Prayer

[stilltrucking]

Beats me. The roman empire was divided into East and western empires in the fourth century AD. and Rome was sacked by the Vandals or Visigoths in the fifth Century AD. I have no idea who was ruling in the city in 530 AD. I think the city was pretty much in ruins by then. Was there a Pope? Was there ever a black Pope? I don't know church history, just a little I remember from Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

I just liked the picture because of a dream I had a few years ago. A very nice dream. Maybe it was Osiris in my dream, but who ever he was he was definetly a black man and he was a cool dude, to hang out with. Kind of like how Rush Limbaugh talks about George Bush, you know a real regular fellow you would like to have a beer with. Do you know who Rush Limbaugh is? God I hope not. I would not like to think anyone outside of this god forsaken land would know who Rush is.

Jesus is just okay with me. Be he a myth, man or a metaphor.

Spanish Pipe Dream John Prine
"Try to find jesus on your own."
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[izeveryboyin]

I don't know that living is prayer... I think I'm a little too pessimistic for that. In fact there are many more times when I feel like Cursing the deity as opposed to thanking him. Although in church they will teach you that every movement, every blink, every breath is owed to the One above. The very fact that we wake in the morning is a supposed to be a great blessing and we are supposed to get down on bended knee and "Exalt His name." I imagine that if living was a prayer we would all be a lot more peaceful.

--k

[hester_prynne]

"exalt his name..."

I dunno, that is extreme, I mean, it's not like i'm praying to a God, more to a collective, an idea, always hoping for the best, positive rather than negative energy, I mean why not? ...Jesus was a hippie who wanted peace and community for all, if I exalt anything it's that idea, which these days seems to be an idea that is over many people's heads.....

H

[stilltrucking]

It sure feels good to breathe
I listened to the old woman's death rattle
and then silence
and I kept right on breathing

Izzy I wish some one smarter than me would come along.
a quantum theologian or a deconstructionist
or Chomsky or e-dog or someone like that
who knows all about semiotics and neuro linguistics
and stuff like that

we going to sit here and bandy words
like which way is up above and down below
when we look at the earth from nine light years away
and realize that they are arbitrary directions.
What do you mean by peaceful
what do you mean by prayer
what do you mean by god
speaking of god why is IT so pissed at us

everybody appologized to abraham's god so many times
lets move on
We slip behind a molecule of meaning and talk nonsense

as soon as our government figures out what the word torture means maybe we should have a congressional investigation of the meaning of prayer.
I am confused old man
where is Joel
where the heck is joel when we need him

I am going to become a southern baptist in my old age say an imprecatory prayer for Dick Cheney and his lovely wife.

Pastor Supports Huckabee for President, Asks Followers to Pray for Death of Critics Who Filed Complaint with IRS Over His Political Activities

imprecatory prayer

sometimes living is good enough
I just like breathing so much
and I still got two more cigaretttes left in the pack
life is good.

[stilltrucking]

Franny and Zoey, maybe my favorite novel by Salinger.

I am not sure sometimes whether I would rather smoke or breath. That's about as pessimistic as I get these days.

I wished I had asked you what kind of church you are going too. I am not much for preachers izzy. I have only met a couple I have any respect for.

The Way of A Pilgrim, how to pray incessantly. I worked at it. These days I am just a zen wannabee. But I still forget to breathe


Interesting novel, I am a sucker for a story about the love between a brother and a sister. I am not sure if THe Way of A Pilgrim is a hoax. I mean I think I have read it is apophyrical.

Golitzen, Alexander
Pilgrim and Community
Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality - Volume 2, Number 2, Fall 2002, pp. 236-242

The Johns Hopkins University Press

Alexander Golitzen - Pilgrim and Community - Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality 2:2 Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality 2.2 (2002) 236-242 Review Essay Pilgrim and Community Alexander Golitzen The Way of a Pilgrim first appeared in English translation a couple of generations ago and was an immediate hit. Purporting to be the work of an anonymous peasant, just educated enough to know his letters, it tells of his adventures and encounters as he wanders the breadth of the Russian Empire in the mid-nineteenth century, saying the "Jesus Prayer" and praising its benefits to whomever will listen. Its fresh, seemingly artless and fervent advocacy of the prayer excited interest in European and American readers which was strong enough to provoke a response from the American novelist, J. D. Salinger, who turned the pilgrim's story into an occasion for a perceptive analysis of spiritual delusion in the novel, Franny and Zoey. To the best of my knowledge, Salinger's novel marks the unique appearance of Eastern Christian spirituality in mainstream American literature. When I received my review copy of the new edition of the pilgrim's story by Paulist Press, The Pilgrim's Tale, I was not prepared for the surprises that lay in store for me. I had read the R. M. French translation many years before (sometime in the late 1960's, I think), and was not especially looking forward either to re-reading the book, in however different a translation, or to...

