i love doing laundry, from start to finish. i love sorting laundry, getting it down to the laundry room, and once it's done getting clean, i love pulling out the items that don't go in the dryer and putting the remaining items in. however, my favorite part is near the end: folding/hanging the dried items, ironing what needs to be ironed, and putting it all away. i'm not gonna be sick and say that this is the high point of my week :), but i certainly enjoy the routine and organization required along the way. i think this stems from my childhood. my mother was a nurse, and one of my required chores growing up was being responsible for her uniforms, laundering them and making sure they were neatly ironed. i did this all the way till i got my first job in high school, but even afterwards, i've still loved doing laundry. crazy, huh? :)

i don't know why, but it just is: 3.14159................................

i'd get my butt over to europe, first spending several days in istanbul and konya, rumi's birth place (which i know is not in europe).  then i'd go up and spend a few days in venice, then a few days at the italian intentional community damanhur, and finish off in amsterdam, taking part in all that amsterdam has to offer.

wow, this is a very hard question to attempt to answer.  to some degree, many of the 'key players' in my life would qualify as the answer to this question.  there are persons who have taught me how to love; how to fight; who have acted as a foil to my personality, which in turn gave me a stronger sense of self; who have served as examples of how i don't want to be or what i don't want in my life; who have made me aware of my shadow side; who have given me new ways of looking at the world. 

i guess out of all that, well, i kinda hate to do this, but my answer at this point in my life is a person that i have never met and probably never will meet.  at the risk of sounding like some blind follower of a cult leader, or a groupie, ken wilber and his integral theories have been a huge influence in my life over the last few years.  his books and other writings have given me the tools to be able to understand a little better where my loved ones and strangers alike are coming from, as well as the tools to get a better grasp on so-called reality and ways that i can experience the ultimate reality on a moment by moment basis.  because of his work, it's easier for me to love and to fight and to understand that this thing called my personality is all just an act.  to use a cliche, i am truly not the same person now as i was before i was exposed to and began to understand his writings.

this does mean that the influence of others in my life who i am close to and actually have interactions with is any less.  i can't imagine my life right now without knowing the love of my family and friends; my experience of life would be so much less with the absence of even one of these people. 

also, i like that the question ended with 'so far', because this leaves the answer to this question open to future influences that could be far greater... :)

GRAVITY - this morning as i was waiting for the bus, i realized that there was absolutely nothing between me and the sky, and then i was amazed at how gravity works and how it's perfect for us here on this planet, how it's just enough so we don't have to be tethered down and yet we can move about relatively freely, and it's just incredible and how perfect this is and how perfect life is, even though at times it doesn't look so good.  um, yeah, gravity... :)

finish my paper on gnosticism and paganism that is due tomorrow!  (so i guess i ought to log out of zaadz so i can git 'er done...)

this particular post (which is probably going to be a long winded one) has been about a month in coming, ever since my return from new orleans, or maybe even it could have been written before then. this is a sort of processing what i have been reading lately, and doing some self-examination as to what i believe spiritually and why.

right before my trip, i read the laughing jesus by (hottie!) timothy freke and peter gandy. the blurb on the back cover looked intriguing, posing questions about the old testament being a complete work of fiction, and whether jesus christ ever actually existed as a human being, among others. so, i took the bait, and by the end of the book, i was an (un)believer. i made the conscious decision to believe the facts that i was reading and not the stories i had been told to believe on faith for much of my life. it is now my belief that the story of jesus, as presented in the bible is nothing more than a myth based on previous pagan myths about various god-men with almost the exact same biography found in the bible regarding jesus.

at the point i made that decision, it was like the scales literally fell off of my eyes. i always thought i understood this previously, especially after having read some years back books such as wilber's up from eden or putting on the mind of christ by jim marion or why christianity must change or die by john shelby spong. however, this is where the idea finally clicked for me, that the story of jesus, like the stories of god-men before him, was meant only as an example of the possibilities i, and we all, can experience in god. paradoxically, my feelings about jesus are no different, and can be said to be even stronger because of this. he is an example to me of how i can be a christ, or anointed of god, right here and now. i don't have to wait till i 'die and go to heaven' in order to be permanently in god's presence. god's presence is everywhere, even in the minutiae of my daily life, and i am in the continual process of learning how to be aware of it.

because of what i've read in this book, and others since then, i have come to the terrible conclusion that christianity in its current form is actually quite a diabolical religion. this is kind of hard to swallow, as this is the religion i was born and raised with, and i spent a number of years in the charismatic christian community. i know that if anyone from that movement were to read these words, they would immediately consider me backslidden and my soul lost for eternity. but this is exactly what i cannot reconcile, despite this blog post i wrote just a few weeks earlier on 'why i am still a christian'. i just don't think i am anymore. i mean, who would dream up a god supposedly of love, a god who demands absolute loyalty, a god who sentences you to hell because you don't literally believe in jesus' life and death? how can a religion claim that it is the only way to know god, when it has only been in existence for 2000 years? how did people get to know god before then? were they just screwed?

the original christians, the gnostics, knew that the jesus story was just a jewish version of the myth of osiris-dionysus, the god-man who within various milieux was believed (for starters) to have been born december 25 of a virgin, wandered the countryside as a young adult teaching parables, died on a cross for thinking he was god, arose from the dead and returned to heaven, promising to come back. the gnostics saw this story for what it was: an allegory of what we can have with god. it was this story that was perverted by the roman church, and moved from the level of teaching story to ‘gospel truth', and is the basis of what passes for christianity today. what is so sad is that people who are normally rational thinkers believe that a child was born from a woman who had not previously had sex. and they believe in a literal hell for those people who think otherwise. and even though the crusades are obviously long over, there are still people who abuse their power in order to get people to believe this, while handing over the money in order to reach more people for this americanized jesus. thinking of the millions of people that have been brainwashed over the centuries into believing this form of christianity, i'm sorry, but to me, this truly is nothing short of diabolical. this is the very evil that i have so often heard preaching against.

it is also interesting to me how christians see stories in other religions, particularly eastern religions, as being mythical in nature, but stories of jesus walking on water and feeding thousands with only a few loaves of bread are 'obviously' true. again with the obi wan kenobi quote: 'you'll find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.'

this is cross-posted over at my other blog, impolite conversation.

if i only knew that happiness is only found within each present moment, then i would stop reliving the past or daydreaming about the future, and enjoy this present moment for what it is.

surrounded by noise
silence begs to be noticed
but is shouted down

(um, yeah, i'm cheating because this is actually the one and only haiku i've ever written a number of years ago...  i'm home from work today with a headache and everything is sooo loud, so i feel this is somewhat appropriate.)

i'm going to borrow from one of my favorite musicians, ziggy marley, and his song, 'love is my religion'.  if this were really true of everyone, the word 'religion' wouldn't have the bad rap that it currently has.