e-books are here

Oh well, I woke up to the fact that e-books are real when I was given an e-book reader at Xmas... and realized it was handier than I had assumed.

The reader is the Literati Reader and it has not been well received by reviewers, seemingly mostly because they reviewed early versions before Xmas, and presently the device has been upgraded significantly, and I have to say it is pretty nifty. I also found I liked it for ideological reasons because the main formats it supports are EPUB and ADOBE Digital Editions, aka ADOBE DRM, which are to all intents and purposes the main open formats that operate cross platforms. The proprietary formats such as Sony, Amazon Kindle, and Barnes and Noble's Nook are doing their level best to keep their users walled-in, an approach which I believe is doomed.
And, if you're in doubt about e-readers, currently, Bed Bath and Beyond has a clearance sale on this device for just $39.99, so that will be a perfect chance to experiment, and you won't lose out because the EPUB/Adobe DRM formats are universal, so you'll still be able to read them if you get another e-reader later:
http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/Product.asp?SKU=17494791&amp. Further once you register on the BBB website, they'll send you one of their fantabulous 20% off coupons, so now, for $32 you have your starter e-reader, and then later, when you decide you need a fancier one you can move up to something more advanced.



Then there was the recent announcement that A Course in Miracles is now starting to appear in e-book formats, although unfortunately they started out with support only for proprietary formats, Sony, Kindle, Amazon - when it would have been easier to use the above formats, which run across all readers.

Then I found out that my publisher has taken the plunge, and came out of the gate with support for EPUB, Kindle, and Nook, with Google on the way. Here they are:

• EPUB/Adobe DRM:
  http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Closing-The-Circle-Pursahs-Gospel/book-fSmQ4BxPdEWNLxA9f9twhw/page1.html
• B&N Nook:
  http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Closing-the-Circle/Rogier-Fentener-van-Vlissingen/e/9781846946271/?itm=2&USRI=closing+the+circle
• Kindle:
  So, now it is for real, the rest is the format wars all over again, though this time it won't be as much of a cliff hanger as was the Betamax/VHS battle.

And, now that I'm used to it, I'm realizing this technology is a real convenience. 

I don't have to have all these bookshelves, though I like books, and see myself keeping some but I'll become much more selective.

With my publisher I've had an ongoing argument that their whole strategy was wrong, trying to produce low quality, low cost books for a niche markets. I've argued with him for years that the cheap reader is going to go for the e-book so that the remaining buyers of physical books will want a quality edition. I am hoping to accomplish that with the upcoming 2nd edition of the book. No questions, please, with the upcoming 2nd edition I mean to say that some time in the next twenty years I'll revise the book enough to warrant a 2nd edition, but don't ask me when that will be.

Lastly, for all of you who have struggled with e-book formats, there is help in a crossplatform tool for managing e-books, Calibre e-Book Manager 

• One thing I realized once I had the e-reader is that there were a few e-books on my PC, but I never read them, because I spent enough time at the PC already. Therefore, once I was able to take them on the bus courtesy of my e-reader, everything changed, and I suddenly read them.

• The second major realization was that some books, such as Edward Gibbons' The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, are must-reads which you never read, even if you own them, because they are so bulky.

In short, I'm sold, and I'm convinced that e-readers have arrived, even The New York Times has noticed:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/05/books/05ebooks.html
... and that's the home of "all the news that's fit to print." 

Gary in the News Again?

All terms are potentially controversial, and those who seek controversy will find it. 2 Yet those who seek clarification will find it as well. 3 They must, however, be willing to overlook controversy, recognizing that it is a defense against truth in the form of a delaying maneuver. 4 Theological considerations as such are necessarily controversial, since they depend on belief and can therefore be accepted or rejected. 5 A universal theology is impossible, but a universal experience is not only possible but necessary. 6 It is this experience toward which the course is directed. 7 Here alone consistency becomes possible because here alone uncertainty ends. (ACIM:C-in.2)

 Spring has sprung, and criticism of Gary's work is circulating again, and once more in connection with the Circle of Atonement. Yet another author with new material on Thomas has come on the air, one Bruce F. MacDonald, Ph.D. His Thomas book can be found here: The Thomas Book, and his unfortunate criticism of Gary's work is here: Bruce MacDonald's contentions on "GaryRenard's Stolen Gospel". Predictably, a number of people have come to me in recent days for comment on this material, because of my own book on the subject - to which this blog is dedicated. (I am slowly moving my material here, from my Xanga blog at http://rogierfvv.xanga.com.)

