I emailed yesterday's Mother's Day question; Why is the Christian Trinity all male? post to several people I know, and three of the recipients made replies that led to further discussion. All three grew up in The Tiny Kingdom, aka Mt. Brook, Alabama. I knew two of them when I was a kid. Unlike me, they were really smart and went on to become lawyers and then partners in a prominent, respected Birmingham law firm. They ran with a crowd, who met daily in designated watering holes after work, to drink and talk about life. Sometimes I joined them at their watering holes. I understand they still drink and talk about life.
Here is their and my discussion, a grubby "warm up act" for the main event - my discussion with the third responder, a renown artist and sculptress, who was born and raised in The Tiny Kingdom, and escaped.
Lawyer 1
I haven't heard anyone mention the "Trinity" for years, which is a good thing since that bizarre concept makes about as much sense as "original sin"
Me
You must not have been in a church for years? :-)
I haven't, but I know nothing's changed.
Superstition competes vigorously with God in all religions.Lawyer 1
Religion IS a superstitionMe:
That is not totally Accurate. God is in all religions, but human beings, mostly the male variation, have made God into their own image.
Lawyer 2
Interesting speculations about gender in religion.My Mother announced at one of our last Christmas parties that she was convinced that Jesus was actually a woman. Many of the Judaism and Christiantenets seem so inclined. This is Mothers Day by the way.I’m in agreement that our democracy would be better led by a qualified woman in lieu of current prospects. One of my favorite nations, Finland, leaves the government and corporate leadership to women while the men are concerned with more important pursuits like hunting and fishing.Now we can discuss how many angels can dance on the point of a needle.Lawyer 1 to Lawyer 2Your mother was a fireball, and obviously broad-minded as well. And a great sense of humor!Me to the lawyers:The men had many opportunities to run America, and look at how that turned out.Look at the Declaration of Independence -We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.All white men, and nothing about women. The African slaves were freed and black men could vote decades before any women could vote.I don't see a woman in national politics, whom I think is right for the White House. I wish I did see such a woman, because I don't see any men I think are right for the White House.This the first time I heard someone thought Jesus was a woman. I imagine that would be a sight, a naked crucified woman.
Meanwhile, if you guys lived in my skin for a little while, say, a week, you would have an entirely different view of your present views and everything else :-).
Lawyer 1 to me:
I would modify that by making it "Gods" are in all religions. Monotheism came late to the party, and with it came the "male" kingpin- back in the plural-gods days the "mother goddess" was the central figure.
Me to lawyer 1:
Whatever religious people want to call what I was raised to call God, has as many names as there are stars in the heavens, but for some people, leaving this life is the only way they can accept that, whiie others believe it will all their heart, mind and being, and others, such as the Swiss Psychiatrist C.G. Jung, when asked at a party if he believed in God, Jung is said to have replied: "Believe? I know."
I once had a good friend named Dora Kalff, who invented Sandplay Therapy, after she had trained under Jung, who had encouraged her to work with children. Dora and Jung both lived in Zurich.
In the summer of 1988, I spent a month in Zurich with my 3rd wife, who was one of Dora's students. My wife was a licensed clinical social worker. Dora had for students: psychiatrists, psychologists, Jungian analysts, clinical social workers, etc. Dora told her students, I heard it, that the Dalai Lama told her, that Sandplay was applied Buddhism. Dora, and her students actually doing their inner work, all knew God existed.Most of her students were women, and they seemed uncomfortable every time Dora told them, for any real change to occur in the world, the women will have to go first. I argued with her about that, and she told me it was true never the less. When I asked Dora why the Jung Institute had not embraced Sandplay, she told me that she thought it was because they had not embraced the feminine. My wife with me when that happened, looked like she wanted to crawl under a rock and hide.
If you lived in my skin for one day, you would know God exists, and there would be nothing religious or superstitious about it. It is as real as hitting your thumb with a hammer or having an orgasm or simply breathing. It cannot be imagined by the mind. It can only be known by experiencing it.Sloan
Lawyer 1
I am a pantheist, and I suppose that's my equivalent of "god".
Me to Lawyer 1
There is an unfathomable chasm between belief and actual experience.For example, Christians believe God exists, and Jesus existed, and he saved them, even though they were not born yet. But do they know God exists? Have they actually met Jesus? Some of them did move past belief, into knowing, and when that happened, everything changed for them. They were no longer like anyone around them.A timeless movie about Francis of Assisi, Brother Sun Sister Moon, is about that shift.
Lawyer 2
Spinoza was great but we should never lose sight of the significance of
W C Fields. “Everybody has to believe in something, so I believe I’ll have
another drink”.
