Today's Religion Stuff

• Hindus have been waiting for Kalki for 3,700 years
• Buddhists have been waiting for Maitreya for 2,600 years
• The Jews have been waiting for the Messiah for 2,500 years
• Christians have been waiting for Jesus for 2,000 years
• Sunnah waits for Prophet Issa for 1,400 years
• Muslims have been waiting for a messiah from the line of Muhammad for 1,300 years
• Shiites have been waiting for Imam Mahdi for 1,080 years
• Druze have been waiting for Hamza ibn Ali for 1,000 years

Most religions adopt the idea of a “savior” and state that the world will remain filled with evil until this savior comes and fills it with goodness and righteousness.

Maybe our problem on this planet is that people expect someone else to come solve their problems instead of doing it themselves.

The first thing you do is get up off your fuckin' knees. And then, if you're paying attention, The Evil will show you what's next.

“Speak up, speak out,

get in the way.

Get in good trouble,

necessary trouble,

and help redeem the soul of America.”

--John Lewis

Not Just Yet

I think it has to be obvious to most of us that there's a substantial chunk of the deep south that's still pretty fucked up in the head.

But once in a while we see that faint glimmer of hope.

Patricia Murphy, Daily Beast:

B.L. Shirley is a Republican woman from a Republican county who always—always—votes Republican. And yet, on a windy, grey morning last weekend, the Talladega, Alabama, retiree found herself in, of all places, a Democrat’s campaign office, wondering just what she could do to defeat the GOP candidate running for a seat in the U.S. Senate from her state.

“Roy Moore,” she said, when asked why she would go canvassing for Democrat Doug Jones before the special election on Dec. 12. “I think Roy Moore is an impostor. I am a Christian and I don’t want to be counted in his camp. He’s a divisive person.”
Things change when we change. And they change for the better or for the worse according to how we change ourselves.

Post Racial(?)

If the US is entering a period of real understanding and acceptance of "color differences", then why are so many of us so uptight about the real probability of a non-white majority that some believe is inevitable and will be here a lot sooner than we think?

What are we afraid of?  If we've treated people of color with the respect they deserve, then what do we have to fear from them when the time comes for them to take charge of things?

Who are the people who spend the most time and energy trying to warn us about the troubles we'll see when this change comes?  Are they the ones talking about social justice and equal economic opportunity? Or are they the ones who want us to build fences, and tell us we should round up all the brown people and deport them?

The way we treat people now is how we can expect to be treated in turn.