Curiously, the author relies once again on the discredited journalistic drive-by shooting that appeared in the form of a series of articles in Miracles Magazine a few years ago, for which to my knowledge at least Jon Mundy, the publisher of said magazine, has publicly apologized at one point. I have perused the website on MacDonald's book a bit, and it seems to me that he comes from a very different frame of reference than Gary does, and it's not clear to me what purpose could possibly be served by his pretty pointless accusation of plagiarism. Simply put, it is very hard to be original in these types of translations, and I say that after following Thomas translations in 4 languages for the past 40 years. You either believe Gary's explanation of how he received the translated text which is published in his books, or you don't. That much is a personal decision. I will have no truck with any one who chooses not to believe Gary's story, but it does not overly bother me either. To each his own, I simply am not interested in the controversy. For me at least, this gratuitous attack on Gary hardly enhances the credibility of what the book might have to say. On the most practical level, it simply represents another viewpoint, and if disbelief in Gary's work is part of that viewpoint, so be it.

Almost every word choice and turn of phrase in the Pursah version could be traced to one translation or another, and I have most of them here on my shelf, and have studied those differences in the process of writing my book. However it was my conclusion at the time of writing my book, that it was pointless to study a comparison of the Pursah material with the historical texts, except to become aware of when she makes deliberate changes, or offers unique and different word choices. In other words, the informational value is in the deliberate differences, not in the parts that are the same as, or similar to other translations. Prior to the appearance of Gary Renard's Your Immortal Reality, Gary once told me that Pursah's favorite translation was actually Meyer's own translation, and NOT the one he did with Patterson. Be that as it may, the controversy seems pretty petty to me. Either you believe Gary's story or you don't, and the need to pick an argument with him has little to do with the content of his books. By the same token, MacDonald's book may contain valuable information for some people, regardless of the controversy, it does however simply come from a totally different frame of reference than does the Course. I see no need to make a fuss over that.

Looking at the Pursah material as Gary has published it, and the way she frames her historical argument on the state of the text, her point is that some of the Logia are more corrupted than others. It is in line with that observation that I would suggest to pay attention to the informational value of when Pursah chooses to make different choices than the standard text, and/or different choices in terms of the translation. The material contribution that the Pursah text makes in that regard consists of the dismissal of about one third of the collection which we have in the form of the Nag Hammadi text (which dated from the 4th century CE), which she declares to be corrupted beyond all recognition. For the rest of the material she simply thinks that some of it was transmitted to us relatively unscathed, and in that respect it makes complete sense that the only possible issue could be about a word choice here or there, but in some instances she makes some very interesting edits, which amount to a correction of the historical Thomas text tradition. Her criticism is entirely focused on the reliability of the Nag Hammadi text tradition, and not so much on the translations, although, again, she makes some interesting word choices here and there.

Aside from the above, which makes sense if you choose to believe it, and no sense at all if you don't, there is really very little to say about this matter. From a standpoint of the Course, there is really nothing else to it, except that it may be another forgiveness opportunity for some, or simply random noise for others. I would doubt if it is worth anybody's while to really track down word for word where every word choice in Pursah's version occurs in the translated material based on the historical text. Of course, Meyer and Patterson might decide to sue Pursah for plagiarism, and call Bruce MacDonald as an expert witness, who knows.

On yet another level, we might keep in mind that the entire Coptic language, which died out in ca. the 7th century CE, consists of a couple of hundred books, a few dictionaries, and a couple of hundred modern scholars arguing over the fine points. So how easy would it be to come up with yet another original new translation after forty years? Not very, and sameness and hairsplitting differences tend to prevail except for some fancy translations which are highly interpretive. Along those lines, I feel that the Meyer/Paterson translation is about the most neutral version that's out there, in other words, if you weren't consciously trying to be unique and different, you would end up with something along the lines of that translation. The point is to address the content, and that is what Pursah's version does, never mind if you agree with it or not. And again, she states clearly that some of the Logia were pretty much in tact, so a high degree of correspondence with existing translations is to be expected. The crux of her argument is about the whole that emerges with her edits, starting with paring back the collection from 114 to 70/71, and then doing some further edits, some of which are pretty drastic and thought provoking. She is not trying to fix what isn't broken, which is exactly the temptation that exists for translators who have to somehow prove their originality.

