Briefly: It can be an amazement how much the history of religion and politics is, —God is a macho white man, just like me! 😀 You know. And it can run the whole gamut of intellectuality from shit-faced drunk at a country music concert, can’t quite get through the whole cowboy romance like your girl—to shit-talking to others because they don’t have a PhD, or don’t deserve their PhD: or life itself, when you come right down to it, you know. Girls: they’re practically…. /black/, and not like God, at all! 😀

Anyway. That being said, I didn’t roll myself up into a little ball and add myself to this book (this larger ball, if you will) like I thought I would, because it’s just so abstract, you know. When it comes to interfaith dialogue, I’d rather take a concrete religion—or, rather, a concrete religionist—and try to see how well they adhere to the Heart of Jesus, you know, and what we can do to help them or help each other; and you know, probably some are closer to the truth, to the light, and some farther away—it’s unlikely to have any group really where all of them are equally and uniformly developed in all or even most ways, so some are closer to the light, some farther away, although not really because of the skin of culture, things like the shape of the eyes and the tricks of language. Our education surely does not serve us well if it makes us think that a person can be classified as holy or unholy, or mystic or materialist, based on the language they speak.

“So just, hate everybody. People are shit.” Said…. Jesus? I don’t try to spend that much time defending the intellectual/ideological castle of Christianity, the system of Saint Thomas Calvinus, you know. Unlike the scowlers, Jesus never presumed that people needed pat answers about every imaginable metaphysical question, you know. He tended to fall silent when the people around him stopped speaking. Or, really, even before that.

I guess I just don’t believe that Jesus wants us to uphold white men as the greatest or the standard, and everyone else—or people in general!—are shit, you know. “This is how everyone will know that you have found right religion, that you love one another.” That kind of implies a certain esteem for people, you know. There’s no separation. Surely if there were separation, heaven and earth would be separate, and Christ wouldn’t be the friend of sinners, but of the righteous. “Comfort widows and orphans in their distress” implies that there’s no separation, since if there were separation, those are the people we’d neglect, the ‘least of these’. That some implicitly do not keep themselves “unspotted from the world” is just quiet realism: some people believe in the world-system and see separation, even if we are training ourselves not to. It’s not the battle-cry of the lynchers….

And, yes, though on Sunday morning we might go to our 98-100% white church and think highfalutin thoughts about how we’ve colonized /those blacks/ and claimed them—presumably their religion is like ours! Or else, hell! Hell for them! Hell for you, sensuous heretic!—when church is over, by the time the 5:00 crime/entertainment show comes on, we remember to project our own fears onto people who look different. People sometimes talk about the slippery slope of toleration, you know. Certainly there’s the slippery slope of bitterness towards rightists—SO endearing 😀—but there certainly isn’t a slippery slope of toleration. The bias is the opposite. We’re much more likely to pick up a club and bludgeon the enemy tribesman because he looks different—even if it started with a discussion about some trick of language!—and then project that behavior onto some other group that looks different, you know.

But, to be honest, to be fair, I don’t know what it means to Saint Thomas Calvinus that grace could be received in another cultural system. St TC demands a lot and assumes a lot; it’s hard to keep up with it all unless you block out all /those blacks/ and the Jews and the women like they do and how they assume you do too if you read their books. The exclusivity isn’t proven; it’s axiomatic, you know. It’s the assumption you start with. But I don’t know what it all means. I’m sure they’d read this and try to label my opinion so they could dismiss it just by repeating the label, you know: Damn, relativist, hell-bound, relativist, corporatist Biden Democrat putting market and community before tribe and bloodletting, what religion is that: Satan’s! Relativistic! /opens a beer can of intolerance, you know/

But I don’t know. There are problems with any position philosophically, whether this one or that; that’s why I prefer to talk about specific people—or at least specific ideas, you know! As opposed to, “the other religions generally”. The other religions generally, oh yes! 😹

And, you know, I’m sure that there are relativist people are relativist philosophies that I don’t agree with, that I don’t think are true religion, you know. I just don’t think you can assign someone a hundred books to read or whatever, and assume that they’ll walk away from that reading totally loving and spiritual…. Just because all the one hundred authors were similar culturally. Or, for that matter, very diverse. It just doesn’t make sense to think like that. The real world doesn’t bear it out. The orchard of fruit trees, the examination of fruit, true discernment, doesn’t bear out this self-serving judgment-system we create to elevate ourselves over our neighbors.