http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals ... itzen.html

I liked this bit about how hip it is to be a mystic these days. If it is good enough for Madona well you know

Joseph Campbell's best-selling scansion of world mythology juggled narratives and images from around the world, maintaining that "all truth is one," with the notable exception of two religions he found unworthy, Judaism and Islam. J.D. Salinger wrote fiction, much of which reads like self-help, including the novel Franny and Zoey, which is peppered with sound bites from a variety of mystical systems and is itself a meditation on The Way of the Pilgrim. Both of these writers, through their work and, through either a flurry of media appearances (Campbell) or a much-publicized retreat from the world (Salinger) took on guru-like status in American culture.

http://marty-center.uchicago.edu/sighti ... 0213.shtml

I missed fighting with you sister
I been hanging back cause of your delicate condition
you well enough to get pissed at me again


please cut me some slack on the spelling
I promise I will check it later.

I was thinking about using a sock pupptet for this post.
cause this is dianamoonglampers speaking, the woman in rosewater indiana that is too dumb to live izz.
having a senior monent could not femember how to spell your name
I want to call you

lemmee think
Myla not Mayla
Kayla not Kyla
okay
inFriendship mi amiga.

I am thinking about your reply to me that it might do you good to get pissed at someone, I can't remember your exact words

come on kick my ass if you think you are man enough

[stilltrucking]

Did someone say Jesus was a hippie
I thought he was a Pisces

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Exalt his name
all six billion names
I am a heretic Izzy

Religion is all about belonging
judih once wrote
men to the left women to the right
sometimes we all got to belong somewhere
If it was me I would just listen to the music
and if I could carry a tune I would sing along
and I would dance
cause james brown in the Blues Brother is my favorite preacher

Extreme prayers
where is joel
I been thinking about him a lot
If I ever win the lotto
I am going to have a great wake
going to invite all my farorite musicians and poets to eat drink and be merry
and Joel to do the eulogy.
I hoep he has some cool old people in his flock

[stilltrucking]

Arcadia thank you for the music, Very beautiful.
It beats john prine and kris kristofferson anyday.

Lifting my spirit to hear it.
So did the music from the church next to my grandmother's house in baltimore, just a tamburine and voices making a joyous sound unto the the lord. It was a put down to call it holy rollers.

I got to watch that movie again Kayla
seems kind of surreal now that I think about it
I can hardly remember what song James Brown sang.
I am going to see if I can find a youtube of him.
jimbo says I am a latent racist
he appologized but he is probably right
nothing to do with you
it was about rev al sharpton.

I am a pilgrim tonight

He's a pilgrim and a preacher, and a problem when he's stoned
He's a walkin' contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction,
Takin' ev'ry wrong direction on his lonely way back home.

K Kristofferson.

[stilltrucking]

I just woke up from a dream about you
I don't remember the dream
but you were the person I was thinking about when I made it back to consciousness again.

the only thing jim was wrong about was me being a latent racist
nothing latent about my racism sister K

I was thinking about startig a new thread with this
Izzy you know an interesting factoid about jews is that jewness is reccond matrilineal

SO even if Jesus was a jew because He had a yidisha mama that don't make god jewish. It makes no differnce who the Father is.

take care
I thought I could tease you out of your funk
I would walk through cyber hell on sunday for you

I beleaf izz
I am not an atheist anymore
but I am still a heretic
I am not an agnostic
I do feel god intoxicated
I wish I knew more about your mother's church
I wondered if it was catholic

all the stuff about einsten and santayana god's just trying to put it into words.

but it can't be said
not by me
i am no poet
and i know it

freud's complaint
he said where ever he went a poet had been there first.