Lastly, seen with the Course in mind, the accusation of plagiarism is a classic ego ploy. The ego is a second stringer by definition, for it is the thought: "What if I could play God by myself?" And since projection is the primary defense, it will therefore always accuse everyone else of plagiarism. Somehow magically believing that  this way it will get away with it, that nobody will notice that it is the very ego thought itself which was not original at all. This is merely the archetypical pattern of blaming others for what we secretly accuse ourselves of, and as experience will show us, projection will not solve the problem, but it perversely reinforces the cycle of sin, guilt, and fear, and keeps us in the ego's hell. Once we recognize it for what it is and instead of defending it, we turn it over to the Holy Spirit, it becomes instead a step on the way Home to Heaven, a miracle, that brings us closer to accepting the atonement for ourselves. Conversely, it is a call for Love, and thus another failed attempt to hide the self-accusation of utter un-originality of the ego, and worse, that nothing really happened, that the thought did not even accomplish anything, which is the essence of Salvation, of accepting the atonement for ourselves.



Meanwhile, in other news, as seen this morning in my travels in the Fordham section of the Bronx, I saw on the safety helmet of a construction worker the following summary:

1 cross
3 nails +
----------
4 given

Of course it's up to us if we want to spend our time with the cross and the nails or with the forgiveness.

The Gnostic Discoveries

It seems that in this blog sofar, I have effectively discussed all the books I've referred to in Closing the Circle except this one. So it's time to correct this oversight. I think it is healthy to begin to realize the shift in perception that the discoveries at Nag Hammadi are bringing about, even though they are still very slow to become generally felt. Evidently the Christian construction of Jesus has staying power, because it has become so culturally dominant, but perhaps more importantly because the Christian concept of Jesus as the vicarious savior lets us off the hook - we can have our cake and eat it too - while the original teachings of Jesus ask us very pointedly to take responsibility for our lives (take up our cross), and follow him. Evidently the Christian model has much greater appeal.

The trap presented by the whole thing is that from the Christian fantasies of Jesus, we are then liable to move into a "better informed" position on "the real historical Jesus." We will then have accomplished nothing, merely shifted from one picture of Jesus to another picture of Jesus, which equally serves as a substitute for the experience of him. A careful reading of the Thomas Gospel, and even the canonical gospels, and most certainly A Course in Miracles,  makes it clear that Jesus is not about theology, but about practicing his teachings and applying them to our lives.
Seen from that point of view, the value of the Nag Hammadi discoveries lies in the mere fact that they upset the applecart, and the symbolism of that is absolutely precious. The books were buried by some priest in an out of the way monastery right at the time that the Canon of the New Testament was decided on, which was a highly partisan selection process of what literature was considered "proper" for Christians, and much else was prosecuted, banned, and often destroyed. And then 1600 years later, after a major world conflagration, and about 20 years prior to Vatican II, where Catholics were set free in the area of Bible studies, voilà this treasure trove turns up again.

Meyer gives a very readable and in depth account of the history of the discovery and the impact of the books. For anyone who wants to understand the context, this is a very helpful introduction, and Marvin Meyer is not too biased in the traditional Christian mold, though I would suggest he has a little too much of a gnostic bias to my taste. Jesus was not a gnostic, even though he did say numerous things which were later expanded upon in the gnostic tradition, and to that extent, he often sounds more gnostic than Christian, but that does not make him a gnostic per se, just as much as he was not a Christian.

New Year's Reunion with Lao Tzu

This last Sunday was Valentine's Day, and it was also Chinese New Year.

I found myself at a New Year's celebration in Flushing, Queens, the town I always joke is named after me (The English called it Flushing, but it was founded by the Dutch as Vlissingen), the birthplace of American ideals of religious freedom (see Remonstrance of Flushing). The event was held at a temple, the Happy Buddha Precious Temple, devoted to the cultivation of the Dao, our true nature, our true Self. This is an outpost of a global movement which was founded some sixty years ago, but claims roots in the oldest Chinese wisdom traditions of Daoism and Confucianism, while also integrating Buddhism and the understanding that Jesus was an enlightened teacher like Buddha. It is an interesting movement, which takes an a-religious posture, although it does incorporate some ritual, but in essence it sees the Dao as the most abstract vision of the Source of all Being, and hence their movement as the root of all religious traditions, so that their view is that their system of belief does not need to conflict with any particular religion you think you belong to. In other words, there is an interesting sort of tolerance here, and an expression of the one behind the many.

