STILL HERETICS?

Another small blast from the past. Edited. Sunrise off the Oregon coast. Not sure where, but I'm guessing that it's north of Coos Bay. Perehaps even north of Florence. Our beaches tend to get smaller the further north you travel. Until you get north of Seaside up towards Astoria which pretty much has no beaches at all. Hills and the Columbia River. 

 From the blog of a druid who also happens to be a Unitarian.    Excellent blog BTW he posts severaltimes a week. "Heresy has it's roots in a Greek word that basically means 'to choose.'" To bad most religions don't really want us choosing anything beyond showing up at the right time with cash in my pockets to throw in the collection plate. In fact ran across the story in The Parish blog of a guy who started attending a mega church. Attended for awhile, received the envelopes for his "offerings." Didn't take long for the mega to suggest very strongly that unless he upped his contribution he could forget about attending THEIR church. He left. Surprise, surprise. 

Can't imagine how they'd act if the traveling rabbi and his "looks like we're sleeping in the orchard tonight" followers darkened their doors. Although they would more likely be asking for directions to the nearest synagogue and when is the Sabbath in this part of the world. 

Ironically this story was one of the reasons that the blogger, who survived Pentacostalism and later became a church of the Nazarene minister, claims that he is no longer a believer. I guess he just got tired of fighting to keep his head above water. One of his fellow Nazarene pastors was basically defrocked when the elders discovered he liked wine. 

The Nazarenes are offshoots of the Methodists. The last time I had communion in a Methodist church we were still doing the Welch's grape juice and tiny cubes of commercial white bread. It takes a lot of imagination to see this as what that itinerant rabbi had in mind. 

Anyway, reading this blog entry got me thinking, always a dangerous occupation. LOL

What continues to puzzle me is this. What each of us experiences of the divine, the unknown, what lies behind the veil; however you describe it, is unique to each of us. I can tell someone else what I experience, but I can’t “prove” it.

I suppose that’s why mystics are viewed with so much suspicion by the Abrahamic religions, especially Christianity and Islam. I could never understand how any “church” could insist that we all had to experience the same things at the same time and in the same way. First the churches call likes of Thomas Aquinas or Ekhart heretics, then when they're safely dead for awhile the church makes them saints. And although I am not a Catholic, I'm barely a Quaker, do not get me started on the last pope to be sainted. John Paul II spent most of his years in the Vatican trying to overturn Vatican II with his attack dog Benedict snapping at the heels for anyone who didn't toe the line. 

Which reminds me. To be honest, there are days when I’m pleasantly surprised when most of us agree where the sun was when I spotted it this morning.