…. (collective moan of discouragement) Aww, but if you just block out all the others, you’ll be able to distinguish all the different flavors of white men, until only that, is the world.
—But I don’t want to do that. All flesh comes in the beginning from God.
—No no no. The Jew doesn’t come from God. He’s blocking out the grace.
—She…. You’re blocking out grace?
—Am I a Jew? What have your own people said about you? Why have they brought you before me? I mean—(shakes self)
—I think we’re done here.

…. …. I never really appreciated Kant. Part of me would like to, but I guess I’m a sentimentalist, you know. Like Fred Nezzy (Zarathustra etc), without the hankering for tyranny, you know. Ah, good times. Good times.

…. Incidentally diversity—the range of choices of how to be good, in general—doesn’t mean that you don’t have to make choices, even exclusive ones, in your own life. New Age Wayne, for example, wanted to include Ev’rybody!—and I don’t know if he was more like Kant or Nezzy; he was kinda feminine, so I guess the feminine version of Nezzy—but anyway, he wasn’t like Kant, but he would once or twice quote isolated Kant to settle down the skittish philosophers who think that nobody likes them, and Like Everybody, you know. As for me, it’s been a long time since I read the Nezzinator, but I can kinda get the feel sometimes. Lord knows I don’t feel Kant. You don’t /feel/ numbness, you know.

…. Margie’s kinda numb, too. I remember when I read Deepak’s ‘Joy’ novel, I was thrilled to meet not an oversexed girl but a Detached Woman, and I was sure if I could get an educated girl that that’s what’d be, that subtle smile. And not, a corpse smile. I probably should have moved from ‘Joy’, straight to Elin Hilderbrand, and never read that awful Matthew Fox memoir (from whence this, I think), where he talks about skipping meals in Paris so he could watch good French cinema and solidify his grip on the language, the better to launch his career which eventually blossomed into the book where he name-drops /damn near every book ever written, except for Elin Hilderbrand/. (shrugs) Gotta wean myself off the dead stuff. Of course, it would indeed be /better/ to some extent, if someone could write a book about God and have it be about tying together the various threads of reality, masculine and feminine, non-subjective and subjective, for example—and not just an exercise in aristocratic class analysis or whatever this is. But then, it wouldn’t be historical Christianity, now would it? God came to earth and /bled/ so I could be above the plebs; I won’t give up my empire.

(subtle smile) Lesson learned. (walks away)

…. I mean, these people just have no credibility, because it’s like supposedly they’re here for us and for reality, but if there’s a problem, it’s like, —Wait a minute; you guys are the ones AVOIDING reality: and now you’re in charge of it?

I mean, sometimes there are people who can’t do their chores or get along with others for pleb reasons, so what am I supposed to tell them? Read the wise men and learn how to avoid reality and start fights for the religionist cause? 🫠

And then you try to correct them, but it’s like: you’re better than everyone else; you’re precious. Let me hold your hand. Let me adopt your manners. Let me make you feel safe. (turns) Someone Has To Make Food For Baby, Dammit! I’m Busy Nurturing This One Here! (turns) Thousands of theologians live in your brain. Your ideas are bogus, but they will Not be forgotten.

…. It’s very much about historical Christianity: I know the history background of the book of Habakkuk and the multi-syllabic Greek words that were debated in the 12th century: therefore have I run the race; I found my faith; I have the correct answer; I’m not subjective.

I’m not really here…. I’m everywhere, simultaneously! (mad cartoon British scientist laugh)

—Just tell us what YOU think, Grandpa. You’ve read the books. What do YOU think?

(takes off glasses, bends down) Grandpa can only tell you the truth of all men, the truth of the historical faith. (straightens) It all began a long time ago, a long time before any of you were born….

(the girl pulls on the boy’s arm, and they run off as grandpa’s back is turned)

…. It’s formally correct, or whatever; however, I wonder how much of this is taking your kids on vacation to get them away from their friends, you know. “Terry, we need to get the kids away from blackart and capitalist racism. We need them to experience a different culture!”

But, as I said, it’s formally correct. Correctly manipulated are the words, Master Yoda says.

…. And, you know, maybe ONCE she could have said, “Being a little soft in the head is better than murdering people, even if it’s not an academic path”; maybe fifty times she repeated, “I am way too smart, too educated—got too many damn credentials, girlfriend—to say that religions are the same. (beat) Too many damn credentials. Too many damn—(starts doing a dance)—“

(Mexican guy) (holds her to her to stop dancing) /Es suficiente/.

(whispers) WHAT did he say?