I was fortunate to participate in their rite of the transmission of the Dao, which they equate to the opening of the wisdom eye. It was very simple and beautiful, and the old gentleman who performed the ritual was excited to learn that I had been a student of Lao Tzu's Tao Teh Ching ever since I was about ten or eleven years old. As it was my acquaintance with Chinese culture started with the discovery of Robert van Gulik's Judge Dee series, and then after that I got interested in playing Go, (Chinese Checkers, as van Gulik calls it in the books), and gradually also in Lao Tzu, and to a lesser degree in Confucius. Over the years it always seemed to me that Kung Fu Tze was to Lao Tzu as Aristotle was to Plato in the West. In any case the old gentleman immediately speculated that maybe this rite would be a reunion with my old teacher Lao Tzu for me, and that was surely what it felt like, and in a funny way it was yet another circle closing in my life, for Lao Tzu, the Buddha, Quan Yin, and Jesus are really all one. Much like the Thomas Gospel the Tao Teh Ching has this quality of being more an invitation to the contemplation and the pursuit of truth, much more than being prescriptive or concerned with form. Of course Lao Tzu, just like Jesus or the Buddha did not found a religion, that's just what the followers made of it.

Along with the ceremony, which was optional, there was also a lovely New Year's meal, where all the members of the community prepared a dish.

All in all, this was a beautiful way of celebrating the Chinese New Year, and a new year in general, reminding me to recommit myself daily to the Course's notion of: Make this year different by making it all the same.

This is the time in which a new year will soon be born from the time of Christ. I have perfect faith in you to do all that you would accomplish. Nothing will be lacking, and you will make complete and not destroy. Say, then, to your brother:

I give you to the Holy Spirit as part of myself.
I know that you will be released, unless I want to use you to imprison myself.
In the name of my freedom I choose your release, because I recognize that we will be released together.
So will the year begin in joy and freedom. There is much to do, and we have been long delayed. Accept the holy instant as this year is born, and take your place, so long left unfulfilled, in the Great Awakening. Make this year different by making it all the same. And let all your relationships be made holy for you. This is our will. Amen. (ACIM:T15-XI.10)

See here for a video commentary to the above passage by Kenneth Wapnick:
http://youtu.be/KFNCHw_Hb5Q

Moving Money in Haiti

The following is is a press release from Fonkoze, dated January 25th, 2010, and it is an amazing story.

Fonkoze filled in the gaps, where the banking system was mostly useless, to get money to the people. Even money transfers were useless if there was no way to pick up money, and Fonkoze made it all work, in an unprecedented collaboration with the US Army and UN. I am passing the story along word for word, it bears repeating.

Quote
In the predawn hours of Saturday, January 23, an unprecedented joint NGO-military operation delivered money by helicopter to ten locations throughout Haiti for payouts of money sent from
abroad and to permit Haitians greater access to their savings. The dramatic operation, which involved the U.S. Military and United Nations to complete the delivery, used disguised boxes of money airdropped across Haiti. In the wake of the earthquake on January 12, Fonkoze was the only financial institution in Haiti able to stay open for customers making withdrawals and receiving money transfers, but within days Fonkoze grew short of cash. Unable to access its commercial bank account in Haiti, Fonkoze reached out to its partners to get money into the hands of desperate earthquake survivors.
In less than 24 hours, Fonkoze was able to secure approval to send $2 million of cash from Fonkoze’s accounts in City National Bank of New Jersey to its 34 branches that had not been
shut down by the earthquake. The cash was packaged in Miami and transported aboard a military C-17 to Haiti. Below is an abbreviated timeline of the mission (the full timeline is
available upon request).

Friday, January 22

4:52 p.m. – Operation is cleared by U.S. State Department, United Nations, and the U.S.Military

9:25 p.m. -- Boxes with cash separated into 34 packets successfully delivered to Homestead Air Force Base in Miami.
10:15 p.m. – A military C-17 is diverted from Langley, Virginia en route to Port-au-Prince to pick up the cash.

Saturday, January 23
3:30 a.m. – Military C-17 plane arrives in Port-au-Prince with boxes of cash.
1:30 p.m. – Military helicopters complete dropping off boxes at designated points across Haiti and return to Port-au-Prince.

