Re: One nation under God......Maybe?
I tend to not involve myself with religious conversations, for a variety of reasons, not the least which being that religion is intimately personal<br /><br />In a neat little work supposedly written in 1625, but quite possibly in The Sixties - or by a guy named Max in 1927 - whichever, there is a work called the Desiderata, which I will post in a separate thread just cause its quite beautiful and if you havent read it, you should, but I digress ... here is a small piece of it<br /><br />Therefore be at peace with God,<br />whatever you conceive Him to be.<br />And whatever your labors and aspirations,<br />in the noisy confusion of life,<br />keep peace in your soul. <br /><br />Whatever you conceive him to be ...<br /><br />God can be anything, from Hairy Thunderer to cosmic muffin, but its more a matter that God is an ideal, something to hold in highest light, a moral standard for humanity<br /><br />those ten commandments are something no longer held as sacred, they are a joke<br /><br />God is what YOU concieve him to be, Great Spirit, Holy Father, an internal guiding light<br /><br />And to have a school system FORBID, yes people, FORBID mentioning GOD, then its time to make a stand that this nation, the United States of America, was formed by a bunch of pissed off people that wanted among other things religious FREEDOM, because they were censored under English rule<br /><br />Not that I wish to confuse the idea of Santa Claus with God, but read these old words, wont take too long<br /><br />"Dear Virginia:<br /> " Your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age.<br /> "They do not believe except what they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little.<br /> "In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of gasping the whole of truth and knowledge.<br /> "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus.<br /> There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The external light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.<br /> Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus.<br /> "The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in this world.<br /> "You tear apart the baby's rattle to see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart.<br /> "Only faith, poetry, love, romance can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.<br /> "No Santa Claus? Thank God he lives, and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood." <br /><br />I just wish that the idea of a God, something greater and purer than ourselves, could be as finely felt by a fifty year old, as Santa Claus is felt in the heart of a five year old
