“How Can We Lose, When We’re So Sincere?”

November 9, 2016Deep Questions, Deep Thoughts, healing, human behavior, political commentary, psychology, social commentary, sociology, UncategorizedDonald J. Trump, President Trump, sincerity, The 2016 American election, What happened????ruth ann scanzillo

# break out of frames
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
	Header always append X-Frame-Options SAMEORIGIN
</IfModule>

“How can we lose, when we’re so sincere?”, Charlie Brown bemoaned.

Sincerity has an indefinable ring to it.

Like a well worn song, it is always recognizable.

In children, it moves the hardest heart to tears, and silences – albeit momentarily – the otherwise blindly ambitious. In all its raw irrepressibility, sincerity always trumps deceit.

The Obamas have it.
And, Joe Biden – God! In abundance.

Bernie had it, until he was shut down.

Donald Trump.has.it. Granted, he is largely repulsive to most of us, with his unbearable absence of couth, his defiant arrogance, his inability to remember what he said or when he said it, and his awful, even cruel, sometimes infantile, attitudes toward people who are not like him.

But, deep within all of us, somewhere in our oldest brain, the stem maybe, we harbor a matrix of survival instincts. And, within this matrix is a sense for the authentic. We can’t, no matter how loudly we protest to the contrary, live without sincerity, because it is the embodiment of truth.

Julian Assange is openly reviled by many. He’s the single entity who brought down Hillary Clinton.

Or, is he? Could she not have been the victim of her own missteps, and did he just happen to find the footprints?

I know one thing. As a musician, I am always listening for pitch, tones that are matched with specific vibrational frequency. And, I am attuned to tone quality, as well, the timbre of a well-adjusted instrument and its player’s technique for bringing that out to the ear.

There was always something about Hillary, in her voice, her manner, that just didn’t ring true for me. I couldn’t name it; I couldn’t find it; and, yet, I needed to know it.

Less than twenty four hours before this election day, I finally made contact with its source. To my interpretation, she had something so profound to hide that the efforts to keep this from us were gargantuan. And, consequently, deceit permeated every cell in her body.

Deceit is distinct from dishonesty. One can make a recklessly untrue statement, and that can qualify as a lie. Even pathological liars are sincere. Deceit is deliberately obscuring the truth.

The reason Trump won the Presidency is being hotly debated well into the morning hours of this new day, by those far more qualified than I to say a word about it. But about this, there is no denying: the sheer volume of American people who craved sincerity over deceit trumped all.

Now, the rest of us must live in that light. And, our ears are ringing.

littlebarefeetblog.com

November 8, 2016.

November 8, 2016Uncategorizedruth ann scanzillo

# break out of frames
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
	Header always append X-Frame-Options SAMEORIGIN
</IfModule>

Wrote this three years ago, today.

It having preceded the inception of my blog, I share with you now.

***

Since there is so much about this life that can be proved, and so much that cannot, be sure that what you choose to merely believe doesn’t scare the living daylights out of you.

Oh; and, remember that, the day you were born, your boss wasn’t in the room – or, your coworkers, your perceived competitors, your ex-husbands or wives……..just your mom, and the people hired to be present. The day you were conceived you had nothing to do with that, either, and that should keep you humble.

Allow no other person to assume control over your happiness, your choices, your value, your potential worth. Learn to breathe like an opera singer, run like a deer, pray like your grandmother, sleep like a baby, and love like Jesus.

And, when you reach 50, have a colonoscopy. It won’t be fun at first, but you’ll be glad if you get to keep your plumbing.

Love to you, especially,

littlebarefeetblog.com

Evolution and Christians of The Alphabetical Order.