“This was an absolutely tremendous experience for all of us – military and civilian, government and non-profit alike,” said Anne Hastings, CEO of Fonkoze Financial Services. “Our branches
have been working since the earthquake to pay the money transfers our clients so desperately needed to begin to put their lives back together.”

“As people continue to migrate from PAP, Fonkoze's branch network will become even more essential. Probably most important, unlike the commercial banks, Fonkoze has re-opened many of its branches and has continued to pay out remittances using its cash on hand,” said Jennifer Harris from the U.S. State Department.
The earthquake on January 12 left many, especially the poorest Haitians, unprepared to cope with disaster. Along with the immediate effects of the quake, many had no money in their
pockets, had had their assets and resources destroyed, and lost key family members. After the earthquake, all Haitian commercial banks closed cutting Haitians off from money sent by their
family and friends in other countries. Despite suffering severe damage to its headquarters, Fonkoze quickly re-opened 34 of its 42 branches, including its Port-au-Prince branch.
Within the first week of re-opening the branches, Fonkoze delivered more than $1 million in remittances and savings to Haitians. It then worked quickly to bring in an additional $2 million
from its account at the City National Bank of New Jersey, working through a unique collaboration of the United Nations, USAID, the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Department of
Defense, Multilateral Investment Fund of the Inter-American Development Bank and City National Bank.

The migration of people out of Port-au-Prince to other areas will mean that Haitians will need infrastructure and financial services in some of the most rural, remote areas of the country,
which Fonkoze has been serving for over 15 years. “After the earthquake it became evident that with large numbers of Haitians migrating from Port-au-Prince to the provinces, Fonkoze, as the
only MFI that pays remittances, would have to play a major role in providing Haitians with access to cash in order to be able to buy food, water and shelter,” said Julie Katzman of the
Multilateral Investment Fund.

Fonkoze, Haiti’s alternative bank for the poor, is helping the most vulnerable Haitians stabilize their lives by opening its doors so that they can access their savings and their remittances from
friends and family abroad. Fonkoze has the deepest reach into Haiti’s rural areas and already has built a remittance network that would take years to create from scratch.

Quick Facts About Fonkoze
Fondasyon Kole Zépol (Fonkoze) is Haiti’s largest, most innovative microfinance institution with over 200,000 clients. It operates 42 branches across Haiti and in every province of the country,
including many towns and villages where no commercial banks operate. It is the institution on which Haiti’s poor relies, especially during crisis. Microfinance helps unlock the entrepreneurial potential of the poor with small loans and other assistance they need to lift themselves out of poverty. Fonkoze provides micro-loans and micro-insurance services and other social programs to poor Haitians and also offers remittances and savings accounts for more than 200,000 people. Overall, Fonkoze directly touches the lives of more than one million Haitians.
Fonkoze targets the poorest of the poor in Haiti. As of 2007, 79 percent of Haitians were living on less than $2 per day and 55 percent were living on less than $1 per day. More than 99
percent of the people receiving Fonkoze loans are women and the average size of Fonkoze’s basic loan is just $172.
Fonkoze pioneered micro-life insurance in Haiti with its Haitian partner Alternative Insurance Company. Families who make claims receive relief from their loved one’s debt and $125 to help
the family cope with the financial shock. Fonkoze has its own remittance service and is also a vendor for MoneyGram, CAM and Unitransfer.

Among others, Fonkoze partners with the Multilateral Investment Fund of the Inter-American Development Bank, Partners in Health, USAID, World Vision, Whole Planet Foundation (Whole Foods Market), Grameen Foundation (Alex Counts, Grameen Foundation President, serves as chair of Fonkoze USA), Oikocredit, MEDA, CGAP and other major development agencies and
organizations.
With over 95 percent Haitian senior staff and a highly-skilled, Haitian-majority management team, Fonkoze is building the foundations for democracy and sustainable development.
Fonkoze and Anne Hastings, CEO, Fonkoze Financial Services, have been recognized worldwide for their innovative approach in helping the most vulnerable build better lives in the
Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation.
You can find the latest information and updates following the earthquake at www.fonkoze.org

www.fonkoze.org

Anne Hastings
Fonkoze
+1 305-420-6192 (Tele)
+509 3701-3910 (Haiti tele)
director@fonkoze.org

Leigh Carter
Fonkoze USA
+1 202-628-9033 (Tele)
+1 202-746-7053 (cell)
lcarter@fonkoze.org

Unquote

Haiti: Update on Progress by Fonkoze

Friends, I am passing this along with a recommendation, and as a special notes for readers who are not in the US: the best way to support Fonkoze from other countries, is to find a sponsoring charity, so that it can be made tax deductible in your area. If you find a good one, they may be willing to do a limited campaign in which they guarantee that 100% of funds are donated to Fonkoze, so that there is no charitable graft going on.