[stilltrucking]

down and out in nashiville tenn living at the mission
every night we would have to sti through a sermon to get fed
all those preachers preaching at us
like a dog and pony show
if you want jesus (quakers speak of the Christ within) to come into your heart, stand up, come forward, raise your hands, do this do that
nothing but a power trip
then one night a country preacher gave the sermon
and he said you don't have to do nothing but open your heart to the spirit
you don't have to move a muscle, you don't need to come forward
just stay where you are and he will find you.

made a lot of sense to me
but I still could not be a baptist
I have never been baptised (quakers dont beleaf in water baptism, they beleaf in the baptism of the holy spirit)
I could not be a baptist because of my violent nature
any man who tries to strangle his mother got issues with violence.
so I stumbled in a a quaker meeting (aka THe Religious Society of Freinds)
there are many different flavors of quakerism so many schisms but originally there were no preachers and the Meetings for worship were silent
no preacher just Friends sitting around in very plain meeting house, no religous artifacts of any kind. Just sitting around waiting for the spirit to move someone to speak. Sometimes no one spoke other times some one might stand and say a few word.

NOt trying to prosletize (I can't even spell prosletize) but maybe you and your mom would like to check it out some time. BUt like I said many different kinds of quaker meetings these days, I prefer a "Silent Meeting"

Another think I liked about the quakers, not many religions cofounded by a woman. Margaret Fell. one of my all time heroes.

Prosletyze
maybe I am
trying to
sorry
I don't even go to Meetings anymore
but there was a time in my life when...

[Arcadia]

de nada, s-t. That music appeared in the hassapikos sta-dhio way. It seems there are parts II and III además!.

[e_dog]

When'er you pray
you pray to the Devil,
thinking it's Jesus
or Vishnu
or Brahma
or Gawd
tha Father

but it's always the same old
spider
inside your brain
eating up the cells and shitting
out fillaments of hope.

The Devil is
Within.

[stilltrucking]

Before Broca taught me how to lie
I knew how to pray wordlessly
Now I make too much sense

[stilltrucking]

I suppose that is why they call satan the father of lies.

I never think about Satan kayla
I never think about devil
I don't believe in supernatural evil


they say child is father to the man
is the daughter mother to the woman


I am sure Myla knows how to pray wordlessly.
"praying just comes natural
like the first breath of a baby" paraphrase of John Prine song

Yes exalt God's name
His name is Donald

I can't remember some litkicker from palastine, but
I do know when I was in combat in Vietnam, I saw
God more than once. He was usually disguised as
a hellicopter pilot, and he flew low, and dropped
ammo. and water. He'd then return and take away
my wounded and dead friends. I'm sure that was
God, even though he used the named Donald.

---surfer mike

[mousey1]

I don't think stability comes to anyone with ease. It seems if you've got lots of one thing you'll be lacking somewhere else.

I think it's a struggle to survive with any real amount of dignity at anytime for most of us.

Everyone's got issues
All God's children got issues
and the best we can do is deal
deal with the tools at hand

Yes I pray.
I try to keep a prayerful, thankful spirit all the time
a gratitude for blessings
because each day is a gift
if you really think about it
sometimes, yes, it really feels like you're up to your eyeballs in shit
but this too shall and does always pass
if you let it, wait for it.

I pray to plain ol' God.
I hope he's listening.

and I try to keep in my heart the notion that
no, this is not all there is

because frankly, I suppose, if this was all there is, most of us
would gouge our eyes out in frustration

I love life
I love the living
but if I were to dwell on all the bad
stew because I feel helpless to fix anything
I would slip over the edge into overwhelming depression...I think
but maybe I'm stronger than that
I don't know.

I don't think any of us know, izzy. But prayer can't hurt and it sure as hell seems to help when trials and tribulations have got you by the neck and won't stop squeezing.

Live in the now. The one day at a time. And treasure all the little things, find the little joys that truly can keep you moving one foot in front of the other...even if you always seem to be tripping.

And come here and hold a virtual friends hand anytime you need to.

Oh and...

yes, yes, yes, write about it. Keep on sharing it. I, too, love these lines of yours...

Seems to me the only way to tolerate this godforsaken existence is to run forward, hands outstretched, eyes closed, and let the branches snag you where they will. Shit, couldnt be much worse than this.

I still strive with the implementing of the following bit of Bible wisdom (which I of course paraphrase, as my memory is shit)...

Fret not in anywise, for who here can change anything by worrying.

Apparently God doesn't want us to worry, so why oh why does man persist in it. It'll tear you up. Of course the answer is, we're human...damn it!

Let's just try to enjoy the experience
apparently we only live once
maybe that's not such a bad thing.

[Doreen Peri]

mousey1.. you are a wise woman. Thanks for that.. beautifully spoken.