It seems that I am more and more trapped into writing about religion. That is not really my purpose. However, the older I get (now receiving Social Security, which you probably won’t ever get if the Publicans in Congress have their way), the more I have to work this part of my life out. I am an AGNOSTIC. Perhaps even an ATHEIST. But I’m trapped in religious thought. I’m sort of like a transgendered person, that is, trapped in a body that I can’t really inhabit. Except, of course, my body is mortal, decaying, dying, and part of the natural world while my mind is full of sixty-five years of religious teaching that it will take something much more than surgery to change. It’s as much a part of me as my sexuality (did I say that? Ugh!). At least, excising it feels as complicated and painful as having a sex-change operation. So, if you don’t want to read my same-song-second-verse writing about religion, well, don’t. It turns out it is an integral part of my TLE and my bi-polar disorder. So that’s that.
Sorry that you feel such antipathy for the Jewish people. Does it disturb you at all when Jews are killed by terrorists, such as the recent savagery perpetrated upon the Fogel family? Do you feel the Jews should be given ANY land in the Middle East?
What is it about the Jewish people that causes people to be obsessed with criticizing and attacking them? Have you written about killing and oppression in Iran, Sudan, Libya, Syria…..and many other countries? Have you ever studied the status of Jews in those countries?
By: Gary on 03/30/2011
at 9:20 AM
Having no clue what this is a response to, I approve it. Not only is responding to nothing I have ever written, it is false and stupid. I will not engage a Zionist-anti-Zionist conversation here. As I said, this is not a blog about religion. So whatever it is that Gary is talking about, I give him the right to his rant–even though he has no clue what I think about my Jewish friends or the State of Israel. I will point out that the terrorism perpetrated on the Fogel family came after Israel bombed a group of children in Gaza AND a Palestinian funeral procession was fired on by an Israeli settler in Hebron, wounding several people. I point that out only by way of saying that rushing to the defense of one “side” in the Israeli-Palestinian “conflict” is absurd on the face of it.
By: Harold Knight on 03/30/2011
at 5:18 PM
I love the way you put it about yourself. I too am in the Golden Age (HA!) and also continue to experience the mental trappings of the religion I practiced for 15+ years. Thank God (?) I’m free from all that now, but am still fascinated by the way Christianity ensnares people to the point they have no mind/will/thought of their own.
Keep writing … and keep living every moment with joy and gusto!
By: Nan on 08/14/2011
at 10:33 AM
What IS it that’s so “golden” about these years? Well, we have earned the right to say what we think without holding back so much. Experience, education, dialogue, pondering…Say hello to the Pacific from one who misses it always. My path has been nearly 40 years in the desert and who knows, maybe I’ll get a reprieve in a couple years and return not far from where you gaze.
By: Rachel on 08/14/2011
at 2:42 PM