One of my problems is that, inside my mind, I do not possess The Proper Respect.
My problem is that, again and again and agan, I have discovered that all the things I was supposed to repsect were NOTHING.
I don’t mean good. I don’t mean bad.
I mean NOTHING.
Psychiatry, I discovered, did NOTHING about mental illness. Every test showed that talk therapy had no effect whatsoever on the patient.
Not good. Not a Giant Conspiracy.
NOTHING.
I discovered that the Greatest Good my teacher-parents had assure me of, Education, meant NOTHING.
You need a degree to be accepted by the establishment, but nobody in the establishment could find out whether anybody had this EDUCATION except by the records.
The “education” itself means NOTHING.
Religions always say that their payoff is after death.
You can’t argue with that. In fact, I respect that more than religions like Communism that insist that they pay off in THIS world.
I was always very tiresome in pointing monomaniaclly to the fact that every Communist state had to kill people who tried to escape from it.
The folks who got paid for it kept writing about how Communism was theologically or ideologically off base. I kept pointing to the machine guns they needed to keep people in.
Communism collapsed the minute the tanks stopped rolling. But the people who said it was ideologically or theocratically incorrect are the ones who are still getting paid.
I am told that if one wears a costume that says “Police” he should have a gun.
As soon as that was tested, with gun permits, it collapsed.
People who went through the clearance procedure to have their gun permitgs did far, far better with guns than the guys in the costumes.
As always, nobody noticed.
Protestant today insist that one have a theology degree.
But despite my official identity as a Catholic, aka, Eastern Rite, convert, I remain a real, out-of-date, old-fashioned Protestant.
I try to be respectful.
But somewhere in me, when I see grown man in a costume, whether he calls it a uniform or a casuble or a Pope’s tiara, I see somebody who is being silly.]
Let me now explain that I wrote this in a comatose state, when I wasn’t thinking right.
Grovel, grovel.
#1 by joe rorke on 11/13/2005 - 4:26 pm
I especially like that idea about “nobody noticed.” You have mentioned this in other writings. Also, the idea that “nobody notices” the obvious. I need, we need, to remember that because it is so important and it is so true. But why don’t they notice? Are they afraid to notice, unwilling to notice, unwilling to call a spade a spade, conditioned by society to not notice? There has to be a reason for not noticing. Especially, there has to be a reason for not noticing the so-called obvious. Is it blindness, deafness, ignorance, unwillingness, fear?
#2 by joe rorke on 11/13/2005 - 4:40 pm
When I was a young guy I decided it was stupid to salute a piece of clothing. I wanted to know about the person inside the piece of clothing. Being young and stupid, I did what I was told to do. In retrospect I have decided that my earlier idea was the correct idea. Especially, when I see what I see happening today. Yesterday, the local police chief appeared on television in his costume with the stupid looking scrambled eggs on his cover. I know him personally. I know him to be a thoroughly corrupt human being that has been that way throughout his career as a “law enforcement” officer. He enforces the laws that his bosses tell him to enforce. I brought to his attention once a woman who had been raped in the presence of her son. He laughed it off. He told her to forget about it. The rapist was one of the local CI personell. This was when “the chief” was just another flunky pretending to be a cop. A company man. A team player. In a costume. The costume itself is a lie.
#3 by Peter on 11/13/2005 - 6:43 pm
When you don’t talk about these serious problems, it becomes your fault.
When no one talks about them, they can pretend the problems do not exist. So then if YOU talk about them, the problem is with YOU.
Now if you talk about something you have first hand experience with, the problem is even then with you. You must have an attitude problem. In other words, they blame you, the victim.
We need to hear more of the real stories like Bob tells and Joe just told. Otherwise evil keeps on getting away with it.
Let me cut to the chase. That man Joe mentions is evil.
He is destined in life to wear a uniform: if not the blue, then day-glow orange.
We can all see clearly who control society now: the flunkies and the evil. It was the same in Communism. Let’s just hope that when fortune’s wheel turns and the good again have their day that the evil ones are not allowed to retire on their pensions as they did in the Eastern Bloc.
#4 by lemon on 11/13/2005 - 7:53 pm
I am of a protestant heritage. Not too long ago I became a Catholic. To make a long story short, I find that I agree about costumes. However, no costumes can be pretty silly too. You know the jeanand t-shirt, we’re all the same mentality. Anyway, one thing I enjoyed about the recent pope’s funeral was seeing our ” Christian president”, wife, and others have to at least predend respect. Shari
#5 by Bob on 11/14/2005 - 9:51 pm
Lemon, there is a piece below called, “Martyr, Second Class” about how I converted from Methodist, my grandfather was a circuit rider when Methodism was still a church, to Melkite, a Uniate chruch.
One day the priest did a homily on the exact subject of costumes. He said that Jimmy Swaggart did a sermon on how ridiculous it was that priests got all dressed up in robes.
Then he said, “You know, he’s right. We don’t need these robes. But we love God and we want to look good for him.”
But a Eucharist on a stone by a Padre in an army uniform is just as much a Eucharist as the old Christmas Mass from Rome that was long and in Latin.
In a Uniate Church the priest dresses up and the congregation is welcome to come in street clothes. In a Protestant church the preacher has on his suit and the worshippers have on their Sunday best.
As Saint Paul said, it ain’t the uniform, it ain’t the ritual, it is Christ.
Though he said it in a more sophisticated way, he’s nodding approval.