winter wheat

I moved my adult chickens to the fenced in garden today.  I have a batch of month-olds that are, for now, taking over the barn.  While they grow big enough to defend themselves from the adults, the adults are fertilizing and tilling my garden for me.  

Three chickens figured out how to fly out of the garden this morning, and have spent all day pecking around, never more than 30 feet from their penned peers.  They have the freedom to roam anywhere in the yard they want to, but they won't leave the other chickens.  I was watching them a few minutes ago, and thinking of my own relationships as a social species.   

It seems to have done the free chickens little good to have escaped while the others remain.  

And I feel a little the same.  Any freedom I may experience on my path, is hampered by the imprisonment my friends may still be experiencing.  I find that I never venture far from their cage.  And my friends who have flown the fence I find myself in,  often come around to hang out with me, close, only separated by a fence.   

Years ago, I read a quote...."None of us are free until all of us are free"  

I understand it more deeply all the time.  And I see the concept in another light now, one that probably wouldn't have meant much to me a few years ago.  I see that it as an individual duty to the rest of our communities, to the rest of humanity to free ourselves.  Our refusal to rise above, to face our fears, to deepen our growth, to learn, to evolve.....it's not something we deny ourselves....we deny everyone.  

I often find myself wanting to escape....I want to escape a reality where people fight wars, where people steal,  where they rape and hurt one another.  I want to escape the selfishness and greed and the pain.  It feels so hopeless.  And I see there is no escape.  There is no real escape until we all escape.  

I am reminded of the prison women lived in 150 years ago.  A few women flew out and we've been spreading the news around the planet to this day.  So I can have hope.  It may take more than my lifetime to see us all fly.  But I can't control all of that....I can only work on me. 

And if you read this...please work on you.  

....."I never forget that we are sowing winter wheat, which the coming spring will see sprout and other hands than our will reap and enjoy"----Susan B Anthony

god, sometimes you just don't come through

I have been having a good year.  Probably one of the best of my life so far.  My childhood was magnificant, with all the pretend horses and adventurous travel, but I couldn't appreciate it back then.  I actually believed my life might always be so sweet.  

Back to now.  

At this point in my life, I am so at ease with religion that I am able to look at it again with eyes open, unafraid of it's dark side.  I am ready to review it again and perhaps incoporate it's value and truth into my own life.    I'm not angry anymore.  

At least, that's what I thought.  

Today, I am finding it difficult to excuse the bad behaviour of christ-followers.  

My mom asked me a few years ago why I didn't want to be involved in the Baptist church.  Looking back, I think it was a telling moment of her grace.  It was a good question in that I was able to articulate exactly what I couldn't swallow about the religion of my family's understanding.  And she just listened.  She didn't try to change my mind, as I remember it.    

My main issues were women, the environment and racial superiority/prejudice.  I felt their church was on the wrong side of every one of those issues, and not idly wrong, but actively wrong.   

Many times when I pointed out how horribly christians behave, my mother would say that we shouldn't blame God for human mistakes, or that people are only human and God is bigger than that.....something along those lines.  

The problem, I've realized, is that while that may be true, or resemble the truth...that still points to Christianity's failure as a path to God.  Or heaven. Or enlightenment.  Whatever.  

And I wonder, if Christianity is designed by God as a path for humans, than does that make God fallible?  And so, basically God isn't God as the Christians know him.  Or, is it a man-made path to a still infallible God?  Doesn't that mean Christianity should be abandoned now that we have given it a couple thousand years, and it has failed? 

Also, I think it's bigger than Chistianity.  I think the same could be said for Islam, and Hinduism and Judaism.    

People can kill and destroy without a god.  They can judge and cause suffering and start wars and rape and steal without a god.  They can be self-righteous and feel superior and separate and find causes to hate without a god.  Can't they?  

If God condones these things, he is pointless.  He is not needed.  Waste of time.  

Jesus never mentioned marginalizing the homosexual population or ending legal abortion as directives for his followers, even though both things existed in his day, yet those are their most important issues.  

Was jesus not the christ?  Are Christians following somone else I don't know about?  

....................Today, I find it difficult to see truth through the smokescreen of Christianity.  

I see widespread rape of women and the planet, war and murder, racism, over-population and classism as the results of Christianity's ideas and path.

I am not satisfied with this path.