Good vs. Evil...

Thinking of those black-habited nuns that helped raise me all those many years ago. I felt like a little caged monkey (I believe in Evolution, yes, Darwin's Dangerous Idea is spot on!), in Catholic Grade School. Couldn't wait to escape out into the neighborhood. Always tried my best to be invisible during the long, boring hours in school. The whole religion thing was delivered to us with such a heavy, literal-minded hand. I resisted immediately, and carried that resistance deep in my DNA for many, many decades afterwards.

Today, I'd say I'm mystically & poetically, (for more on this topic check in with Patti Smith & Nick Cave), connected to my religious upbringing. I see the magic of the mass; the incense, the pomp & circumstance, the theater, the transubstantiation, the wine into blood (ritual vampirism), the bread into flesh (ritual cannibalism), the consuming of the body of the Lord by the the gathered flock (how to get close to Jesus, not to worship him but to BE JESUS? Consume his blood and flesh, TAKE HIM INTO YOUR BODY!), as a symbolic, magical ritual, that was orchestrated to get us to some kind of transcendent state.  Count me in as a mystic, a pagan, a druid, a spirit-seeker and soul-stirrer.  

And what does it mean to BE JESUS? "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Humility, Forgiveness, Love, and an ability "to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" without complaint: "they know not what they do."

What was the point of all the smoke and mirrors, the hurly-burly, the grand pomp? 

Today I'd say it was simply a drama of GOOD vs. EVIL. A sort of play-acting that illustrated the concept that both GOOD and EVIL reside deep in the Human Heart (see Carl Jung & Joseph Campbell). All of us in the Human Herd are capable of the GREATEST GOOD AND THE MOST VILE EVIL. And we know the difference. We can choose, we don't need a Heaven or a Hell to reward or punish us. We embody heaven and hell, right here, right now. We can embrace the symbolic nature of everything around us: practice rituals and embrace the poetry & the myths. Try to transcend our human flaws & foibles, hold ourselves to account.

And, well, we see that big ponderous drama played out every day. Yes, there is GOOD in the world, and there is EVIL. Easy to see it, it is IN us. We can all choose to throw our lot in with one side or the other, (as Dylan said: "you've got to serve somebody"), but it is important to realize, to know definitively, that there is an existential game going down right before our eyes every damn moment of every damn day. And there ain't no Jesus, or God, or Demon who is gonna come down and save us. We need to dig deep and get our shit together all on our own, (Patti Smith: "Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine, Meltin' in a pot of thieves, Wild card up my sleeve, Thick heart of stone, My sins my own, They belong to me, me..."), leaning to the light.

Human Beings. Universal Human Rights. Catalog the "Crimes Against Humanity" (See the latest Putin edition of Hell). Turn to the Questioning Gospel according to Nick Lowe: "What's So Funny about Peace, Love and Understanding?"