God

Being "Laughing Sunday" [correction: "Holy Humor" sunday] morning and all, I this might be as good a time as any talk about God. Yup, it's a topic that has far too little attention, because people are far too interested in their own interpretation of truth.
Well, I'm going to share little about my "truth". I happened to be a Christian child, primarily because I really like Jesus, a lot. I also really like Francis of Assisi because he really got the message, he walked the walk and talked the talk. I think I might have been equally comfortable with other belief systems-I just happen to really like the teachings of Jesus.
I am not too much a fan of the Old Testament,you know, hellfire and brimstone, punishment, hordes of locusts, plagues... bad juju. I guess I am a little simplistic, and have distilled it all down to one simple understandable (for me) theory: God is Love.
That's it, simple,when there is Love present-God is present. When there is hatred, anger, evil-God is not present. End of story.
I do not believe any of this is rocket science, I believe my creator wants us to be happy and for that purpose, provided some simple guidelines for just that; Love One Another, don't kill people and make every day count.

I know there are a great number of Evangelical people in this country who believe, sincerely, that if you don't go to church every Sunday and memorize every line of the Bible (and take it literally) that you are probably heathen-pagan- faggot- devil, who is destined to rot in hell.

I just don't subscribe to that. I believe in worshiping (I'm not diligent as I used to be), I believe the Bible was inspired by God (as were other religious books)-but I also strongly believe that the Bible was translated (many times) by an elite patriarchywhich chose to ignore the Feminine Wisdom -as well as many meaningful writings and selected the texts which most closely aligned with their own beliefs (including only those gospels, which they felt to be appropriate. Excuse me, who died and made them boss- well come on, I know who died, but I don't remember any line that said, you can pick and choose which people to believe.)

I also think that we were given these writings as a guide, a "spirit of the law"-not the letter of the law. God created man with free will-the ability to make his/her own decisions.And when I step back from the pervasive hysteria of our modern-day, it seems that all of the saber rattling, finger-pointing, name calling and frenzy is distracting us from real truth.
How can any human being who actually believes in any higher power, look at what's going on in the world and not see a number of other solutions?
If we really, truly got that it's all about loving one another and living together on one planet with a finite amount of resources-- that we do not own -- maybe we could step back from all the rhetoric and practice a little simple kindness. I don't mean sackcloth and ashes, self flaggelation and denial, poverty and selflessness-I just mean a little human kindness. That might include notions like saying please and thank you, practicing courtesy, being polite, being thoughtful; how about kindness or generosity?

When there is genocide in Africa, war and murder in Iraq and Afghanistan, corruption and tyranny in our own country-- we have to let go of some of the petty crap, i.e. who says what about whom, what happens to Anna Nicole's baby, what decisions women make with regard to their own bodies (we don't make those decisions about men), who raised more money for an election that is more than a year away, gay marriage (come on people, really) and any of the other drivel that is being passed off to us as news-which does not make one iota of difference, when men and women and children are being murdered or starved or mutilated, every minute of every day.

Where in the hell are our priorities!? Don't quote Bible verses to me when murder is being propagated on innocent people. Period.

My God is really unhappy about this, trust me.