The negative things that some people here tend to attribute to 'religion', are not attributes of religion. They are attributes of people, of large social units, of methods and means of cultural preservation (which is one function of all social institutions, of well known and researched attributes of individuals and/or groups of any number of species.

I've posted often about the confusion in present-day culture between "religion" as advertised by the Rigid Religious Right, which is not religion but social control. (Rev. Gary Davis sang about TRUE religion.) I've posted about the way the RRR grab most of the press on religious matters and how the real, daily faith lived by the majority of believers is a very different thing from the RRR press campaign.

These posts mostly have been ignored. They're not as much fun as being mad at the RRR, nevermind that it means being mad at all religion too! So I guess it should not surprise me that people duped by the current RRR into thinking that it's the major reality of religious life could miss the fact that a similar phenomenon has gone on in the past. But the reality is that in the same periods of time so many anti-religionist folk rant wbout (for the bad things that were done in that time), there was quite positive religious life going on at the very same time and within the very same denominations that did so much wrong.

And this is the realtiy that Hardi and I know now. Sure, the Episcopal Church is getting lots of bad press for the divisions we're struggling with while we try to find a godly way around the places where we're stuck and disunified. But it has so little to do with the vitality and positivity of parish life as we know it not only in our own parish, but as we know it across this Diocese and others. And it makes us sad that so many people are so caught up in the bad news that they never see or hear or experience the good news.

Remember resonating to the dialog in "Pretty Woman" where Julia Robert's hooker-character explains that it's easier to believe the bad things? But our culture still lacks the ability to turn its attention away from the bad news- to think about the hope the good news represents.

That's what Hardi and I fell asleep discussing last night-- the hope of the good news. One thought I had before I dropped off was about the umpteenth suicide-shooter (at Von Maur's this time), from the evening's news-- another young man caught on videiotape in his black coat, dampened affect, raising a gun. "These shooters-- tragically devoid of a belief system that gave them hope," I thought. Then I wondered, "How many fundies, as bad as they are, shoot up malls?"

Where am I going with this. Where I am going with this is that whether the objective realities bear out a life of faith or not, there is something good about having a positive belief system. People have asked me what I'm doing to correct our denominations' wrongs, as if I answer to them; they have no idea that I may very well be doing quite a bit of peace work and just don't care to talk about it here.

More pertinently to this discussion, they also don't tell me what THEY are doing to prevent these hopeless shootings, or how their lack of belief helps kids have hope and stay off that videotape..... so I'm curious how many Mudcatters who ARE helping with THAT social issue DO HAVE a belief system of some kind that involves faith of some kind.


Hardi also reminded me what one of his aged seminary professors used to say when asked about scientific proof of God. He likened it to proving "love:" a couple comes in to get married. Can they prove, scientifically, that they have the kind of love that will sustain a long and difficult relationship in today's world? No... not with today's science at least; but is it there?

MAYBE it is.

~Susan