Boy Scouts

How many children know that they are gay?  They are still figuring it out.  Sexual orientation had nothing to do with boy scouts when I went through.  The issue that bothers me is about adult leaders.  I sense the old prejudice about gays and sex.  The fear is putting our children in the hands of leaders who are gay?  Won't these leaders try "stuff" with our children?  This prejudice can see gay people only in terms of physical sex and their being preoccupied with having sex.  I know it sounds weird.  But it is real.  Being a leader of scouts has nothing to do with one's sexual orientation.  I believe that one of my leaders on a jamboree was a drunk.  Our safety was in the hands of some guy who was drinking in his tent.  But he got a pass.

Eternal Fire

I believe it is Isaiah, chapter 33, that refers to "eternal fire."  He does not mean hell.  He is referring to God as the Eternal Fire!  Maybe the institutional church got a bit carried away when it used this term to refer to a hell after death, flames and all, to punish us for not obeying the rules.  With Isaiah, when we die, we all enter into the eternal fire of God, who is Love, I believe.  I, who have messed up, will have this mess refined away, to become all that I could have been in this world, except without a body.  The sadness of discovering what I could have been but was not in this life, will be the pain.  But, this pain will be embraced by Love into a union with God that makes the pain more a memory, than a present hurt.  Love can do this.  Actually, if I would let God love me more now, I might not mess up so much.  Maybe Satan, with that big ego, is the only kind of person who can resist Love.  Hell is for them.

Ego or God's Glory?

I am getting to run a 10K race at altitude.  A 10K can be dreadful, as in L-O_N-G!  Now, if I run it for my ego, wanting to beat all my pals and anyone else my age, this is what happens.  Some time during the race, I will hurt.  My mind will then say that no one cares how I run.  I am miserable.  I will just slow down, and finish and never run this stupid race again.  I will feel hateful toward all the young, fat people who are beating me to the finish.   I will throw away anything I get in the mail that reminds me of my time or this race.  Run with the ego and you run to unhappiness.  On the other hand, if I run to the glory of God, then I do the best I can with my race strategy, accept the difficulties, inconveniences, surprises, knowing that God is being glorified by his creation,"me" running in this body, the one God gave me.  Attitude and goal can carry one a long way, even through a 10K.

Who Is Innocent?

Well, the Republicans are having a good time of it now with Obama's Administration snafus.  This is why we have the two party system, to challenge one another.  But neither side is all clean.  I noticed that Rios Mott, the boss in Guatemala back in the Reagan administration, was just convicted for Genocide or mass murder, or something dreadful like that!  Well, did we not fund the Mott administration?   Reagan was a Republican, as I recall.  History beats the two party system when we need to stay real.

Enjoy Your iPhone

Well, a congressional committee says Apple avoided paying taxes by setting up subsidiaries in foreign countries that had no employees.  Say it isn't so!  Otherwise, how can we go on using their products without shame and guilt?  We really are a world wide web of self-interests.  It becomes harder to be good, to do the right thing.  Of course, drop any sense of spirituality and you might get rid of shame and guilt.  I doubt it.  But the folks who say they are spiritual but not religious won't have a problem if this Apple thing proves true, so long as being spiritual is all about "me."

Corpus Christi

The Feast Day is coming up and parishes are gearing up to have a liturgy where everyone looks at a round white host, while ignoring one another.  I have no problem with the host being God.  It is the ignoring part that strikes me as odd.  Wasn't the original Body of Christ the community of persons?  Christ was in our bodies before we had tabernacle boxes and churches.  Why not have the pastors go to the parish kitchens and cook up a big meal to serve to all the parishioners who come by?  Maybe even serve anyone who comes by.

Breasts

Will Angelina Jolie get work now, as a love interest in a movie?  Let's see.  Hollywood moguls, men, are obsessed with breasts.  Big and revealing is what they want on the screen.  Many a guy going to the movies fantasizes about making love to the female lead characters, if they have big/revealing breasts.  Guys don't go to the movies for real life.  They can get that at home.  They go to escape, to dream, to fantasize.  In the darkness of the screen theatre a guy never has to grow up.  You gals shake your heads? Deride guys?  Well, you do marry them.