My brother Felix runs an orphanage in Cambodia. From the Christian point of view he is definitely a sinner but he’s going to heaven anyway. Directors of Cambodian orphanages go directly to heaven without passing through purgatory.
It is a deal Buddha made with Jesus a long time ago. In return Christian tele evangelists are allowed into heaven as long as at some point in their career they admit to all their decadence and lies in a well promoted teary eyed prime time spectacle.
I think the deal sucks because directors of Cambodian orphanages are truly doing gods work regardless of whether they care less about the Bible. and tele evangelists are idiots.
I came across a list of prison slang from an article in Mother Jones magazine and one term caught my eye:
“diesel therapy”: a lengthy bus trip used as a punishment.
I remember my father’s story. He spent many years in US prisons for drugs and acting out violently against the Vietnam war. But that’s another story.
Regarding this slang term, he never mentioned it to me but his stories clearly reflected the practice.
Guards would chain him face up on the corrugated metal floor of a van with his arms and legs outstretched. Then they would drive for hours on end from one prison facility to another. Sometimes it would be over 12 hours he said.
It wasn’t like he needed to be transferred because often they would just turn around and go back to where they started. And they weren’t tying to get information from him or punish him. They just did this kind of stuff to inmates they didn’t like because they had the power to.
He suffered from migraines anyway, so this torture was beyond painful for him. Early in the trip a migraine would set in and it would just get worse and worse with each rumbling bump in the road.
So now I know what its called: diesel therapy. Another service provided by our tax funded prison system.
It sure taught my dad a lesson! It taught him that authority is corrupt and cruel. It is best to be servile to it, like an abused dog who loves its owner. And it made him angrier. It increased the amount of pain in the world.
He is a great example of how prisons waste money and help nobody (except for the corporations that run them and make huge amounts of tax funded money from them).
I think a name can be give or take power from a person. For example, if you called a child “Idiot” as their name it would probably cause problems for them. All names cary some sort of influence for the child.
We got Cazimirs name through a series of steps:
1. Loretta dreamt that his name was “like Kashmir but different”.
2. Loretta’s mother pointed out that the Patron Saint of Lithuania is Casimir (Lithuanian is their heritage).
Once we settled on Casimir we debated whether to spell it with a z or s: Cazimir or Casimir.
Online searches revealed a Polish Church in Baltimore (my mother’s city of birth! Good sign!) called the “Faith Community of St. Casimir”. It is a Catholic Church run by Franciscan Friars, a group of people I like.
The web site has all sorts of cool things like this photo:
I find this man’s face very endearing.
The site also has a lot of cool quotes like this Prayer For Peace by St. Francis of Assisi:
“Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is doubt, faith.
Where there is despair, hope.
Where there is darkness, light, and where there is sadness joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;
To be understood, as to understand;
To be loved, as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive.
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.”
—–
If we all embodied that prayer life would be better I believe.
But then I got to the “Prayer in Honor of St. Casimir”. It goes like this:
“O God, the giver of all heavenly grace,
in the angelic young adult, Casimir,
you did unite wondrous innocence,
great prudence, diligent fidelity to duty,
and generous charity with strict penance.
By his merits and prayers grant unto us
who have not followed him in his avoidance
of sin, the grace to imitate him in his
voluntary penance for sin. Amen”
——
These words did not jibe with me: “diligent fidelity to duty”
“strict penance”
“avoidance of sin”
“voluntary penance for sin”
Woa, lighten up, dude. That’s where me and Catholicism part ways. This is not the kind of energy I like. But I love the name. So we decided to spell it “CAZIMIR” with a Z. The Z is our way of giving Cazimir the freedom to be all the good things that history has imbued in his name while making him unique and individual, free to forge his own path as well. Every time I call his name I will have that meaning in the call. Being treated in that way he will know those options. It will influence him. How much only God knows.
Cazimir Constantine Gendville-BrooksChurch was born in the Brooklyn Birthing Center, NY, this morning at 4:44am, July 3rd 2008. There to celebrate his arrival were Gennaro, Loretta (obviously!), Saomi, aunty Hannah and the great birthing center staff.
Loretta was in labor for about a day and a half. The final push was about half an hour. Everything went smoothly.
We chose his name because Loretta had a dream that his name was Cashmir but different. Her mother pointed out that Casimir is the patron saint of Lithuania, their heritage. So we settled on Cazimir because, well, we just liked it. The same goes for Constantine. It is also Loretta’s mother’s name (Constance).
Today we found out that Cazimir means “Peace Maker and Famous Destroyer” according to YeaBaby.com. I like that. Peace Maker. I also like Famous Destroyer. I’m a HUGE fan of another famous destroyer, the Hindu Goddess Kali, who destroys all and everyone. You don’t mess with Kali. There’s nobody better to have on your side than somebody who can obliterate the universe. Because of that she’s popular amongst the Hindus.
Below are photos of the Peace Maker and Famous Destroyer’s first few minutes in this world.
A child has a heightened ability to take in stimuli but does not yet have the tools to deal with this stimuli.
