If a man hates us or persecutes and reviles us, we must refuse to let fraternity be ruined, and must woo him back with love and blessings (Matthew 5:43–48). If he smites us in the face, we must turn the other cheek instead of doubling the barrier by returning the blow (Matthew 5:38–42)

The fundamental virtue in the ethics of Jesus was love, because love is the society-making quality. Human life originates in love. It is love that holds together the basal human organization, the family. The...

The fundamental virtue in the ethics of Jesus was love, because love is the society-making quality. Human life originates in love. It is love that holds together the basal human organization, the family. The... physical expression of all love and friendship is the desire to get together and be together. Love creates fellowship. In the measure in which love increases in any social organism, it will hold together without coercion. If physical coercion is constantly necessary, it is proof that the social organization has not evoked the power of human affection and fraternity. Hence when Jesus prepared men for the nobler social order of the kingdom of God, he tried to energize the faculty and habits of love and to stimulate the dormant faculty of devotion to the common good. Love with Jesus was not a flickering and wayward emotion, but the highest and most steadfast energy of a will bent on creating fellowship.

The highest type of goodness is that which puts freely at the service of the community all that a man is and can be. The highest type of badness is that which uses up the wealth and happiness and virtue of the community to please self....

Because Jesus believed in the organic growth of the new society, he patiently fostered its growth, cell by cell. Every human life brought under control of the new spirit which he himself embodied and revealed was an advance of the kingdom of God. Every time.....

Because Jesus believed in the organic growth of the new society, he patiently fostered its growth, cell by cell. Every human life brought under control of the new spirit which he himself embodied and revealed was an advance of the kingdom of God. Every time..... the new thought of the Father and of the right life among men gained firmer hold of a human mind and brought it to the point of action, it meant progress. It is just as when human tissues have been broken down by disease or external force, and new tissue is silently forming under the old and weaving a new web of life. Jesus incarnated a new type of human life and he was conscious of that. By living with men and thinking and feeling in their presence, he reproduced his own life in others and they gained faith to risk this new way of living. This process of assimilation went on by the natural capacities inherent in the social organism, just as fresh blood will flow along the established arteries and capillaries. When a nucleus of likeminded men was gathered about him, the assimilating power was greatly reinforced. Jesus joyously felt that the most insignificant man in his company who shared in this new social spirit was superior to the grandest exemplification of the old era, John the Baptist (Matthew 11:11). Thus Jesus worked on individuals and through individuals, but his real end was not individualistic, but social, and in his method he employed strong social forces. He knew that a new view of life would have to be implanted before the new life could be lived and that the new society would have to nucleate around personal centers of renewal. But his end was not the new soul, but the new society; not man, but Man.

Jesus had realized the life of God in the soul of man and the life of man in the love of God. That was the real secret of his life, the well-spring of his purity, his compassion, his unwearied courage, his unquenchable idealism: he knew the Father. But if he had that greatest of all possessions, the

Jesus had realized the life of God in the soul of man and the life of man in the love of God. That was the real secret of his life, the well-spring of his purity, his compassion, his unwearied courage, his unquenchable idealism: he knew the Father. But if he had that greatest of all possessions, the... real key to the secret of life, it was his highest social duty to share it and help others to gain what he had. He had to teach men to live as children in the presence of their Father, and no longer as slaves cringing before a despot. He had to show them that the ordinary life of selfishness and hate and anxiety and chafing ambition and covetousness is no life at all, and that they must enter into a new world of love and solidarity and inward contentment. There was no service that he could render to men which would equal that. All other help lay in concentric circles about that redemption of the spirit and flowed out from it.

No comprehension of Jesus is even approximately true which fails to understand that the heart of his heart was religion. No man is a follower of Jesus in the full sense who has not through him entered into the same life with God. But on the other hand no man shares his life with God whose religion does not flow out, naturally and without effort, into all relations of his life and reconstructs everything that it touches. Whoever uncouples the religious and the social life has not understood Jesus. Whoever sets any bounds for the reconstructive power of the religious life over the social relations and institutions of men, to that extent denies the faith of the Master.

 If we want to understand the real aims of Jesus, we must watch him in his relation to his own times. He was not a timeless religious teacher, philosophizing vaguely on human generalities. He spoke for his own age, about concrete conditions, responding to the stirrings of the life that surged about him. We must follow him in his adjustment to the tendencies of the time, in his affinity for some men and his repulsion of others. That is the method by which we classify and locate a modern thinker or statesman.