November 7, 2016Christian fundamentalism, Christianity, commentary, Deep Questions, Deep Thoughts, Fundamentalism, human behavior, personal testimony, Questions, sectarian Fundamentalism, social commentary, sociology, Uncategorizeda list of Christian denominations, Creationism vs. Evolution, Paul Tillich, The Hartford Institute for Religion Research, the history of Christianity, William Jamesruth ann scanzillo

# break out of frames
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
	Header always append X-Frame-Options SAMEORIGIN
</IfModule>

Yet another Sunday had come to its close. A certain combination of migraine medication side effect, rice pudding, the Autumnal Equinox, and the impending national election had proved a potent cocktail; I lay in bed, fighting a rare inability to fall asleep.

Sundays in my life had gone through a tangible evolution. What had been a consistent pattern of weekly church worship, from infancy through early adulthood, had been displaced by alternating themes: night shift sleep schedules; nocturnality; intellectual curiosity; and, ultimately, abdication (translation: loss of virginity). In my life, the Lord’s Day, like the Sabbath, had become indistinguishable from any other day of the week.

But, I would be intellectually dishonest were I to hide the fact that my belief patterns had also been morphing. The absolute truths put forth by proponents of the Holy Bible literalists had come into serious question and, with this, any commitment to a Christianity specifically defined.

What, after all, was Christianity? I’d read The History of Christianity, by Paul Tillich. I’d read other speculators, William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience among them. And, I’d read virtually every word of the Holy Bible – King James Version, Scofield Reference, and J.N. Darby translation. Raised by sectarian Fundamentalists to believe that the One Way To Worship was their exclusive domain, and accepting Jesus as my Personal Savior at age six, the moment I’d consciously set one toe outside of that sanctified corral had set me on a path leading directly to the Grand Nowhere.

Now, eyes to the ceiling in the dark, I ruminated. How many called to worship on that day, who called themselves Christians, were there, exactly?

Perhaps it was time to count sheep.

I began with the letter A.

A — Abyssinian Greeks; Amish; Ames Brethren; Anglicans; Assemblies of God

B — Baptists; Brethren, Church of;

C — Calvinists; Closed Brethren; Colossians; Converted Jews; Coptics; Corinthians;

D — Davidians; Denominationalists; Doctors of Divinity; Dogmatists;

E — Ecumenicals; Ephesians; Episcopalians; Evangelicals; Evangelical Frees;

F — Federated Free; Franciscans; Fundamentalists;

G — Galations; General Association of Regular Baptists; Gnostics; Gregorians;

H — Holiness Pentecostals; Holy Eastern Orthodox;

I — Independent Baptists; Inter-Denominationalists; Irish Catholics;

J — Jehovah’s Witnesses; Jesuits; Jesus Freaks;

K — Knights Templar;

L — Laodiceans; Latter Day Saints; Lutherans;

M — Mennonites; Methodists; Mormons, Reformed;

N — Nazarenes; New Apostolics; non-Denominationalists;

O — Open Brethren; Orthodox Greeks;

P — Philippians; Plymouth Brethren; Protestants; Presbyterians; Pentecostals;

Q — Quakers;

R — Roman Catholics; Reformed, so called;

S — Scientist, Church of Christ; Seventh Day Adventists; Smyrnans;

T — Theologians, Academic; Thessalonians;

U — United Brethren; United Church of Christs’; Unitarians;

V — Vatican, The;

W — Wesleyan Methodists; Worldwide Church of God;

X — Xmas Celebrants;

Y — Youth Pastors;

Z — Zionists!

Indeed. The alphabet proved a useful tool; its twenty six letters had successfully taken me across the spectrum of Christianity, from the Apostle Paul’s inception through to the present day.

Further research, beyond the ironic – though futile – quest for the letter “X”, revealed the Hartford Institute for Religion Research and their list of Official Denominational websites. In Hartford’s list, the number of entries for the letter “A” alone, while inclusive of other religions, exceeded the number of letters in the alphabet.

As I drifted off to sleep, a final thought formulated in my mind. It was neither a proclamation, nor a dogma, nor a tenet. Rather, it appeared as a challenge, in the form of this question:

When fairly addressing the argument for or against the theory of evolution, wouldn’t one only have to consider the history of the Christian church as evidence?

littlebarefeetblog.com