Children’s’ senses are just as acute as an adult. In some cases their senses are even better, for example most children have better hearing and eyesight than adults.
What they don’t have yet is contextual analysis tools. When they see something they might not have the experience to be able to put the thing in context and analyze it. They have not seen enough violence to know how to process it, for example. An adult has seen so much violence that they can easily put it away in the part of their brain that deals with violence.
That part of the brain has developed the tools to diffuse or otherwise rationalize the violence so that it does not do any great damage to the rest of the body. For example an adult can see a murder in a movie and the mind easily explains that it is just acting and thus we don’t get upset by it.
A child however does not have these tools fully developed yet and the violence has nowhere to go. So it gets dealt with in various ways; it resurfaces later as trauma; it is expressed as violence to others; it does damage to the body via cancer or another stress; or the child actually inflicts violence to their own body.
This is why it is so important to be aware of what a child is exposed to.
But I do not think quarantine is the best route. A child can’t develop the tools unless they are exposed. If you keep a child away from violence their whole childhood, when they go into the world one violent event could destroy them.
They need to be exposed to real life as children, but HOW this is done needs to be considered with great care. I think the parent has to perform an ongoing proactive role as that part of the brain that the child does not yet have developed.
The typical example is the conversation almost every parent has with a child about how movies are just actors and not real. The parent is helping the child process the information, helping the child exercise that part of the brain.
Obviously helping a child develop is a fine line and can easily fall into propaganda and brain control. I strongly think that the child knows better what is good for them than I do. Helping the child develop their brain to deal with elements of life comes from the perspective that the child already has the essence of those tools already.
The adult is only a guide, much like a mountain guide helps climbers up a mountain. Like the guide is the employee hired by the mountain climbers, the parent is there to serve the child in their climb. The child is the boss of their soul. The parent only guides as somebody who is more knowledgeable with the current terrain.
But as the guide, there is tremendous responsibility. The adult must understand that the environment for the child is crystal clear and new. The great tragedy is when the adult fails to realize that even though the child doesn’t yet have the tools to process the environment fully, the child takes it all in with great intensity.
When you talk on the phone with the child in the back seat, when you glance at someone, when you speak in a certain tone of voice, when you say words (every single word): it is all taken in with complete clarity. Never mind that the child appears to not be paying attention. Their ears, their eyes, all of their senses are working perfectly.
The appearance that they are not paying attention is merely because, like all humans, they can multitast and also their mind is not necessarily engaged. But their body is engaged and they take it in and it gets lodged somewhere inside.
That is why a child can come out with something totally surprising. For example my four year old daughter put on a dress the other day and said, “I feel so sexy in this dress.” Nobody ever told her she looked sexy, but she probably picked it up when adults were talking about something else and thought she wasn’t paying attention.
The danger occurs when we loose control and presume that the child isn’t taking it in.
Here is a great rendition of the Beatles song “Hey Jude” by a little boy still in his diapers. Great talent!
I personally think child prodigies are risky business. People called me a genius when I was a kid and all it did was make me do grown up things when I was a kid. Big deal.
The presumption was that when I grew up I would advance even more into some mega genius. But that didn’t happen. And to make things worse, now that I’m grown up I spend a lot of time doing kids things. And that is not considered cute at all, especially when it is your girlfriend asking you to “grow up!”.
The moral of the story is that there is a time for everything. Let a kid be a kid and they will learn this. When they grow up they will be very good grown ups, not confused people trying to be something they are not.
That is why I clap with joy when my four year old brushes her hair. That for me is the height of my expectations from her.
This is not to say I treat her like a dumb version of a grown up. She is amazingly intelligent. I treat her like I treat my web designers who don’t speak English very well.
They are very educated, smart people who know more about certain things than I do, including their own language(s). I tone my English down with them, not in a condescending way but so communication is maximized.
John
Southern Baptist upbringing, currently an apostate (somebody who has lost their faith).
My father was a Southern Baptist Minister, and I was raised deep in that tradition. I was taught to believe that the Bible should be interpreted literally and that Jesus is the only path towards salvation. Fundamentalism in Christianity, and I guess in any religion, does not allow you to compartmentalize your life. So, the religious beliefs we were given intended to permeate every part of our life.
It informed how we related to others, what type of television we watched, and whether we drank alcohol or not. Proselytizing, sharing our faith with others, was also a huge part of the religious experience. And the religious experience was everything. I remember in high-school, in addition to playing football and being in student government and all that, I was known as the devout Christian. I would take my Bible to study hall to read.
I can remember a particular time in study hall when someone came to me and they were having some problems in life. It was an opportunity for me to share the idea of salvation, as I understood it, and we prayed on the spot. He became a born again Christian, right there in the study hall. It was exhilarating!
I was like this everywhere. Because I was a quarterback in football I was welcomed into the party circle in high school. I would go to these parties and make a point to get a clear glass and fill it with milk. While everyone else was getting wasted and engaging in all sorts of licentious, sinful behavior I walked around with my glass of milk and my Bible.