Three choices in our zero sum world: 1. Joy. Live for the neediest. 2. Pleasure, happiness. Starve the neediest of the resources they are dying for. 3. There is no 3.

Why do we find it understandable when someone dies seeking happiness and pleasure, but unimaginable when they die for the joy of serving? Because our culture trains us for the former, and terrifies us of the latter. That's why.

I'm struggling to reach a new level and I think with some success. I do experience it as a new level in my work trying to help Humanity demands that I succeed if I can. It seems to me like an escape but it is not an escape. It

I'm struggling to reach a new level and I think with some success. I do experience it as a new level in my work trying to help Humanity demands that I succeed if I can. It seems to me like an escape but it is not an escape. It.... seems like living a delusion but it is not living a delusion. It is living a reality but not the reality that our sick culture says is the only reality. It is real that out of my imagination I can Envision the soul in every individual and they're almost all on their life support. And like the Abel farmer that comes across a huge wasted Fallowfield that sees the possibility of bringing it to life, at least a spot here or there, that is where I want to live in that is where I think I need to show we can live. That is to say, I'm pretty certain that we need to show people, first ourselves, that we are afraid not to live, but we are on not afraid of physical Life ending. I don't think we do others a service when we allow ourselves to be too concerned with the ending of our own life or that of anyone else. I might be wrong, but I don't think so.

So deeply glad I didn't give up on this book. So difficult emotionally. So incredibly moral, informed, by certainly one of the greatest living Souls today..

As the world around us becomes bleaker all acts of resistance seem futile. Cynics remind us of their insignificance. But acts of compassion affirm life....

As the world around us becomes bleaker all acts of resistance seem futile. Cynics remind us of their insignificance. But acts of compassion affirm life.... in the face of death. These acts hold at bay the crippling power of death and despair. They allow us to live, allow us to be human, allow us to affirm others and ourselves. When we do not accept pain as an inevitable part of life, when we are no longer willing to sacrifice, we embrace death and reject life.

The secret of life is that our life is not our own. As with every life form we are here for the joy of contributing to the well-being of all.

Evicted. Note to James: James, if you are going to be of any use to anyone you have got to learn what is in front of you, the increased Joy seeking joy in what you can control, your effort, and avoiding all other distractions. There's now....

Note to James: James, if you are going to be of any use to anyone you have got to learn what is in front of you, the increased Joy seeking joy in what you can control, your effort, and avoiding all other distractions. There's now.... an eviction sign for James from where he has been parking at night. No overnight parking. Big white letters on Brown background. James should have expected it but he didn't. And it is a big step forward for James to realize that what he wants is joy in a situation like this, not that it was done, but in an uninterrupted focus on his work. That such things, up and including death and or torture do not throw him off his work and the joy that comes from it. And he's making some progress.

The trek north has begun. 40 MI per day avg expected.

I'm curious to what degree a global recession would buy time against our destruction of the planet?

We are guilty of the pain and destruction of the world by each breath not devoted to its well-being. To that degree cancer, a parasite, a virus.

Update

Einstein as I understand it was tantalized by discovering the unified theory of all physics. And if that is a correct understanding on my part then Central to that was his sense that there was such a thing. I am tantalized with the need to discover the unified theory of human Joy, loving, goodness. Which is to say I believe it's there to be found. That's what I work on.

I'm probably my V reading now of rauschenbusch Christianity and the social crisis I am mining it for the greatest of all glimpses that I think he provides of the man Jesus.

Those infected with loving, the joy of loving, I find a greater collection of them associated with the man Jesus than any place else which is why I'm so focused there.

How best to spread the virus of loving as a way of being? This is my quest. For Joy.

Christianity is a grotesque Fantasy game where by magic words & actions you get an eternal condo in the sky and you get to despise, hate, exploit, neglect, and maybe exterminate millions or even billions of your fellow human beings. What's not to love?

This sentence says it all. "Jesus had realized the life of God in the soul of man and the life of man in the love of God."

Vlog pt2. The joyous Wasteland.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/YzZeasbi3fcbqNTt5

Vlog. Am I the one that is deluded, or the only one that knows about Joy?

https://photos.app.goo.gl/EjitJgomWmf7sm378

Postman wrote: What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed....

