Mt. 5 - Dealing w/ the Beatitudes

Well, here I am again at work, hoping to get out of here early only to be thwarted by an erring Zip disk. Damn. So while I wait for the 250 MB disk to do the “long format” and with Dirty Vegas (”Throwing Shapes”) blaring on my speakers (I love my iPod) I can’t think of anything better to do than to continue the chapters that I began last Friday.

Thirty years ago it was all new and, not being a proficient reader, I read the four gospels four times (each) before moving on to any other books of the bible. But at the same time I vaguely remember that it was a bit of a race to read as many books as possible as quickly as possible. Lord knows why, but I was hanging around with a fellow Christian named Jim, and there must have been some male-competitiveness or something that led to that approach. Needless to say, I’m not in the same hurry anymore. And, in that I did spend 15-years pouring over the text, it’s more a case of re-reminding myself of things more than anything else. My current emphasis is definitely on the reflective angle of it all and addressing the questions that led me to cease my “association” with the scriptures.

Technorati Tags: biblestudy, matthew’sgospel

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Mt. 4 - Drop Everything & Follow Jesus

After despensing with the devil, and hearing about John the Baptist’s arrest, Jesus begins his ministry and calls out the 12 disciples. I remember thinking that that was supposed to be the model for all Christians, drop everything and follow Jesus. I think spiritually it holds true, but I guess way back when, as a 15-year-old thinking about what I wanted to do with my life, I just assumed that it was to just “live for God” and somehow live like the disciples. I mean, anything less would be to be “double-minded” or to have two “masters.” And I was most definitely of the “wear your spirituality on your sleeve” kind of person. Little wonder that friends who didn’t share my beliefs became scarce and eventually nonexistent. The thing is that this is a perfect example of the mistake I made looking at the bible and making the assumption that this was that way the all of life was supposed to be lived. Jesus has a real message here, but I don’t know that it’s that we have to all be full-time preachers. Anyway, I didn’t get that back then.

Technorati Tags: biblestudy, matthew’sgospel

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The Bombs of Salvation

I was going to continue reflections on my bible reading from a couple days ago, Matthew 5 The Sermon on the Mount. But I’m pretty dead tonight so I should really crash. Before I do I have to say that the one things that I wanted to note was the irony between reflecting on Jesus’ “Beatitudes” and the fact that this evening the US President decided to unload on a country halfway across the world. In prior explanations of the reasons for this action and what he hoped to accomplish I find it amazingly arrogant that we’d take it upon ourselves to “liberate” a people who have not asked for our “assistance.” It’s a bit like saving everyone in a village by burning down the village and killing half of it occupants. I am very fearful that we are only digging ourselves in deeper and inviting the wrath of the rest of the world. I guess we really didn’t learn anything from Vietnam. This does not sound at all like the Kingdom of God Jesus spoke about. JBB

Music: The Na-Na Song-Sheryl Crow-Tuesday Night Music Club

Technorati Tags: biblestudy, matthew’sgospel

Full TV Schedule & Matt. 4 & Matt 5

The days have been pretty busy. Sunday night the Sci-Fi channel started up their “Dune” mini-series follow-up “Children of Dune” so that’s taken up a huge chunk of Sunday night, Monday night and Tuesday night. Well, actually only two hours, but then because they tend to repeat the showing two additional times back-to-back each night, I had to catch those parts too. I’m kind ‘a weird that way. Ack. TV, what a wonderful productivity killer.

Actually in view of all that, I’ve gotten a ton of stuff done. Monday night I sent off my income tax, went shopping for more diet stuff (@ Target this time), then watched TV. After TV I spent a little time “unwinding” with Danni.com and then as odd as this is going to seem read a couple of chapters of my bible before falling asleep.

Technorati Tags: biblestudy, god&sex, matthew’sgospel, tv, video

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First Steps: Visiting with an Old Friend

Matthew chapters 1-3. You notice that I waited until a quiet moment at the end of the day to begin this journey. First choice was where to start. A couple of weeks ago I had thought to start in some place like the Psalms, but tonight I thought that the verses might be a bit too ethereal for me right now. Then I thought about the Gospel of John but that starts out pretty much screaming about Jesus’ Godhood. So I decided to start in the same place where I started almost 30-years ago, Matthew’s Gospel.

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Praying? Moi?

This morning my former-love sent a cryptic e-mail: “Hmmm, I wonder if JBB is praying?” Ack. What does that mean? Granted, this is the most she’s written in a single message since 2/18 but it’s just enough for me to hang myself. Kind of makes me wonder what it might have been that she sensed. It’s interesting enough the juxtaposition of my buddy’s comment about me not going to Danni.com last night and her question this morning about prayer. Add to that, when I was fantasizing about our next time together I thought about the first time we got together this year. And because part of me doesn’t want to go back to the way it was, I kept on seeing the image of how out-of-sorts she was because she wanted to be with me so much but hated what it was doing to me and to her, and I kept hearing in my heart that it’d never be like that again. But because that’s all I’ve known of her, then my heart kept thinking, “then, it must be over.” Needless to say, there were a very mixed bag of feelings there.

So what does this mean? I wish I could ask her. Damn communication-embargo! I guess it’s another one of those, “I’ll know when I know” sort of things.

Technorati Tags: faith&doubt, god&sex

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Like Carbs…

I was talking with a friend over the phone and something interesting happened when we were saying good-night. I mentioned that, in that I wasn’t going to get anything else done (because of the damn computer problem) that I might as well check out what’s happening on Danni.com (a popular p0rn website) to which my buddy said something to the effect that I shouldn’t do that. Huh? I was surprised enough at his response that i asked him, “and why not?” He said that i wasn’t supposed to be doing that anymore. Okay, this was weird. Here’s my “wow check-out the rack on that babe” buddy who continually sent me a link to playboy-esque calendar sites, and he’s telling me…. Well, actually, now that I think about it, it was nice, because I knew that he was just trying to encourage me to do what I said that i wanted to do for myself. But it was a very funny thing to hear him say. I told him that it was really all about balance (something that we’d talked about with the diet stuff). In my old “Christian” way of thinking there was no balance, and God knows that I wasn’t really completely in balance when I ignored that part of my life. So we agreed that p0rn was a bit like “Carbs,” pretty important to living but one cannot live by them alone and it’ll probably make you fat if that’s all you “eat”… or something like that. It was all very weird. JBB

Technorati Tags: faith&doubt, friends, lust, video