Dear God: Why didn't you save the school children at:
Sincerely, |
Dear Concerned Student:
God: Let's see, I think it started when Madeline Murray O'Hare complained she
didn't want any prayer in our schools.
And we said, "OK".
Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn't spank our children, when they misbehaved because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem. And we said, an expert should know what he's talking about, so
we won't spank them anymore. In God We Trust **************************
COMMENT FROM DINIZULU GENE TINNIE
Thanks, Joan, for sharing this.
Maybe the greatest value in the message is the compiled list of these
horrors in American schools. Put together that way, one can really get a
sense of the terrible pattern.
As to "God's" answer, I would have, to put it
diplomatically, a different view. First of all, any human being who dares
to speak for God or claims to know God's answers to our questions must be
viewed with a healthy dose of suspicion. The message goes on to catalogue
the slow dismantling of civil society, through careless and misguided
political and social decisions in which we have all played a part. Yes,
that list has some validity too, as a list of historical moves that were
made. As a list of causes for what has happened in those school
tragedies, that's another matter. Or, to put it bluntly, I ain't buyin'
it.
Haven't other countries made similar "liberal"
reforms? Don't other countries have strictly secular schools that turn
out fine doctors and other human beings, for example? (Don' we, for that
matter?) Aren't there places where parents do not beat their children in
order to teach discipline? And what's all this crapola about "God in
schools"? I am old enough to remember being in sixth grade (or fifth?)
when the Pledge of Allegiance was changed to include the words, "under
God." Even at that age, I wondered what nation on earth was not "under
God." Did this mean ruled by God? Or, maybe more likely, blessed by
God? If that's the case then why even at that early age did I know that
"liberty and justice for all" was a load of b.s. And was I now supposed
to believe that God approved?
I had a friend who found God and religion in her life
after years of trying to fit in with the street crowd and its values. She
became devout and truly grateful for being "saved." She was the first to
pull my coat to the idea that money had a curse on it, precisely because
we, as a nation, have the gall to put God's name on it. "In God We
Trust," we say. On the dollar bill, the motto "Annuit Coeptis"
translates, I am told, as "He has approved our enterprise." Both of these
mottos, as well as the "Novus Ordo Seclorum," loosely translated as "New
World Order," come out of the Masonic tradition, according to what I have
read. Some of what I have read has been very complimentary and
pro-Masonic and some has been rabidly anti-Masonic, going so far as to
suggest that the "He" who approved this enterprise is not God but
Lucifer. This then gets into all of that arcane stuff abut the layout of
the city of Washington and, most blatantly, into the design of the
Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest award that the nation gives,
which is in the form of an inverted pentangle. (Cut to "Twilight Zone"
theme...)
Having no opinion about things I don't understand, I
leave that alone, just registering information in the same spirit that I
encourage people to view my own rantings, based on the wise African
proverb that "When the fool speaks, the wise man listens." What I DO
understand very well, however, is how, in the history of this country, God
has been used to justify slavery, "Indian Removal," the oppression of the
working classes, the exclusion of women from human rights, and general
white supremacy for propertied males whose ill-gotten wealth is stained
with the blood of millions. I don't want to hear about what a "great
country" this is supposed to be, or supposedly was before all these
idiotic reforms like Dr. Spock and non-criminalized abortions came on the
scene. I'm not saying that either of those are right, or wrong, for that
matter. I am saying that adult human beings can decide for themselves,
based on their experience. conditions and aspirations, what seems right
for them. We may not always be right, but that's why we have social
debate and why true friends offer friends wise counsel when they think it
is needed. The idea that some of us are supposed to decide for a whole
bunch of others of us -- whom we don't even know and care even less about
-- what they are supposed to be doing with their lives is one that I
cannot accept,
That, after all, is the entire basis of slavery. Worse
than that, let's understand what slavery is. It was not a "peculiar
institution" or a "way of life," "in which chivalry took its last bow,"
as the GWTW romance would have it, or just unpaid labor. Slavery is
violence, plain and simple. It is a regime of unremitting violence in
order to maintain an unnatural and perverted social order, and the
undeserved privilege and power of the class of people who perpetrate the
violence. In America, this routine abuse was accompanied and compounded
by the carnage, genocide, and chemical and psychological warfare that was
visited upon the Indigenous nations in order to clear them away from the
land and expropriate its resources. Everything that America "gives thanks
for" every November, all of the "blessings" that we attribute to God and
his approval of our way of life, are the spoils of these horrible acts,
which still account for the great MAJORITY of the country's history.
Today, no other country on earth has stockpiled more
weapons of mass destruction (a phrase that has become all to glib, as if
it were normal, much like the way in which "Right wing death squads "was
bandied about in the news media during the Ronald Raygun years, as if
that, too, were something normal to live with); no other country has more
handguns and rifles circulating among the general population, no other
country has more people per capita in prison, no other country glorifies
and feeds on violence as a way of addressing differences and even as a
source of entertainment(!), and no other nation is as openly contemptuous
and disrespectful of other nations (respecting them is considered
"butt-kissing") than this one. (Even before the Iraq horror, some will
remember, there was the [in]famous walkout, with the Israelis, from the
International Conference on Racism in Durban, South Africa, attended by
cabinet-level ministers from around the world, but trashed by our
government, in the person of one Colin Powell, as merely a forum to talk
bad about us and our Israeli allies. Less than ten days later, the 9/11
attacks occurred. Maybe there was a link, and maybe not. But it was yet
another case when our nation showed the world its true colors, and its
butt to kiss.)
