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Today's Topics:

1. Re: Define God please
(xxxxxx-wing news, discussion, and coordination.)


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Message: 1
Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2021 17:05:22 +0000
From: "xxxxxx-wing news, discussion, and coordination."
<[email protected]>
To: "xxxxxx-wing news, discussion, and coordination."
<[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [ r i g h t ] Define God please
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<[email protected]>
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So we get to have our 15 minutes of God by creating Him/It in our own image. Our turn!.

It's probably Whatever It Is when we don?t think or emote: some autistic form of energy that sets thought and matter in orderly motion. Then humans get to mess that up, with ripples over generations, which they call social order or God's plan. Alternatively, social justice. A bit like this woman in New York, I?ll call her W1. She was traveling by subway and she sees this other woman (W2), who kept arranging her hair in a mirror to get it to sit just xxxxxx. This fussing annoys W1 so much that she waits for the doors to open for the next station and with a swift motion, she ruffles up W2?s hair, then runs away in the crowd, knocking over many in row. There.

Trouble is... even if the definition above is accurate, it is not much use. Perhaps we should attempt to define 'Effective God.' After all, we can't avoid human projection here, not even in the rejection of anthropomorphic religions, which is perhaps a premature attempt to escape the perishable and evanescent in our human condition in favor of short-cuts to perennial star dust and bliss. Humans can't do without prayer - the relevant kind - because prayer and humans go together like a horse and carriage; so might as well project away. It?s just words - in which case a quick search in Good Reads will pull up a rainbow of definitions and reflections on God - one more colorful, self-imbued or self-denying than the other. Fun game: pick the conservatives.

If I were to project, I would say God is The Sublime (latin "up to the threshold.") One thing I know is that He doesn't speak, read or write - this is a must. He is illiterate. In Heaven, schools teach illiteracy. Yet He?s so good at Math that He solves by instinct because he knows and does, QED. Einstein said He makes black holes when He divides by zero! I can see that. He inspires awe, the kind that takes the fear of God out of you, because He protects from the tyranny of the Me. For some of us, this energy manifests itself in Christ. I can't imagine another redeeming medium or Godly substance to save my life (no pun), neither can I deny my inconvenient need for substance. "I am the resurrection and the life." This works better than anything else I know.

Otherwise, it?s difficult not to notice how God can become anything sundry humans want or need It to be. When He?s drunk - the Devil. In hangover?the Devil you know. When on call, He sneaks into symmetrical, graceful designs in sumptuous colors to spark Marie Kondo's joy. He can turn into warm refuge, ethereal silence, peace or absence of consciousness. God is in babies, puppies and plants....in creatures so ugly they're cute...or in the unapologetic flow of little engines that can. God is the cruelly kind high-school crush who resists deconstruction, or a cancer patient's newly discovered knack for counting blessings...or historical cycles... or food. God is never having to file for bankruptcy in the meaning-making business, never having to say 'I am done.' Endless options - just leave it to Humans.

Below are a few 'God projections' (read quotes) I saved over time; not necessarily favorites or endorsements, I only thought they were interesting, even funny in their unfunny-ness, so I added them to the collection.The last one is on God?s Nemesis - for special effects.

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?If you are a Christian, you are not a citizen of this world trying to get to heaven; you are a citizen of heaven making your way through this world. ?

? Vance Havner

?The blood of the heroes is closer to God than the ink of the philosophers and the prayers of the faithful.?

? Julius Evola

?Silence is the language of God, all else is poor translation.?

? Rumi

?Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the Gods made for fun.?

? Alan Wilson Watts

"It was for this world that Christ had died: the more evil you saw and heard about you, the greater the glory lay around the death; it was too easy to die for what was good or beautiful, for home or children or civilization--it needed a God to die for the half-hearted and the corrupt.?

? Graham Greene

?Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when he does not want to sign.?

? Th?ophile Gautier

?When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, "Why God? Why me?" and the thundering voice of God answered, There's just something about you that pisses me off.?

? Stephen King

?Every faith in the world is based on fabrication. That is the definition of faith?acceptance of that which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove. Every religion describes God through metaphor, allegory, and exaggeration, from the early Egyptians through modern Sunday school. Metaphors are a way to help our minds process the unprocessable. The problems arise when we begin to believe literally in our own metaphors. Should we wave a flag and tell the Buddhists that we have proof the Buddha did not come from a lotus blossom? Or that Jesus was not born of a literal virgin birth? Those who truly understand their faiths understand the stories are metaphorical.?

? Dan Brown

"God created man and, finding him not sufficiently alone, gave him a companion to make him feel his solitude more keenly."

--- Paul Val?ry

?Beware of any work for God that causes or allows you to avoid concentrating on Him. A great number of Christian workers worship their work. The only concern of Christian workers should be their concentration on God. This will mean that all the other boundaries of life, whether they are mental, moral, or spiritual limits, are completely free with the freedom God gives His child; that is, a worshiping child, not a wayward one. A worker who lacks this serious controlling emphasis of concentration on God is apt to become overly burdened by his work. He is a slave to his own limits, having no freedom of his body, mind, or spirit. Consequently, he becomes burned out and defeated. There is no freedom and no delight in life at all. His nerves, mind, and heart are so overwhelmed that God?s blessing cannot rest on him.?

? Oswald Chambers

?God takes care of us; he thinks of us every minute, and he gives us instructions that are sometimes very precise. Those surges of love that flow into our chests and take our breath away -- those illuminations, those ecstasies, inexplicable if we consider our biological nature, our status as simple primates-- are extremely clear signs.
And today I understand Christ's point of view and his repeated horror at the hardening of people's hearts: all of these things are signs, and they don't realize it. Must I really, on top of everything else, give my life for these wretches? Do I really have to be explicit on that point?
Apparently so.?
? Michel Houellebecq

?If God were omnipresent and omniscient in any literal sense, he wouldn't have bothered to make the universe at all. There is no success where there is no possibility of failure, no art without the resistance of the medium.?
? Raymond Chandler

?I wake up and I see the face of the Devil and I ask him ?What time is it?? And he says:
?How much time do you want???

Diamanda Galas

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??????? Original Message ???????
On Thursday, March 11, 2021 10:03 PM, xxxxxx-wing news, discussion, and coordination. <[email protected]> wrote:

> What?s your description/definition of God?
>
> Sent from ProtonMail Mobile
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