Lawyer 1
…and for his choice of drink, WC memorably chose alcohol over water, reciting that fishes swim in and poop in water all day.
Me
And there you have it, God Bacchus.
The third responder, E, is about 10 years behind me, I knew one of her older brothers and her parents. E became a remarkable sculptress. She was commissioned to do a statue for Kelly Ingram Park in Birmingham, also known as The Civil Rights Park, where statues memorialize how Birmingham city police brutalized back people marching for the same rights as white people had. Brutalized them with water cannons, German police dogs and night sticks.
I found this online:
Elizabeth MacQueen's statue, "Four Spirits", is a moving tribute to the four girls
who were killed in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing on September 16, 1963. Located on the corner closest to the church, the four girls are represented around a bench: Cynthia Wesley sits on one end of the bench with a Bible in her lap. Carol Denise McNair, the youngest girl killed, releases doves into the air while Addie Mae Collins ties a sash around her dress. The fourth girl, Carole Robertson, stands apart from the bench, in motion as she beckons the girls to church. The sculpture is a beautiful tribute to the innocence of the victims, with the release of the doves symbolizing the hope for peace or the release of these four spirits to heaven. There is a pair of shoes on the ground by the bench under McNair and Collins. Both figures are barefoot in the sculpture, so it is not clear whose shoes they are. However, the shoes that McNair was wearing when she was killed are on display at the Civil Rights Institute, along with other personal effects she had on her that day and the piece of shrapnel found in her skull.
E told me a few years ago that she lost popularity in Mt. Brook after she did that sculpture, and she didn't care what those people thought of her. Here is her and my conversation yesterday.
Me
I promote it?
E
Yes.
You are a “Christian”.Did you ever count how many humans the Bible’s GodKilled, murdered, tortured?Statistics are around.I read one time somewhere, more than all the wars BCEand AD combined. Nice guy, dad, “father”. Insane.Kindness.Where is it?I don’t talk write about this. Incredibly boring and useless.Art, Beauty, Creativity.It is getting more and more difficult to stay in my bubble.Good trying on your side.We are fucked.Me
After reading your first email, I did look up and read how Mother's Day got started. I think being a mother is the most important job on this planet, and I have said so from time to time at my blogs. What I wrote today was aimed at the Christian religion. Were I to go into a Christian church Sunday School class and say those things, it would cause a disturbance. Regardless of how I feel about Christianity today, it is very important in America, especially to the red spectrum, and so I poke it where it least likes to be poked.
You did that statue? If so, can I spread it around?
M
Why would I send someone elses’ work?6’. 230-50lbsOn her way to me from getting a beautiful patina,Ferric gold at foundry in Berkeley.She needs a home.Just got back from Mexico.Had to laugh seeing Manuelfor manual. Spanish auto correctUse my few paragraphs for your sheep.
None of them think.To thinkTo thinkSt. Luke’s you knowBut this insanity is globalat least the Koran before it’s gutted and abused by the likes of the Taliban and other male sadists,supports knowledge, science while education is first given to the females( they raise the children…so first instilled pablum of propaganda).Then Rome with its male horrors brought down the shared male/female Pharaohs of worship in North Africa spreading more oppressive Christianity…..and still going strong.Nothing you aren’t aware.Good luck.We are on the end road.Not a lot of productive time left.xxxemE
Me
That's a beautiful sculpture.No, I'm not a Christian. Since early 1987, my ongoing direct experiences with angels known in the Bible is that God is so much bigger than the Bible, that Christendom is clueless. The Bible's Old Testament God was a pretty rough dude at times. Those angels never displayed to me any kind of physical threat to human beings. The ego, that's another matter altogether.As for my sheep, looking at the analytics for the blog where I posted this column, nobody reads the blog regularly and only a few people have read it.A friend and I do The Redneck Mystic Lawyer Podcast, which averages 80,000 complete watches world wide per episode. Unlike YouTube, Spotify, Facebook, Twitter, etc. the Torrent platform owners, which accept the podcast for their subscribers, like stuff that is different and is free and has no advertising and no soliciting. We address lots of topics and we are controversial relative to the status quo.We recently told the audience that humanity is fucked and is no longer capable of unfucking itself. The cause of it is two things. Demonic influence and loss of the feminine essence in the species. We recommended people of child-bearing age stop making babies and do their best to be true to themselves and the planet. We suggested that all of humanity stop making babies because the species is fucked, and why bring new babies into that? Better for the species to die itself off, before it kills the planet and thus itself.
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