With such a history, with such a culture, with such
divisions and disparities between haves and have-nots, between rulers and
ruled, we are supposed to be shocked by incidents when disaffected people,
whose self-esteem has bottomed out to below the crisis level, arm
themselves and seek to address their frustrations in the same way that the
most powerful and privileged in this country do -- with violence! And
then we have the nerve to say that the cause of this is that we have
turned our backs on God! Schools get shot up with multiple murders and
suicides because, "God" says, "He" (and what is this business of God
having gender, anyway?) "is not allowed in the schools anymore." When He
was allowed, WE weren't, so what's up with that claim? I suppose
Integration ranks right up there with the rest of the "liberal"
transgressions in the list. |
We have no
idea who created this message, but it is, undoubtedly, profound! -- Diva JC
GOLDEN CITY OF
LIGHT
[GENE TINNIE'S COMMENT CONTINUED] I come from a long line of Ancestors who have
understood and respected God for a mighty long time. We did not to be
schooled by criminals as to who God is, or what God wants. We have always
known that "God is Love," that we must treat ourselves, others, and the
rest of nature as all being manifestations of God, and therefore we
coexist in respect and harmony. Of course there will be competition, and
there will be differences and conflicts, but all of these are resolved in
the spirit of knowing that our commonalities and similarities far outweigh
our apparent differences. This is why it has become so much of our role
in society to be the practitioners of a better, more harmonious way of
understanding the universe, one another, and, yes, God. We know that
there is only one universe from which nothing is eliminated, so we know
better than to entertain dumb fantasies of the world being a better place
if so-and-so were not in it.
True enough, however, and sad enough to recount, many
of us, too many, have been seduced by the beliefs of our adversaries, have
been insufficiently schooled in the wisdom of their Ancestors, have
endured to much pain from the daily exercise of physical and psychic
violence and thus become their, and our, worst problem as we seek to
restore, redeem and reclaim our collective selfhood and sanity from the
ravages of the last 500 traumatic years of being excluded, maligned,
exploited and misrepresented. To many of us still believe the lies that
were told, because it was the only language we were taught, and we act
accordingly. But at least we are, for the most part, conscious of there
being a problem.
What is to be said of those unfortunate children who
have been taught even more lies, whose failure to live up to the myths of
their supposed greatness that is supposed to come with the happenstance of
being born "white," drives them to the pit of despair and frustration and
self-hate, and therefore hatred of others. (At least that's one guess at
the motive, and the same can apply, as we well know, to those who are not
"white.") Sure, there is some spiritual dimension to all of this -- good
and evil spirits at work with weaker human beings as their tools; almost
every religion has some way of interpreting and explaining this, and this
is why so may of us spend so much time in prayer. The reverence for God
that the writer of this message calls for is much needed, but not in the
self-righteous posturing and judgmental pronouncements that are bandied
about here so cutely.
We have drifted so far from the path that it almost
seems impossible, or at least unrealistic, for us to actually cultivate
love for all human beings equally, kings and fools, prostitutes and
princesses, heroes and hustlers, old, young, rich, poor, male, female,
gay, straight, Black, White, Other, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Gentile,
loud and aggressive, shy and quiet, etc., etc. Beneath all the pretexts
and appearances and possessions and titles and labels and symbols, we're
all just naked primates trying to make it on this planet. Compete we
must, and defend ourselves, of course. Other beings have horns, fangs,
armor, thorns, claws, etc., etc., while we have what we call
"intelligence.' Those others, who we say lack intelligence, are so much
more attuned than we. They do not fight unless it is necessary. They were
all safely out of the way of the tsunami while we were caught unknowing.
They navigate thousands of miles without maps or GPS devices, and return
to the same nesting places. We, on the other hand, prefer plastic cards
and machines to human contact. We eat flesh that we haven't hunted while
listening to reports of bombings and killings, totally disconnected from
what either experience means. We are living in a protected asylum that
has been taken over by the most disturbed inmates, who run it according to
their fantasies and delusions, which they now have the cherished "freedom"
to make into tangible realities, at great expense to others in the unseen,
unacknowledged nether world of slave pens, sweat shops, prisons and
slums. How "intelligent" are we really?
This is not a call to retreat to some Lalaland of our
own fantasies, nor a putdown of where we are and what we are. It is just
a reminder of awareness, of the fact that we are so much more than we
might seem to be when we think of our identities as being defined by the
car we drive, the clothing or jewelry that we wear, the title of our jobs,
the flags we wave or the particular religion that connects us to God. In
my estimation there is a much greater common identity -- which might even
be said to be with God -- which has so much more to say about who and what
we are than all of those pretenses to individual differences. We can dare
to imagine a society in which our common interests and communications are
so engaging and important and understood that we hardly need to use words,
and our differences in color, size, look and talent are so incidental as
to not even be a subject of conversation. This, I think, is not only
possible, but has existed many times in many places, and continues, far
away from our perceptions. I can also understand why the seizers of the
asylum feel absolutely, morbidly threatened by anything like this, that
would disabuse them of their pretended importance and reveal the truth
they fear confronting the most: that they are sick. Lest I be accused of
judgmentalism myself, I would clarify that "they" are us, all of us, who
are participating in this false world of disconnections.
Now that would be a REAL Wake Up!
Love, Peace, Guidance, all ways,
Dinizulu Gene Tinnie
|
We have no idea who created this message, but it is, undoubtedly, profound! -- Diva JC |