The god of War

"The god of War" is the title of this post. I had to write the word "god" with a lower case "g" because it's my firm belief that God wants All of Us to stop making war.

Strange that God is so Forgiving and Merciful.

He's also completely Just:

If we make war, He'll forgive us; but, His Justice gives us massive suffering during and after the war...

How does one explain the Creator of All That Is?

Best way I know of (that won't drive one plum crazy) is to look at what He created (and, even looking at these creations can make one Wonder...)...

Still, these days, we must look Very Deeply into what He's created to see HIM...

The { image credit } is a site with sights you may not want to see, like:
"She Survived Iraq — Then Shot Herself at Home"

Other Spaces you might look into, to give you more to ponder about what God may be up to with us humans, are the related studies listed after this explanation on scienceblogs.com:

"A few recent psychological studies about religious beliefs presented seemingly contradictory results: One found that reading violent biblical passages made readers more aggressive; two others concluded that mentioning "God concepts" made people behave less selfishly. ScienceBloggers dig into the nitty gritty of these experiments, and discuss how the results might apply to phenomena like terrorism."

Here are the study links:

In smite of my own thoughts on religion...

Psychology and Religion

Does Religion Make You Meaner or Nicer? Inquiring Minds, Etc.

Obey God — Kill!

Two Americas: Past, Present and Future

Happy Pondering...

Poems Like Warm Wine

Many people are like me--we have some very good friends who we've never met in person. Something happens and the conventionally abnormal distancing that the Internet can instill is warmed way up and a true friendship blossoms.

This is what happened with Anna...

I'm a poet and she's a poet. She's young and I'm old. We're both religious (in "different" Faiths). And, we're both "weird"...

Not so long ago, I was blessed by technology. There, in my e-mail, was a link to an audio file of Anna Saying one of her poems!

I get nice chills just remembering the sound of her voice mingling with the meaning of the words...

So, prepare to be positively Enchanted...

Turn up your volume and relax into the magic of Anna's poetry...

strange



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dusting for prints

Here's a link to Anna's blog...

The Truth Shall Set You Free..

Dave Lucas published "Egyptian Blogger Sentenced to Prison" today.

I haven't checked out the facts to assertain the guilt or innocence of the blogger in question, but the posting made me remember a link off the site I've recommended here a few times, GlobalVoices ( Dave likes it, too!) .

The link takes you to a "Handbook for bloggers and cyber-dissidents" which helps those under governmental oppression get their words out to the world.

After this foray into the story's context, I went to GlobalVoices itself and found Much More Coverage...

This in turn reminded me of the oppression of a religious group in Egypt. Here's that story...

Science & Religion

This is one of the latest pictures of our Solar System neighbor, Saturn.

It was taken by the spacecraft, Cassini, which has been tirelessly working to expand our knowledge of Saturn since 2004. And that mission began after the spacecraft had taken seven years just to reach Saturn.

Some folks like to say we shouldn't spend so much on space missions when people here on earth need so much. This is a valid concern, yet there's much more money than is spent on space in the pockets of people who have more money than they know what to do with...

Sure, they earned it (hopefully honestly) and have the right to decide what they want to do with it. Still, there's a crying need for all members of humanity to become more spiritual and truly help each other.

I'll leave final answers of this money-for-space issue to history...

Carolyn Porco, the Cassini Imaging Team Leader, maintains a site full of marvelous images called, CICLOPS/Space Science Institute.

Just in case you haven't thought about our neighbor Saturn recently, here's a picture showing the relative sizes of our major neighbors (Saturn's the one to the right of Jupiter...):

And for those who doubt that Science and Religion can agree, I propose looking into the message, Science and Religion Explored.

One closing thought:

Many people think Spirituality is somehow divorced from daily living. To me this seems to fall far short of the evidence. If God created everything, wouldn't it make sense that Spirituality would hold all the answers for our mundane, day-to-day problems (personal or global)?

Where Do I Turn?

So much is wrong in the world...

So much effort must be spent just to stay slightly positive...

Most folks just give up.

Oh, they may still go to a church or mosque or temple but beyond a passing prayer for peace, not much gets done...

Our post, The Death of Violence !, has 64 simple and powerful things each of us could do, every day, to further peace...

But...

Beyond the good deeds we all need to do lies the need for a solid connection to a Spiritual Path.

Back in the post, My God, Your God, Our God, I listed quite a few Names of God from different cultures and Faiths. Right here, I want to list these names of the major Founders of Religion: Zarathustra, Krishna, Buddha, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, The Báb, and Bahá’u’lláh.

More and more people are coming to realize that these Prophets of God were all speaking the same "Language". When you look carefully at the core teachings of each of Their Faiths, you find the very same Truths. The only real variance in what They each brought to us is in the social laws, which must change periodically as humanity grows up...

So, how does a person decide which Faith to cleave to? If they're all teaching basically the same thing why do people fight over their religious beliefs?

According to a WebPage titled, Major Branches of Religions Ranked by Number of Adherents, there are twelve "classical" major world religions and 65 "branches" in those twelve "classical" styles of Faith.

If you look at that page, you'll find Many More "sub-branches"...

Ever get the suspicion that all those flavors of religion are created by people and may or may not have much to do with God's Wishes?

The more I talk to earnest believers in various Faiths, the more I find agreement that the Prophets each brought the Faith of God and people immediately began to erode It's pristine beauty and purity, created their own materialized variants, and made it quite easy for massive human slaughter due to "religious" strife !

This is one post I really hope to get many comments on...

Religion ?vs? Spirituality

I posted the following comments in the B.I.D.E. BackYard and got an interesting response:

"The B.I.D.E. Blog is born. It purports to be "Spiritual Commentary on Current Events" and this Group is said to be "an aid to Seeing current events in the Light of Spirituality".
I want to kick-off discussion here by proposing that:

"Spirituality without Religion is near-fantasy
&
"Religion without Spirituality is near-boredom...

"I framed that proposal in a somewhat weird way to stimulate a hearty discussion.

"Wanna jump in?"
~ Alex