January 29, 2010


Dear Friend,

On behalf of the 200,000+ Fonkoze clients that touch approximately 1,000,000 Haitians, all of us in the Fonkoze Family appreciate your prayers, phone calls, emails and especially the donations and pledges that we have received in response to the devastating earthquake that ravaged Haiti on January 12th.

Fonkoze staff in Haiti, led by Anne Hastings, CEO of Fonkoze Financial Services, Carine Roenen, Director of Fonkoze, and the rest of the Fonkoze management team continue to amaze us with their ability to cope with yet another major catastrophe.

We are now in touch on a daily basis with Fonkoze's leadership in Haiti, where they have worked feverishly to contact and account for all employees, establish a temporary headquarters, and enter negotiations for permanent headquarters space. As of today, 37 out of 42 branches are operating and delivering essential services like money transfers and savings deposits.

More importantly, they have begun to assess and estimate what will be needed to assist and accompany clients and staff, and the costs to replace branches and equipment destroyed by this unprecedented natural disaster. In addition to the central office in Port-au-Prince, management estimates that nine branches will need to replaced and eight will require substantial repairs.

We have been updating our website daily. So, please continue to visit www.fonkoze.org for the latest information about the situation on the ground with Fonkoze and to contribute to the "Relief and Rehabilitation Fund."

Donations are urgently needed to serve our borrowers and clients by helping them re-establish their homes and families and their businesses. This will take time, but Fonkoze has a wealth of successful experience in responding to disasters in the past and has already made great strides in overcoming the latest disaster.

To date, we have received a little over $1.5 million in donations. Staff is feverishly working to determine how much financial support will be needed to help our clients who have basically lost everything.

Please make a donation now to our "Earthquake Relief and Rehabilitation Fund." Please do it today by mailing a check to Fonkoze USA, 50 F St., NW, Suite 810, Washington, DC 20001 or contribute online at www.fonkoze.org.

Sincerely,

Alex Counts, Chair, Fonkoze USA           

John Mercier, President, Fonkoze USA


P.S. Recent legislation has been enacted that will allow most U.S. donors to deduct contributions to Haiti relief on either their 2009 or 2010 tax return. Please consult with your accounting professional to confirm that you meet the qualifications.

Haiti: Passing the Black Jack

Lisa Miller, in her discussion in Newsweek, writes in response to the comments about Haiti from Pat Robertson, in which he accuses the Haitians of a pact with the Devil, and the latest natural disaster as simply due them as a result of that particular "sin." She speaks of "the frustrating theology of suffering," and brings up both Bart Ehrman and Rabbi Harold Kushner as voices to counter these now infamous statements of Robertson. The comments from these two authors however mostly merely blunt the issue without really resolving it.

We will have to be more drastic, as it cannot be resolved as long as you remain stuck in the notion that God is both the creator of the world, and all good, all powerful, but at the same time either powerless to stop evil, or, alternatively, he has his bad days, when he is a vengeful God. Or, if you would have it in the fundamentalist model of Pat Robertson, you end up in a complete dualism of God and the Devil, who are at war with one another at the expense of the people, and if anyone makes a pact with the Devil, God will be out to kill him or her. This is the Faustian problem in its many variations. And of course that notion is brought out in the Judeo-Christian world as early as the Adam and Eve story, in which the ontological sin ends up being blamed on Eve and the snake, and God in the process is made into the heavy, who throws them out of paradise.