The danger we face is not an Orwellian 1984-style dictatorship, but Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, where we waste our lives in the vain and impossible pursuit of a self-centered, universal happiness. The Illusive Self 181 "What Orwell feared were those who would ban books," Postman wrote: What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny 'failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions.' In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will The tens of millions of impoverished Americans in the working class, whose lives and concerns rarely make it on television, have become largely invisible. Shows such as Cashmere Mafia, Big Shots or Cane openly celebrate excess 182 WHEN ATHEISM BECOMES RELIGION and wealth. Television tempts viewers with the opulent life enjoyed by the American oligarchy, one percent of whom control more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined. Characters on television live in sprawling and artfully decorated lofts.... 

Chris Hedges, on religion. A presbyterian Minister. Ordained.

Those who turn to religion seek an expression of the transcendent and the sacred. Few believers care much for dogma. Many religious institutions, such as the Catholic Church, incorporate ideologically diverse movements, from Opus Dei to liberation theology. All Catholics, however, are unified in the liturgy and ritual of the sacraments. The pope can rail against birth control and publish turgid encyclicals, but for most Catholics his theological admonishments go unheeded. The passages of most sacred texts in all religions are of little real importance. Believers pick and choose what fits. They discard the rest. The liberal Presbyterian Church, in which I grew up, ignored the violent, apocalyptic literature in 174 WHEN ATHEISM BECOMES RELIGION Daniel and Revelation, as well as the homophobic and misogynist rants by Paul. They were expunged — along with the calls by God to the Israelites to carry out acts of righteous genocide — from the biblical readings at the lectern. These passages might as well have been cut out of our Bibles. Christian fundamentalists, who seek a justification for their bigotry and hatred, trumpet these passages and rarely speak of the Sermon on the Mount, Christ's calls for vows of poverty and His pacifism. Such selective interpretation is no different for Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and other believers. It is culture, history, circumstance, tradition, economics and the deep self-interest of the tribe or the nation that more powerfully inform belief systems than the contradictory and often impenetrable pages of the Bible, the Koran or any other sacred text. Attempts by these atheists to reduce sacred texts to instruction manuals is not part of the reality of belief. Faith arises out of practice. We find our faith in how we live. The labels we attach to ourselves — Christian, Buddhist, Jew, Muslim or atheist — are a way to tell stories about ourselves, to create coherent narratives. The danger we face does not come from religion. It comes from a growing 

Dump and his clone Army have all but completed a near-perfect all out War to destroy the truth, justice, goodness, by inverting it. The totalitarian War.

With few exceptions I don't like people. But the soul in everyone, as near death as it may be, I love in everyone. Seeing this is a game-changer for me.

The prophet is always the predestined advance agent of the Kingdom of God. His religion flings him as a fighter and protester against the Kingdom of Evil. His sense of justice, compassion, and solidarity sends him into tasks which would be too perilous for others. It connects him with oppressed social classes as their leader. He bears their

The prophet is always the predestined advance agent of the Kingdom of God. His religion flings him as a fighter and protester against the Kingdom of Evil. His sense of justice, compassion, and solidarity sends him into tasks which would be too perilous for others. It connects him with oppressed social classes as their leader. He bears their..... risk and contempt. As he tries to rally the moral and religious forces of society, he encounters derelict and frozen religion, and the selfish and conservative interest of the classes which exploit religion. He tries to arouse institutional religion from the inside, or he pounds it from the outside. This puts him in the position of a heretic, a free thinker, an enemy of religion, an atheist. Probably no prophet escaped without bearing some such name. His opposition to social injustice arouses the same kind of antagonism from those who profit by it. How far these interests will go in their methods of suppressing the prophets depends on their power and their needs. I have been impressed with the fact that though Christianity began in a renascence, of [prophetism, scarcely any personality who bears the marks / of the prophet can be found in Church History between

My teaching is that your Soul is Creator and to work every breath for Creator. That's it. Every breath.

Our destitute working class now understands that the cloying feelyour-pain language of the liberal class is a lie. The liberal class is not attempting to prevent wages from sinking, unemployment from mounting, foreclosures from ripping apart communities, or jobs from being exported. The gap betwe... N

3yrs ago standing Rock. Arrested w 47 others expecting 5yrs in prison.

Protest in the i96os found its ideological roots in the disengage¬ ment championed earlier by Beats such by Jack Kerouac, Allen Gins¬ berg, and William Burroughs. It was a movement that, while it incorporated a healthy dose of disrespect for authority, focused again on self-indulgent schemes for inner peace and fulfillment. The use of hallucinogenic drugs, advocated by Timothy Leary in books such as the Politics of Ecstasy, and the rise of occultism that popularized Transcen¬ dental Meditation, theosophy, the Hare Krishna branch of Hinduism, and renew