Plain in the city

A plain Quaker folk singer with a Juris Doctorate in his back pocket, salt in his blood, and a set of currach oars in the closet, Ulleann Pipes under his arm, guitar on his back, Anglo Irish baggage, wandering through New York City ... in constant amaze. Statement of Faithfulness. As a member of the Quaker Bloggers Ad Hoc Committee I affirm that I will be faithful to the Book of Discipline of my Meeting 15th Street Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends.

Thursday, January 18, 2007

My Brother and My God

Well, I am not a Universalist. I find I cannot abide paganism, not the paganism of the friends who dance naked in the woods, but the paganism of idolitry.
I have been thinking deeply of Martin Buber's comments about not chasing after God, for the risk of worshiping idols we make, rather than living in God in the acceptance of the moment, and I think of the terrible dilemma presented by Christianity. I find my self saying to Christians with a capital "C," give me back my brother, when thee makes a God of him, thee looses the man as well as God," and they say, "Give us back our God he was never your brother." They tell us that we who say this man was our kin are led by some other idol, satan, and we are damned to say our brother, as a teacher is lost under the idol of thy God.
I think about what Rome was, before Yeshua, there was a Pontiff, there was a religion like Christianity in so many ways, the state as God, the man as perfect, and how that so offended Yeshua. The banality that was Rome, the terrible institution that was Rome, that conquered so many civilizations, some so much more civilized than Rome. And how, if this were any other historical study, rational people would see the Romanized God, in the Hebrew teacher. Jesus did not make the Pontiff or the Church of Rome or the Christian churches that rose up in protest against Rome. Rather, Rome made Christianity as a weapon against the teaching of the great and gentle rabbi Yeshua.
I don't reject Yeshua, called Jesus, the teacher, but I reject the perfection he would have found offensive. The idea that we have come to the perfect moment of completion, rather than the completion of being in the moment as we seek perfection has caused so much strife, so much heart ache ... so much of the evil of separation from God.
I can't give you your God at the expense of my brother, he taught much better than that.

1 Comments:

At 7:53 AM, Blogger ef said...

Lor

I have read this post many times, and it speaks to me deeply. I havne't commented, since I don't really have anything to add.

Yet I know how confusing it is to face those who seem to want to steal god away from our human embrace and set him on a pedestal, far out of reach.

I don't see why, and what's more, it hurts.

peace
Pam

 

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