NUDGINGS: a journey into the unknown

‘…and there is no new thing under the sun’   Ecclesiastes 1:9 [KJV] I imagine most of you already recognize this saying as being from the bible when you hear hear it repeated as  “There is nothing new under the sun”. It came to mind again for me recently when in conversation I happened to mention a magic lantern that had been use in my Sunday School days to project words onto a screen and was met with a blank look. Now when you go into a modern church, you might well see the words still being projected on a screen at the front, with the only change being in the method projection. But I bet you will hear people saying, “I don’t like the words projected up there. Why can’t they do it the old way!” My answer would be “They are.” What has been is what will be,  and what has been done is what will be done;  there is nothing new under the sun.   Is there a thing of which it is said,  ‘See, this is new’? It has already been,  in the a...

“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” Karl Marx, who wrote this, has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history and one of the principle architects of modern science. it is often quoted to show the Marx [and communism] were enemies of organized religion. But I don’t necessarily agree with that. For those on this planet who experience their world as heartless and  oppressive, religion often eases that burden. If we see religion as a human construct whose original purpose is to explain that sense of the other, to explain why we are here, then it makes sense that it is 'the opium of the people'. Religion gives people hope and we all need that hope in order to survive. For some (actually for most), that hope for something better doesn't seem to exist in this life, and so they believe in a better life after death.... and this belief ...

“You can tell they are familiar, in some ways they’ve grown apart But even in their distance they’re connected by the heart And there’s a gentle wind that’s blowin' round the door And married in the 60’s, it seems so long ago.”  [From ‘Married in the 60’s’  sung by Rita MacNeil] Recently one of my friends and I were having coffee when she said of her husband,  “He’s not the same person I married!” And that seems to be a sentiment I’m running into often these days.  Of course, if we stop to think about it all, we are not same the same person we were 25, 40 or 50 years either. And that if by chance we were, it would be a case of arrested development! These truths got me thinking about the institution of marriage especially now when more and more marriages are lasting for more that 50 years. Half a century is a long time.  I remember when I was just nicely married and heard of a couple who had been married 25 years and were getting a divorce, think...

I t was 55 years ago when the 'church' first made me say 'You've got to be kidding!' . Not out loud of course, after all it was the early 60's and the church had been part of my formative years. My fiancé (now my husband) and I were meeting with the minister making arrangements for our upcoming wedding. The minister asked if we had a date in mind. We did. We wanted to be married on the same day that my parents had been. Straight forward. Definite. Only it wasn't. According to that minister, that happened to be a Sunday, and weddings were never on Sunday. No reasons were given. We agreed that the day before would be just as good ~only of course it wasn't! And that is my first memory of the church assuming the it knew best and that one size fits all. Of course, although I didn't know it then, that wasn't to be the last time. Then there were the issues of 'allowing' women to become priests and marrying divorced people. It took ...