Category: Meditation

July 4, 2023

I recently came across a most intriguing blogger.

Should you find yourselves w/ spare time & yearn for some intellectual / philosophical stimulation, do consider this web author.

Not endorsing her opinions, but I find her writing deeply fascinating. (Is she the same Sasha Stone – LA film blogger, founder of Oscar Watch?? I just don’t know, but I find her thoughts compelling.) She’s a woman raised in a Topanga Canyon hippie cult.

Here is her recent two-part article.

PART 1: https://sashastone.substack.com/p/america-at-the-hands-of-a-cult?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2#details

PART 2:
https://sashastone.substack.com/p/welcome-to-americas-religious-war#details

If you get a chance also access the video links she’s embedded in the articles. They are stand-alone intriguing.

PS If anyone wants to judge or cancel me for following my own innocent curiosity – go for it. I don’t even care. I’m having fun!!

[…]

When you raise children to believe in God, they have a final authority to answer to. Not you, not the president, not even their favorite YouTube personality, can fully control them. This is why the people in charge bleat so loudly about the dangers of “Christian nationalism” and “religious fundamentalism.” They are afraid of you laughing in their faces when they attempt to impose their dumb rules on you. Children raised to believe in God just wave these haters away. When your values, morals, and rights come from the divine, they are not up for discussion or debate. They cannot be repealed or replaced. God cannot be canceled.

Children who believe this will naturally be skeptical of politicians who make dumb decisions. They will intuitively understand that unborn children deserve to live. They will live by a moral code more compelling than anything man could ever legislate. They will be forces for good in a world breaking bad. They will be better able to resist the urge to join the mind-flayed lemmings flinging themselves by the thousands into Trans Canyon. They will have more willpower to refuse the first offer of a dangerous drug. They will be better prepared to resist the temptation to indulge in harmful sexual behaviors. They will cherish their own lives.

Faith gives children ballast. Faith gives them confidence that even while suffering, even after they die, they will be okay. Best of all, children who believe in God are much more likely to raise their own children to believe in God, thus perpetuating goodness and decency—and grandchildren for you.

Nothing is foolproof, of course. There is no guarantee that a devout child will thrive.

But it’s the best we’ve got.

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2023/06/the-ballast-of-faith

https://rumble.com/vso89s-mlks-last-sermon.html

May 26, 2023

… things we think of as being human — the need for love and connection, the ability to be intimate, the need to express and to create, the love of beauty and order, the drive to form families and friendships, to sustain an harmonic, morally coherent civilization — perhaps are qualities that do not separate us as humans from what has been presented as a cold, un-needing, abstract God; perhaps, rather, these are qualities that we get from God, the way a child gets blue or brown eyes, or a downturned smile, or certain way of waiting a beat at the end of a joke — from his or her parents.

Perhaps we get these needs, drives and qualities not as human flaws or as failings or irrelevant urges, but rather as parts of a proud inheritance, from a God who is literally a parent who is like us, who made us — perhaps emotionally, creatively, expressively, relatedly, as well as physically — to resemble (domeh) Him.

If we understand this, I do think we see ourselves with more compassion.

I think we see God Himself with more trust and intimacy and confidence, and with less fear, perhaps, and with less incomprehension.

I think if we see how we resemble God — as members of His intimate, immediate family — we can’t despair — and ultimately, it would seem, we cannot fail.

(Click here for more)