aspiritual
Do you - - smoke?
In recent time, maybe still is, it has been cool to declare of oneself, “I’m spiritual but not religious.” They’re full of it, literally Full of It, have no idea of either religion or spirituality. See, read this, read this piece, http://www.spiritualdirection.com/2017/07/26/a-kneeling-theology, this is why I’m the opposite, say I’m religious but not spiritual. It’s too early in the morning, or the Black & Dark haven’t set in, but this spaced-out gibberish is straight from Share a Little Tea with Goldie, fragrance wafting from sticks of incense to dilute the aroma of "smoke" filling the tent from the psychedelic sixties.
However, I’ll keep trying, reading and trying.
Generally I get about a haircut a month or six weeks, maybe this morning, IDK. Early in Navy days and years it was once a week, especially in Japan, from my office the pleasant walk to the base barber shop, a haircut was a dime, for another quarter a shampoo too that included a head massage.
But the walk to and from: what I recall besides the momentary peace and quiet of that fifteen-minute stroll along the base perimeter was the summer of the cicada. I remember my first, at eye level clinging to a leaning tree by the sidewalk, looking for all the world like an enormous housefly, so intent on his ear-piercing song that he ignored me coming up for a close look.
But religion. I was stationed at the U.S. Naval Base, Yokosuka. Until August 1945 it had been a major base of the Imperial Japanese Navy, has been American for seventy-two years now, why do they put up with us? But we lived in Yokohama, a half-hour drive up the coast, in a base housing complex high on a hilltop ridge looking out across Tokyo Bay. Ours was a separate house, single story, two bedroom, one bath, at the private end of a cul-de-sac, by a high wall separating us from a Japanese cemetery beyond the wall, fragrance of incense sometimes coming our way, sound of soft wailing, other religion. Over the fence and at the bottom of the hill was a Shinto or Buddhist shrine from which monks sometimes looked up the hill at me gazing down the hill at them. Religion for us was the English-speaking congregation of a parish of Nippon Sei Ko Kai, Anglican Church in Japan.
For religion this morning, I’m avoiding internet and television news about national health care debate as I puzzle over the sense of fairness and kindness in Christians whose concern seems not religion, to look after, but politics, to repeal. Love God, Love Neighbor, caring for the least of these. Either a Christian gets it or does not; if not, maybe they're alphabet spiritual? Meanness. Madness. Hatred. My sense, sans authority, is who does not love neighbor, who will not care for the least of these, dare not come up to eat and drink damnation.
Lest we offend, we hold our tongues. Yet there was nothing subtle or oblique about John the Baptist or Jesus of Nazareth.
This, after all, is my blog as a Christian and an American, to say what I DWP.
RSF&PTL
DThos+ muttering and mucking along
In recent time, maybe still is, it has been cool to declare of oneself, “I’m spiritual but not religious.” They’re full of it, literally Full of It, have no idea of either religion or spirituality. See, read this, read this piece, http://www.spiritualdirection.com/2017/07/26/a-kneeling-theology, this is why I’m the opposite, say I’m religious but not spiritual. It’s too early in the morning, or the Black & Dark haven’t set in, but this spaced-out gibberish is straight from Share a Little Tea with Goldie, fragrance wafting from sticks of incense to dilute the aroma of "smoke" filling the tent from the psychedelic sixties.
However, I’ll keep trying, reading and trying.
Generally I get about a haircut a month or six weeks, maybe this morning, IDK. Early in Navy days and years it was once a week, especially in Japan, from my office the pleasant walk to the base barber shop, a haircut was a dime, for another quarter a shampoo too that included a head massage.
But the walk to and from: what I recall besides the momentary peace and quiet of that fifteen-minute stroll along the base perimeter was the summer of the cicada. I remember my first, at eye level clinging to a leaning tree by the sidewalk, looking for all the world like an enormous housefly, so intent on his ear-piercing song that he ignored me coming up for a close look.
But religion. I was stationed at the U.S. Naval Base, Yokosuka. Until August 1945 it had been a major base of the Imperial Japanese Navy, has been American for seventy-two years now, why do they put up with us? But we lived in Yokohama, a half-hour drive up the coast, in a base housing complex high on a hilltop ridge looking out across Tokyo Bay. Ours was a separate house, single story, two bedroom, one bath, at the private end of a cul-de-sac, by a high wall separating us from a Japanese cemetery beyond the wall, fragrance of incense sometimes coming our way, sound of soft wailing, other religion. Over the fence and at the bottom of the hill was a Shinto or Buddhist shrine from which monks sometimes looked up the hill at me gazing down the hill at them. Religion for us was the English-speaking congregation of a parish of Nippon Sei Ko Kai, Anglican Church in Japan.
For religion this morning, I’m avoiding internet and television news about national health care debate as I puzzle over the sense of fairness and kindness in Christians whose concern seems not religion, to look after, but politics, to repeal. Love God, Love Neighbor, caring for the least of these. Either a Christian gets it or does not; if not, maybe they're alphabet spiritual? Meanness. Madness. Hatred. My sense, sans authority, is who does not love neighbor, who will not care for the least of these, dare not come up to eat and drink damnation.
Lest we offend, we hold our tongues. Yet there was nothing subtle or oblique about John the Baptist or Jesus of Nazareth.
This, after all, is my blog as a Christian and an American, to say what I DWP.
RSF&PTL
DThos+ muttering and mucking along