As I look back at it now, it is like remembering another person. It is interesting, though, that the seeds of my faith’s own destruction were formed in my very desire to be a better Christian. In college, and I went to a religious college, I got into Christian Apologetics, which is the study of Christian philosophy, because I wanted to be a better defender of Christianity. I wanted to learn how to counter those people who pointed out Christianity’s flaws.
This lead me to study philosophy, and was an important part in my becoming doubtful of my religion. At the time that was a big thing. There was a year or two when I literally didn’t go a day without breaking down and crying. When you are in the fundamentalist evangelical tradition you take faith seriously, and when you begin to question it, then it is not simply a small tinkering with the beliefs, you are engaging in a complete overhaul of your entire being.
Because the religion deeply affects your whole identity, your whole concept of reality, to change it is a very painful transition. But I had to change. One of the things that really bothered me was the concept that people were going to spend eternity in torment, anguish and hell if they did not accept that Jesus was the son of God, that he came and died for our sins, and that he rose from the grave.
I remember one night, I was sharing my new doubts with a Christian friend, and, after listening to me quietly, she looked at me with concern and sadness, and said, “John, I think you might be the Anti-Christ.” But I kept thinking of the majority of the world who would never be exposed to Christianity and thus, according to what I was taught, were destined for hell. It seemed profoundly unfair. I decided that if it is true that they are going to hell, then I did not want to worship a God that lets that happen.
My mother was very sad about my decision. I had became an Apostate, she would say. That’s somebody who has lost the faith. She has only recently realized to what extent I’ve drifted way from the beliefs she so tried to instill in me. I get an e-mail from her everyday now asking me to go to church, and saying how much she loves me and is praying for me.
I have mixed feelings about this because I know she wants me to believe the right things, but at the same time I feel like a tool. Christians have this way of being so nice and solicitous to you, but it is always doubtful whether they really like you or whether they want you to change your beliefs. I even feel this with my mother.
Up until recently I had tried to be honest with my parents regarding my changes, but that just got me nowhere. It was just a source of frustration for all of us, because I would attempt to articulate my new views, but for my mother they were simply incomprehensible. Her understanding is that once you become a born again Christian, then you have reached the goal, and there is nowhere to go from there.
So, it is a conundrum for her that I could once be a devout Christian and now no longer have those beliefs. That’s why I’ve started lying to her, telling her things like, “Oh yes, mother, I’ll be in church for Easter. As a matter of fact I’m looking forward to church. And I’ll be thinking of you mother.” But I’m not going to church. Since it makes her feel better about her only son’s eternal destination, I don’t feel so bad about lying.
But I’m not an atheist now, because I still feel there is a God. I’m perhaps an agnostic, or a deist, even though deism went out a few centuries ago. As much as I’ve purged myself, there’s still the notion that something much bigger exists. It is probably impossible for me to ever comprehend it.
I have a faith in something I can not understand, so I don’t put much importance into it. My faith now is mainly an ethical one, as opposed to being metaphysical or spiritual. The pivotal value now is really about being a good person, treating other people with respect. To me that’s what Christianity is really about. Christ emphasized your interaction with others as the starting point for your relationship with God.
I still think Christ was a good example, just like Gandhi or Mother Theresa. Christ was a liberal, a revolutionary. The only condemnatory language he ever had was directed towards the religious leaders. And at the same time he hung out with those who were considered the most corrupt in his society: tax collectors, people in cohoots with the Roman empire, prostitutes.
After all, his first miracle was to change water into wine. It was at a wedding, and back then they didn’t just have a wedding celebration for a few hours; it lasted days. They drank and danced and had huge parties. So, at one of these parties that Jesus was attending, after a few days they ran out of liquor. And who do they turn to? Jesus. He stepped up to keep the party going! That may be a liberal interpretation, but it shows how He embraced humanity.
We don’t have a God’s eye point of view and it would be dishonest to try and live our lives as if we did. We have a lot of questions and very few answers. And we should embrace that. We should be more tolerant, with humility, admitting that we don’t have all the answers. I remember my father telling me that any problem in life can be answered by the Bible.
That was certainly how he dealt with any problem he had with my mother. Before they got divorced, she wanted to go and get counseling, but he would refuse and say the Bible was the only counseling they needed. Yet, since he was a Southern Baptist Minister, he was the final arbiter of what the Bible meant. This created an authoritarian, oppressive family life – not good. Not good at all. I’ve been estranged from my father for some time.
Interestingly enough, though, recently I’ve begun to reexamine my relationship with my father,. Up to this point I’ve always had forbidding, ominous dreams about him. They were very unpleasant. But over the past few weeks I’ve been having sympathetic dreams towards him.
Frankly, I’m not sure that I’m too crazy about my new dreams, because it was much easier for me when I didn’t see any humanity in my father at all, when I just saw him as this monster. Now, these dreams have been portraying him in a much more human light, with faults and shortcomings. Oddly, these subtleties are more difficult to live with.
