate translation from the Greek, it pretty much says that. But then, that was the custom of the day. Paul could have imagined nothing else, I suppose. Although, in the communities in Jerusalem, the women and men were treated equally. But to be fair to Paul, he also says, “Husbands, love your wives, and avoid any bitterness toward them.” And in the Greek there, Paul uses the word, agapao, which means to love unconditionally, without counting the cost. He also tells children to obey their parents, but then he also reminds parents not to constantly anger their children, as it will eventually discourage them. It seems like general good advice, but not necessarily the specific teachings of Jesus.

It seems to me, that if a person calls himself or herself a Christian, then it would do well for that person to act like it. That was the real message of Jesus. We are all the children of God. We are all a part of one big Christ. Paul was right. Following the teachings of Christ isn’t about following any certain rituals or denying yourself things, it’s about living the message.

When Jesus was about twelve years old, according to the story in Luke’s gospel, Jesus became separated from Mary and Joseph, and after a long search, they eventually found him in the temple talking to the learned men there. And when they complained about his running off, he said, “Didn’t you know I had to be about my father’s business?” Of course, after that they grounded him for eighteen years. But that’s really all of us.

We are all about our father’s business everyday. And people know us by the way we treat one another, Christian or not. So if you are gonna put a peace symbol on your car, act peacefully, or else you give all us bleeding heart liberals a bad name. And if you’re gonna put a fish on your car, well…ask yourself, how would Jesus drive (HWJD)? You know a tree by its fruit. I never met anybody who ever had a problem with what Jesus taught. I have met a lot of people who have problems with his followers. But you know, you don’t judge a church by its followers, or at least you shouldn’t. Sometimes they cut you off in traffic. After all, you don’t quit your job because some of your coworkers are jerks. If we did that we’d all be unemployed. No, we are all part of the same big family of humankind. It’s time we treated each other like family. And like members of a family, we don’t have to like each other, but we have to be nice to each other, at least in front of dad.

Where?  Maritime Research Center and Nautical Shop

301 West Seventh Street

San Pedro, California, 90731

310. 521.0175

When:  Saturday, November 7th, 2009

2 pm – 4 pm

Plenty of free parking!