PARTY PARTY

Normally, I try to vote non-partisan. I tend to vote for more Democrats than anything but in the 2008 major election I voted for candidates from Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Independents, and even a lowly member of the noble Green Party. I read up on the candidates and their views and what they were running for as best as I could and that is what I came up with.

However, the thought that a Republican candidate could win The White House's highest office chills my very soul.

WHY?

The answer is simple: GEORGE W. BUSH. “Junior”. I was helpless in 2000 and again in 2004 as I was 17 years old. I-possibly more informed than the high school Government teacher (sorry –M.C.)-could not have a say in the man that would dictate my country as I set out into adulthood. I watched him his throw my country into one possibly justifiable war (Afghanistan) and let that fall to a hidden whisper for a War of Lies based on big money, oil and occupation. While I have mixed feelings on marriage as a government institution instead of a private and/or religious commitment, giving it to one group of CITIZENS and not to another is unconstitutional post 3/5 and female-suffrage related laws and it is inherently UNAMERICAN. And while the Great Recession fell upon us during the Obama Administration, it's foundation was set--despite the beautiful economy that Clinton left him--as we trudged through, trapped in eight years of Baby Bush playing out his daddy issues on a national and global stage.

AM I WRONG?

Have the Bush years bushwhacked my sense of substance vs. partisanship? With the GOP dreams of McCain and Vice President Dumb Rhetoric behind us what does that Grand Old Party and it's Republican, hipster offshoot the Tea Party offer the American constituent?

Romney, Paul, Gingrich and Cain.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-15/romney-two-way-race-is-now-four-way-republican-dead-heat-in-iowa-caucuses.html

I'm-a vote Obama. And pray that people join me.

Impotence

I have an exercise I’d like us to try. Take a journey with me:

In the bible, G-d gets pissed at humans and decides to kill everyone but Noach and the animals. How all of the plants survive is a moot point but Noach and the animals get a heads up and build a boat…well, Noach builds a boat. Hopefully, his kids helped.

G-d floods the world. The waters recede and here’s where it gets interesting. The line in the Torah goes something like this:

"When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between G-d and all living creatures and flesh that is on earth (Gen: 9.16)."

Let’s play with some synonyms, shall we?

Switch “bow/rainbow” for “post-it note” and you get:

When the post-it note is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between G-d and all living creatures and flesh that is on earth.

Let’s also switch out “Covenant” with “promise not to KILL YOU ALL AGAIN (9.15)”

When the post-it note is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting promise not to KILL YOU ALL AGAIN ….

I’ve highlighted “reminder” because G-d needs a frickin’ reminder? G-d is worried that G-d will just FORGET to not destroy us? I find this entire exchange VERY disquieting. I’d also like to take a line to note that the previous verse clarifies that we’re just talking about not killing humans…by flood.

“I will remember my covenant between Me and you and every living creature among all flesh, so that the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. (9.15)”

So, G-d’s up front about this covenant euphemism…and it’s only by flood. See Sodom and Gemorrah if you question my notation of this nuance.

If I may quote an 18^th century preacher:

"The God that holds you over the Pit of Hell, much as one holds a Spider, or some loathsome Insect, over the fire, abhors you. (Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, Jonathan Edwards)”

Now, I’ve excepted an angry G-d as my gift for being Jewish. But this garners to my mind the confusion that anyone, EVER, thought G-d was either omnipotent or omniscient. G-d loses Adam, Abraham, Moses, just off the top of my head. Oh yeah, and NEEDS A POST-IT TO NOT KILL US.

G-d might be a chump. That is all.

The Holy Goat

I've actually been writing a lot lately but just not posting it. This may look like it's from Yom Kippur but it's not quite that old. It was inspired by one of the postings I read online but like four weeks later. So about half way between YK and now?

I think I had an undiagnosed inner ear problem as a child. Once, I witnessed the Beard (my father) chastising my brother for saying “Jesus”. This was penalized under taking the lord’s name in vain. However, I had heard my brother say something like “cheese”. I proceeded to never refer to cheese for several years.

In Catholicism, at least, the concept of G-d is represented by the “Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.” For anyone who doesn’t know, liturgical legend says that Jesus was born in a manger. Mangers are in barns and barns in the Holy Land have goats. The problem my family had with always being late to church—if we ever went—was that we had to sit in the back. As a child I prayed “the Father, the Son and the Holy Goat.” It made perfect sense at the time.

The ancient Israelites had a different concept of the Holy Goat. For starters, it actually was a goat. On Yom Kippur, the Priest would give one goat to G-d (he’d kill it) and one goat would receive the sins of Israel and be sent out into the wilderness.

Now the practice in many places, Jerusalem and beyond, became to ensure the demise of goat #2, usually via chasing the thing off of a cliff. The idea was that the sins couldn’t return.

I can’t uphold this viewpoint and not just because it’s contra-biblical and needlessly kills a goat (I think the first goat was needlessly killed as well but that’s a different matter). It’s the idea that we can just drop our sins off of a cliff and they won’t come back. That’s not how teshuvah works. It’s not how sin works; nor is it how tikkun works and—in my eyes at least—teshuvah is part of tikkun.

As an archery term as well as for our sin, chet is a missing of the mark and teshuvah is returning to it. Maybe for those sins and misses that are just one-time issues, like maybe someone’s sin-goat bumped you as you were about to shoot, it’s logical to go directly from messing up to a bull’s-eye. However, most things aren’t that easy, especially not the type of personal teshuvah that really matters.

And maybe that’s why the second goat was sent into the wilderness—the ambiguity of Schrödinger’s cat: both alive and dead. We have to be prepared that the goat MIGHT come back. We need to look out for that goat, for those misses and sins that slip back into our lives and our behaviors. If G-d had wanted us to kill that scape-goat, the Torah would tell us how the Priest slaughtered two goat-offerings. Instead the Torah releases it, sets it free with the option of returning. The same way that we let go of our sins, be they one time oopsies or lasting habits; we need to let them go, aware that they may return so that that we may return to better hit the mark.