Understanding Religion's Relationship To Human Social Systems

I’m not actively dating right now—not in the conventional sense. I’m trusting the timing, but that trust is not passive. As I manifest for the journey, the journey manifests—both for me and as me. I’ve been bringing my inner currents into harmony while learning to navigate the greater flow. I move with destinations in mind, but without allowing those destinations to consume my experience of the river. For me, life isn’t merely what happens . It is more than that. It is how we experience what happens, how it changes us, and how we share all of this with others. Together, our experiences of the river, ourselves, and one another form the unimaginably complex, living whole we call life. The journey is both the events that shape us and the ever-emerging selves that keep shaping what comes next. The currents carry their own music—as do we—in turbulence and stillness, in tension and release. The bitter and the sweet—together, this symphony of our becoming. Each moment reveals me to myself,...

  The Reality Of What She Did https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1EdiQmuKUz/ https://www.facebook.com/reel/1718503199816022

Discussion: Monotheism, the Bible, Akhenaten, Dan McClellan, and Paula Fredriksen Initial Claim The first monotheism was created by King Akhenaten as a way to unify his society, as a means to consolidate his own power. Monotheism isn’t “modern” in the sense of post-Enlightenment. Rather, it’s modern in the context of the timeline of human history. Polytheism very far predates monotheism. But even polytheism took a very long time to develop out of our species’ heightened agency detection, imaginations, storytelling, superstitions, scientific illiteracy, social-power paradigms, major personality disorders, etc. None of the Bible writers or characters were monotheists. The stories about Jesus are stories about a henotheistic Jew who joined and later took over an apocalyptic Jewish mystery cult. Do I think any of the Bible characters thought that any “God” is always and purely “good”? That’s not how I read it. But I also have no interest in arguing comparative interpretations about that ei...

  As every day, there's so much on my mind and in my heart. Yet, nobody to share it with. Seldom, an ear. Rarely seen. Rarely heard.  Never deeply known. From someone, somewhere, somehow ... I need so much more. I know people. I even really value some of the people I know. But everyone's so busy with their own lives. So far, I'm always the spare tire in the trunk ... of the vehicle of someone's life; as they rumble roads and soak sheets ... with other men. When the people who matter are unavailable, suddenly, there's a text on my FB or phone. Just as quickly they appear, they're gone again. Seldom is there even a chance for me to find out if the groundhog saw its own shadow. But, to be fair, I always know the answer. With every sighting, ... There will always be six more weeks of winter. --- --- So then, what and who do I need? I need two Ride Or Dies. 1. A Turk to my JD. ("Scrubs" reference). #guylove #bromance -A Charismatic, high-energy, fully a...

  Romantically speaking, I recovered. I'm not currently "in love with" anyone. Nor do I have the faintest clue who I'll end up with someday. This isn't about that. It's about what happened. For me, this is the song of what a predator [ This guy ]  (clinical Narcissist and sociopath) did to my family, starting 16 years ago. It reminds me of what George Carlin once said: "All the problems in the world...ALL of them...can be traced back to what fathers do to their sons." This song reminds me of how I accidentally helped make it possible for him to infiltrate, capture, and devastate people I held dear. I lived outside of the city gates. Left to my own devices, most of the time. But I was the city guard. The Sentinel. The Father. The kin and the kindred. When the unseen threat approached, I was caught unprepared. All of us were. He had been waiting. Watching. Scheming. He moved in the shadows for a very long time, exploiting critical vulnerabilities. T...

  There has only ever been one bad man in our world. A million different names and faces, but it's always the same man. Copied and pasted. An ancient echo of evil. It wears the skins of the fallen; dead children. Souls never mourned because their bodies lived on. It's how monsters procreate. They murder and hollow out the vulnerable, and then seed the essence of that 1 man ... into those hollowed out spaces. -The perfect crime. To this very day, not a single county has a law preventing it. He doesn't always succeed. Sometimes the living and beautiful essence of a child survives. But that inner light will flicker for years. Every such child remains vulnerable to any other face of "him" showing up to finish what an older version of him started. So they'll need to find a guardian to help nurture and protect that light from going out. The "him" still prowls; never tiring of the hunt. He must always try to hollow out every child, because even the darkes...