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=> Re: Love The United Methodists!

Re: Love The United Methodists!
Posted by Emil (Guest) squaremoon@emilsdiary.com - Thursday, October 27 2005, 23:12:23 (CEST)
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Fear must be the opposite of faith and God. Spirituality is about strength and hope, it's about making our world bigger and more connected, not smaller and severed. If one's faith is in fact shriking one's world I think we have to stop and question our UNDERSTANDING and INTERPRETATION of OUR faith.
From my experience it just doesn't make sense that God would or should equal fear and prejudice. Exclusion.
Men AND women who use God to oppress others- I'm not talking Governments and regimes, but everyday people in everyday settings- to reject others, to condemn others, to belittle others are merely ABUSING faith to elevate themselves.
If YOU don't believe in abortion, don't have them!
If YOU don't believe in gay marriage, don't marry!
But why hinder others' God-given birthrights to pursue in life, not mere and fickle "happiness", but something more profound, more noble, more personally fulfilling?
FEAR. That is why.
Worse than murder, more destructive that bombs. FEAR! Which we foster, which we dress up in incense and plumes, silk and gold and call FAITH. We carry fear in our little hearts, which are paralyzed with it, like the most precious thing we could ever own, and we hand it down openly, ceremoniosly to our children- as though we are doing them a glorious FAVOR.
I cannot possibly accept that any God that is FOR the people would want this kind of existance for His children. Unless that God was fashioned out of pomp by con-artists to oppress the poor, the intellectual, the free-thinking, etc... which is being further revealed as the centuries come to pass...
Give me a break.
Why FEAR going to HELL when we already LIVE IN and NURTURE HELL on earth in the name of God!
I have struggled and survived but the last thing I feal is victimized. In fact, I feel grateful for my life, my path, which has ultimately blessed me with a courage I could not have otherwise ever imagined for myself.
I always say I come from the ASSYRIAN GHETTO, from a father that was born and raised in a VILLIAGE for crying outloud! And I'm to accept and trust the madness that was wasted on me?
In the ASSYRIAN GHETTO everyone is a piece of shit- JEWS, MUSLIMS, BLACKS, GAYS, ASIANS, even ASSYRIAN RELATIVES. There was no way I was going to get stuck in this ghetto and although I was told that I would never make it out without a formal education, I did exactly so. My life has not been so much so about proving my elders wrong or rebelling against them, but MORE about finding MY OWN WAY and WHAT WAS PREDESTINED for me.
It is not good credit or a formal education that are going to get me through the wildest days on this breathtaking planet, but hope, a solid sense of self, making decisions not out of fear and anger, but doing the "NEXT RIGHT THING".
Maggie, it DOES take a village to recover from alcoholism, but we in A.A. are anything but of LIKE MINDS. That's what is so rehabilitative about A.A. It teaches one to be a person among persons and that principles come before personalities. We do not discuss politics or religion, but our EXPERIENCE, STRENGTH, AND HOPE as it pertains to alcoholism.
I'm always a little FEARFUL when I walk into a meeting- which does not cost a red cent, does not require signing any papers, and asks nothing more than your FIRST NAME- and see only older WHITE straight folk, and immediately decide that I'm not going to relate because I am Assyrian, judgmental, and queer; But it never fails that despite these visible differences I walk away having heard my own experience and struggle out the mouths of men and women I would swear I would have nothing in common with!!!
It's amazing how same we are when you take away the fear, the judgment, the prejudice, and you talk about being human and frail, when you admit you need help and are confused, or that you don't have all the answers.
Being queer and alcoholic have SAVED my life, and given we more than I was ever brought up to be or have!



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