Religio-Politics 101: Freedom is the Fruit of Forgiveness, Inna Gadda of Eden, Baby…

The best part about Christianity is the forgiveness, of course, the ability—no, the requirement—to wipe the slate clean, and start over anew… renewed… with tabula rasa… a blank slate… a new life… reborn in the spirit… in the flesh… en la boeuf… in the buff… at the small price of confession, at the small request of compassion…

Protestants maybe threw out the beer with the bath water when they decided to forego confession in favor of confection, just keep the wafers if nothing else, add sugar and beat lightly, store the memories in the waistline rather than get it out on the timeline…

Your deepest darkest secrets will kill you, assassins with no conscience, all with your complacence, all in the name of privacy, your sacred right to hide yourself away, to suffer no embarrassment, to suffer no shame, either real or imagined, to not reveal yourself to your maker, to not stand naked and afraid, and suffer the freedom that that brings, the freedom of nakedness without sex, the freedom of wealth without money, the freedom of fulfillment with no festivities, the freedom of fashion without followers…

Buddhism, of course, has something similar with its thumbnail philosophy of ‘letting go’, of what we’re not sure, maybe everything maybe nothing, but Asia the face of Buddhism is hardly the best example of that practice, obsession with ‘face’ a cultural norm, saving it and losing it the last word in self-fulfillment, dignity at any price, but true freedom priceless…

True freedom has nothing to do with your vote or your boat, one content to merely float, the other candy-flake streamline souped-up inboard outboard, all the better to scream down streams and rivers at breakneck speed destroying wildlife and wetlands while electing your most persuasive politician or businessman to do your thinking for you; no, true freedom is probably more like the freedom to surrender to something larger something better, in this case something that probably looks a whole lot like Mother Nature, fickle in her fancies unforgiving in her dictates…

Nature is not always right, of course, that just a fantasy for romantics and rabble rousers, the opposite true of the robber barons and musketeers, who feel that nature must be conquered in addition to all neighboring souls and their scarce possessions, the hard part finding that soft spot that sweet spot that golden mean that happy medium between extremes picking and choosing from the plethora of ideas and notions, cosmetics and lotions that lure us into false complacency….

The best religion the best politics the best philosophy is always multiple choice, the dialectic of ideas and circumstance, the doctrine of no doctrine the dogma of no dogma, and anyone who says otherwise is too complacent to count, thought(s) long ago relegated to the casual processing of menu items and consumption options, true thought turned over to the troubadors and trumpeteers, the mouthpieces for arcane logic and obscure reference, the street preachers of pop religion and traditional tedium, whatever it takes to keep you quiet… and quiescent… and acquiescent… and acquisitive… anything but inquisitive…. until the lion lies down with the lamb…

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