Letters to the Editor
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Jesus was just a man
The biggest problem with Christianity is that it takes the brave actions of a revolutionary man and credits them to a God.
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Salon has really hit the skids
Look Salon, I didn't plunk down my cash each year for the last two years to read a bunch of horse shit from a bunch of religious lunatics.
If they want to get in a big swoon over Jesus, or Mohammad or any other fantastic boogeyman they idolize to keep from facing themselves, they can go to over 10,000 other websites and blogs that cater to their insanity.
I come here to get away from that shit.
Once you open the door, even so much as a crack (as in Sara Miles' adventure into looney town) then all the nut jobs start showing up to "testify" about Jeeee-Bus and all kinds of other superstitious bullshit.
Goddamn it! My paid subscription is up in May and the way it's looking now, Salon has become just a cheap whore with a dozen different tricks get the johns to pull over and take a look.
Bleah!
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She should try living in the south
Here Jesus is worn like an armband, big box churches compete for revenue, and sects are political movements for the angry and mean. Here anyone who does not fit a bigoted morality mold doesn't get to call themselves Christian, and if they try they are vilified. Body piercing are not welcome and gays can go elsewhere. Here following the teachings of Jesus (making yourself worthy) is the wrong approach to finding God. Here it's all about being a willing church follower, concentrating on the teachings of the church - generate more revenue.
Is there more to it? Sure. But that's how the Bible says Jesus would see it if he were here today. This isn't liberal comdemnation of something foreign to me. I've been a Christian for forty years, but my search for Jesus led me away from churches and sects, and I'm much better for it. The author now knows why she searches, and perhaps in 20 years she'll learn where she can find the answers. Right where Jesus said to look - inside.
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Me too!
I am also a believer, surrounded by yoga-practicing Buddhists or agnostics in an intellectual spiritual urban center. It can be lonely at times. I've worked at churches, known the accusers and the accusees in abuse accusations. I've been discriminated against for being a woman, for not being feminine enough, for being single, and for being gay.
And yet, I still go. I still make space in my life for church. And I agree, it's not about the church. Church is a political institution because it involves people. And yet church is also a place where people aspire to be a bit more humane. It is a community more than an obligation or one more place to be evaluated.
I think one can practice faith for the community, but I think there comes a time when the faith has to go much deeper than the community. It has to become a deeper part of us than what our minds or our emotions understand. And going through that, we then come back to community not for answers any more, but for companionship.
I wouldn't, and can't really, pick a church out of the phone book any more and just show up on a Sunday, but I have a church family that I can sit beside as I experience my awe at the great mysteries of life.
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"intense, profound" longing?
Two great words that don't go together. Think about it, Jose.
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Thanks for publishing letters by Locutus and raquez et al.
It's always nice to see what the really bright kids in eighth grade science class are thinking after they first read ideas that might be in conflict with the banal orthodoxies of dominant culture--you know, going to church, sitting up straight, being nice. While they may be a wee bit tiresome in their noisy Hey, Ma! Lookit ME posturing, they certainly are brave little darlings to be so, SO-OOO iconoclastic.
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Oh wait, just a sec, oh yeah, I can feel it, it's, it's ... Ooooo, I'm having a conversion experience
I feel all shivery inside, my head is swimming, I'm seeing things, I hear angels singing, I feel a tightness in my gut... I think I'm .... Yep, I think I'm...
Wait. Nope. False alarm. It was just some gas.
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Your article
Have you completely lost your mind?
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To Locutus from Bill in Baltimore
Locutus,
you are a piece of work. What's wrong with listening to someone's story? Do you only want to talk about things from one perspective. Apparently, Sara was sort of like you, then she found a different life. What's that to you?
btw, I'm praying for you.
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stories and theories
Sara told a story. Her story. Some people are better at this than others; Sara, I thought, told her story well enough. I think I will buy her book. I am always interested in well-told stories of personal spiritual journeys. Over the centuries -- millenia, even -- such stories have become an identifiable genre of world literature: Apuleius, Augustine, Margery Kempe, C.S. Lewis, and so on.
It appears from the ensuing correspondence, however, that many readers construed Sara's story as a theory, in particular as an exposition of some theory of the universe. Most of these respondents had theories of their own, opposed to those they attributed to Sara Miles.
But I didn't find much of anything in Sara Miles' story that propounded any theory.
Many of these theoreticians had something to say about religion too, and about people who practice one. But that was all very theoretical.
I suppose if the theories those people call "religion" looked anything like what I do every Sunday in church, I'd get mad, or at least try to set them straight about what my worship really amounts to. But I don't recognize, in those pathetic parodies and recurring references to Jimmy Swaggart or Tammy Baker or Ted Haggard or whoever, anything that touches my worship at all.
Responding to a personal story as a theory of the universe is a logical howler that discredits, straight off, all of the latter-day Voltairean wannabes on this thread.
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Here's what "religion" is all about:
You put your left foot in
You put your left foot out
You put your left foot in
and you shake it all about
You do the Hokey Pokey
and you turn yourself around
THAT'S WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT!