Wednesday, January 1, 2003

A big new years shout-out to Filchyboy and his comments about me and Ms. Shinn. Below is my response: Well more than anything I would like to thank you for opening up this conversation. That is THE only objective that I really hoped to achieve with my blog (well at least in the beginning). Let me also say that I am/was fully expecting to get whacked about the ears from everyone since the very start of this adventure, so it is good to see my gauge was not far off the mark. :-) I cannot renounce your skepticism about the statement you quoted or your outright rejection of something you haven't read through yet, because you are simply reflecting what your own life experience has been to this point. I am simply offering some new hypotheses to test for anyone who is interested to see if their own perceptions of things could possibly be different than what is. If and when you do get a little farther in the book you will quickly realize that this is not a religious book by any stretch of the imagination, even though she quotes scripture (the proof that something is or is not religious cannot simply be determined by whether they use the words Jesus Christ). The scripture is used as supporting material for the principles she is talking about - nothing more. Florence obviously feels more at home working with the teachings of Christ but I can promise you she would have no problem at all with someone substituting Krishna, Buddha, or Mohammed (etc, etc) everywhere the words Jesus Christ pops up. There are no dogmas, nothing to sign up for, and I can assure you that most "religious" folks have a very hard time with this book because it pretty much walks right through some of the most sacred illusions taught by churches that quite frankly don't hold a copyright to the teachings of the man (Christ, that is), whom of course had nothing to do with forming their organizations himself. So basically, the only thing I feel compelled to correct is your mistaken assumption that someone who uses the words and teachings of a great teacher to illustrate the principles which they have found to be true in there own interactions with life to be "religion". Be willing to separate the concept and actual red-letter words of Jesus from the people and or organizations that you may not think well of - they don't own him. 2:47:54 PM    comment []

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