ch-ch-ch-changes

"There is no fault...


there is no blame...


there are only choices"

you are a human - being

This Is Halloween

Halloween (or Hallowe'en) is an annual holiday observed on October 31, primarily in Canada, Ireland, the United States and the United Kingdom. It has roots in the Celtic festival of Samhain and the Christian holiday All Saints' Day, but is today largely a secular celebration. (read more)

Church Of All Worlds

The Church of All Worlds (CAW) is a neopagan religious group whose stated mission is to evolve a network of information, mythology, and experience that provides a context and stimulus for reawakening Gaia and reuniting her children through tribal community dedicated to responsible stewardship and evolving consciousness.

The key founder of CAW is Oberon Zell-Ravenheart, who serves the Church as "Primate", later along with his wife, Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart, designated High Priestess. CAW was formed in 1962, evolving from a group of friends and lovers who were in part inspired by a fictional religion of the same name in the science fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein; the church's mythology includes science fiction to this day. The headquarters are presently in Cotati, California.

CAW's members, called Waterkin, espouse pantheism, but the Church is not a belief-based religion. Members experience Divinity and honor these experiences while also respecting the views of others. They recognize "Gaea," the Earth Mother Goddess and the Father God, as well as the realm of Faeries and the deities of many other pantheons. Many of their ritual celebrations are centered on the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece. (read more)

Joseph Smith Meets An Extraterrestrial

Joseph Smith, Jr. (December 23, 1805 – June 27, 1844) was the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, a group of churches whose adherents regard him as a prophet.

In the late 1820s, Smith announced that an angel had given him a book of golden plates, containing a religious history of ancient American peoples. Smith claimed the book was written in an unknown language, which he translated by use of seer stones given with the plates. In 1830, Smith published this translation as the Book of Mormon and organized what he claimed was a restoration of the early Christian church.

Moving the church in 1831 from western New York to Kirtland, Ohio, Smith attracted hundreds of converts, who came to be called Latter Day Saints. Some of these he sent to establish a holy city of "Zion" in Jackson County, Missouri. In 1833, Missouri settlers expelled the Saints from Zion, and Smith led an unsuccessful paramilitary expedition to recover the land. Fleeing an arrest warrant in the aftermath of a Kirtland financial crisis, Smith joined the remaining Saints in Far West, Missouri. However, tensions escalated into a violent conflict in 1838 with some hostile Missourians. Believing the Saints to be in insurrection, the governor ordered their expulsion from Missouri, and Smith was imprisoned on capital charges.

After escaping state custody in 1839, Smith led the Saints to build Nauvoo, Illinois on Mississippi River swampland, where he became mayor and commanded a large militia. In early 1844, he announced his candidacy for President of the United States. That summer, after the Nauvoo Expositor criticized Smith's teachings, the Nauvoo city council, headed by Smith, ordered the paper's destruction. In a futile attempt to check public outrage, Smith first declared martial law, then surrendered to the governor of Illinois. He was killed by a mob while awaiting trial in Carthage, Illinois.

Smith's followers believe he saw God and regard his revelations as scripture. His teachings include unique views on the nature of godhood, cosmology, family structures, political organization, and religious collectivism. His legacy includes a number of religious denominations, which collectively claim a growing membership of nearly 14 million worldwide.

Elohim (אֱלהִים) is a plural formation of eloah, an expanded form of the Northwest Semitic noun il (אֱל, ēl). It is the usual word for "god" in the Hebrew Bible, referring both to pagan deities and to the God of Israel, usually with a singular meaning despite its plural form, but is also used as a true plural with the meanings "spirits, angels, demons," and the like. The singular forms eloah (אלוה) and el (אֱל) are used as proper names or as generics, in which case they are interchangeable with elohim. Gods can be referred to collectively as bene elim, bene elyon, or bene elohim.

The notion of divinity underwent radical changes throughout the period of early Israelite identity. The ambiguity of the term Elohim is the result of such changes, cast in terms of "vertical translatability" by Smith (2008), i.e. the re-interpretation of the gods of the earliest recalled period as the national god of the monolatrism as it emerged in the 7th to 6th century BC in the Kingdom of Judah and during the Babylonian captivity, and further in terms of monotheism by the emergence of Rabbinical Judaism in the 2nd century AD.

In the Levantine pantheon, the Elohim are the 70 sons of El the Ancient of Days (Olam) assembled on the divine holy place, Mount Zephon (Jebel Aqra). This mountain, which lies in Syria, was regarded as a portal to its heavenly counterpart. The Elohim were originally ruled by El Elyon (God Most High), but He later hands His rule down to the god called Hadad who was known among the common people as "the master" ("Baal"). Assembled on the holy mountain of heaven and ruled by one, the pantheon (Elohim) acts as one. The enemy of the Elohim is Yam ("the sea"), a chaos monster slain by Baal. Each son was allocated to a specific people (e.g. Yahweh to Israel, Milcom to Moab etc.).

The word occurs more than 2500 times in the Hebrew bible, with meanings ranging from "god" in a general sense (as in Exodus 12:12, where it describes "the gods of Egypt"), to a specific god (e.g., 1 Kings 11:33, where it describes Chemosh "the god of Moab", or the frequent references to Yahweh as the "elohim" of Israel), to demons, seraphim and other supernatural beings, to the spirits of the dead brought up by the prophet Samuel in 1 Samuel 28:13, and even to kings and prophets (e.g., Exodus 4:16) The phrase bene elohim, usually translated "sons of God", has an exact parallel in Ugaritic and Phoenician texts, referring to the council of the gods.

together

"religion" divides us...

spirituality brings us together...

god is not "religion"

...Oberon...

Two Choices

You have two choices

as you live your life

you can be "happy" or

you can be un-"happy"

which will you choose?


"There is no way to happiness...happiness is the way"

The Truth

If the Republicans will stop

telling lies about the Democrats,

we will stop telling the truth about them.

Adlai E. Stevenson

The Sun Of God

(click title for astronomical rebuttal)
http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/transcript.htm

Bon Appetit

Julia Child was a spy?

All The World

All children are my children

All women are my sisters

All men are my brothers

All the world is one big family

Let's be Peace-Makers

In these past ten years or so we in Ireland, North and South, have been enjoying a stable and hopefully lasting peace. The thirty years of conflict, bloodshed and loss of life are more or less over. (It ended in the early to mid-nineties of the last century) Yet, as peace-makers we can never become too complacent, because there is much hatred and bitterness North of our border. Now, I am not saying for a minute that our brothers and sisters in the North of Ireland have a monopoly of these two vices - far from it. I readily admit that there is not a little hatred and bitterness in the hearts of some South of the border. However, statistics show that the North of Ireland is an extremely racist country. A report recently declared that some 20 or so Romanian people of the Roma ethnic minority had to flee back to their homeland because they had literally been burnt out of their homes. I am old enough to remember such happening in the Catholic areas of the North of Ireland in the early to mid 1960s. So, all people of good will, North and South of the border, and, indeed, all people of good will everywhere must be peace-makers with a deep compassion for all our fellow human beings! There is too much conflict in the world today - and there probably always was - but in these more enlightened days let's be conflict breakers or conflict busters.

Sadly religions of all hues have been more often than not repositories, and indeed often promoters, of hate and bitterness. Anywhere in the world where there is inter-national and indeed intra-national war oftentimes religion or interpretations of that phenomenon lie at its heart. We have to go beyond religion and find a spiritual ground or baseline - the only solid foundation for intra and inter-national peace. With these thoughts in mind I offer here some words from the wonderful Dalai Lama on the matter of the difference between Religion and Spirituality:

I believe there is an important distinction to be made between religion and spirituality. Religion I take to be concerned with belief in the claims to salvation of one faith tradition or another--an aspect of which is acceptance of some form of meta-physical or philosophical reality, including perhaps an idea of heaven or hell. Connected with this are religious teachings or dogma, ritual, prayers and so on. Spirituality I take to be concerned with those qualities of the human spirit--such as love and compassion, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, contentment, a sense of responsibility, a sense of harmony, which bring happiness to both self and others.

-His Holiness the Dalai Lama
From "The Pocket Dalai Lama," edited by Mary Craig, 2002. Reprinted by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Boston, www.shambhala.com.

The Magisterium

The Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary are a Congregation of religious brothers and sisters dedicated to a two-fold Crusade: the propagation and defense of Catholic dogma — especially extra ecclesiam nulla salus — and the conversion of America to the one, true Church.

OUTSIDE THE CHURCH THERE IS NO SALVATION

"Outside the Church there is no salvation" is a doctrine of the Catholic Faith that was taught By Jesus Christ to His Apostles, preached by the Fathers, defined by popes and councils and piously believed by the faithful in every age of the Church. Here is how the Popes defined it:

"There is but one universal Church of the faithful, outside which no one at all is saved." (Pope Innocent III, Fourth Lateran Council, 1215.)

"We declare, say, define, and pronounce that it is absolutely necessary for the salvation of every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff." (Pope Boniface VIII, the Bull Unam Sanctam, 1302.)

"The most Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes and preaches that none of those existing outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics, can have a share in life eternal; but that they will go into the eternal fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels, unless before death they are joined with Her; and that so important is the unity of this ecclesiastical body that only those remaining within this unity can profit by the sacraments of the Church unto salvation, and they alone can receive an eternal recompense for their fasts, their almsgivings, their other works of Christian piety and the duties of a Christian soldier. No one, let his almsgiving be as great as it may, no one, even if he pour out his blood for the Name of Christ, can be saved, unless he remain within the bosom and the unity of the Catholic Church." (Pope Eugene IV, the Bull Cantate Domino, 1441.)
[excerpt from catholicism.org]

Price of this salvation? "Religious submission of intellect and will."

(Sounds exactly like a cult to me.........really creepy)

Percy Lavon Julian

Percy Lavon Julian (April 11, 1899 – April 19, 1975) was an African American research chemist and a pioneer in the chemical synthesis of medicinal drugs from plants.

He was the first to synthesize the natural product physostigmine; and was a pioneer in the industrial large-scale chemical synthesis of human hormones, steroids, progesterone, and testosterone, from plant sterols such as stigmasterol and sitosterol.

His work would lay the foundation for the steroid drug industry's production of cortisone, other corticosteroids, and birth control pills. He later started his own company to synthesize steroid intermediates from the Mexican wild yam.

During his lifetime he received more than 130 chemical patents. Julian was one of the first African Americans to receive a doctorate in chemistry. He was the first African-American chemist inducted into the National Academy of Sciences, and the second African-American scientist inducted from any field.

Corpus Hypercubus

Salvador Dali-1954

Blasphemer

All great truths...

begin as blasphemies

...George Bernard Shaw...

Angels & Demons

One and the same?

Co-exist-ence

It doesn't matter to me

what you believe...

...as long as you give me the freedom

to believe what I want