Supposedly, we've been stuck ever since, until - according to Christian theology at least - God sent up Jesus as a blood sacrifice for our malfeasance, which washed away our sins. This model ends up as a vicarious salvation, which cancels out our sins, and particularly the original sin, and leaves us all good and guilty (Look what Jesus did for you! Now are you going to eat your spinach or not?!), so we can be cajoled into tithing to the Christian churches for life, while we wait for the second coming. That's how society pays the salaries for Pat Roberts and the like, who mostly just repeat the dogma, to reinforce it and make sure we really believe it. In that model anyone not professing to believe like the fundamentalists, has de facto chosen the wrong ballot, the Devil, and must suffer the consequences. Then, when someone like Carlton Pearson takes even the first step outside this model, and realizes that Jesus was preaching love and inclusion, not hate and exclusion, he ends up being thrown out of the fundamentalist camp. For apparently "we" just hate the idea of love and inclusion, perhaps for the simple reason that we then left with no one else to blame.

It is all so convenient, if I just have to believe one way and my troubles are over, and everyone else is bad. Very apparently then, the vicarious salvation through Jesus was not enough, for there still seems to be a need to also blame everyone else, who do not believe the story, just so as to make it really clear who are the good guys ("us," who go to Heaven). In other words, this God, while being praised as all powerful and all loving also appears to be too stupid to know what's in the hearts of his children, so they need to make a lot of noise, and pass the blame to everyone else. It's a game of Black Jack, and it's a game of judgment, for the bad people are always out there, they're not me. Thus I don't have to take responsibility for anything, except pointing fingers. The absurdity of this whole model was probably best shown in Tom Lehrer's famous song, "National Brotherhood Week."

An alternative within the Christian tradition is thankfully present these days from Bishop Carlton Pearson with his Gospel of Inclusion, which represents the radical notion that God loves all his children equally, and doesn't play favorites. This is a major step, but it does not all the way resolve the odious "theology of sin and suffering," as we are still left with a supposedly loving God, who lets presumably his "only son," Jesus (so what are we, step children, as Paul would have it?), be gruesomely murdered on the Cross for our supposed sins. Presumably, that was the same Jesus who in his ministry did nothing but preach forgiveness of sins, and whose own teaching says nothing to promote sacrificial slaughter, let alone the vicariously salvific value of crucifixion. Those interpretations of his life and teaching all date from after his death, with Paul and Peter leading the parade for a belief system, which gradually became "Christianity," in which his teaching was made suitable for the Roman Emperor, and which very early made it its business to suppress any beliefs that were at variance with its own.

Jesus of course stood for the notion that the truth needs no defense, and that all that's needed is the forgiveness of sins, and to love our brothers like ourselves, and God above all. It's this "loving our brothers like ourselves" which Christianity, or any religion have the most problems with, again, quite in the spirit of Tom Lehrer's song, unless we fully and completely understand that ALL God's children are equal. Which is so evidently untrue, when we trust our body's eyes. Yet in the original teaching of Jesus, such as we find it in the Thomas Gospel, parts of which survived in the canonical Gospels accounts that became included in the New Testament, the emphasis is on the Kingdom as an ever present reality, which we merely do not perceive as long as we remain preoccupied with the things of the world. The world of the senses is thus a distraction from the world of the spirit, and of course all of our problems in this physical world which we mistake for our reality, have a way of securing our attention in the world, very unlike Jesus, who was in the world, but clearly not of it, and whose teaching consisted of asking us to follow him, to a Kingdom not of this world. Once we can fathom this, then the people in Haïti are simply our brothers, and we can address their needs on the basis of love, to the best of our abilities. No need to find fault or judge.

The churches - and all religions, but, thank God, with exceptions - have too often made the mistake of blackmailing people into joining their camp, completely oblivious to the simple truth that truth needs no defense, as Jesus taught in word and deed. It is only if we do not speak the truth that we need to expend so much effort at convincing others, because we are really in doubt ourselves, and operating from fear, holding on to a belief system which deep down we know to be at variance with the truth. Once we understand the spirit of Carlton Pearson's "Gospel of Inclusion" we must realize that we don't have to include anybody, since they already are, on the strength of the fact that we are all God's children.

The clincher then is to realize that Jesus very much spoke of the Kingdom of God as our reality, which we merely do not see in our present condition, or we would not feel the way we feel, but which is all around us, if we merely follow him, and learn to see as he sees, by practicing the forgiveness of sins, and loving our brothers like ourselves, and God above all. Would we not have a nicer experience if we treated all our brothers like ourselves, and treated every encounter as if we were meeting Jesus in that brother? That is the option which Jesus holds out to us, to live from forgiveness, love and inclusion, and to join with him in the Kingdom of Heaven. Most of us are a while away from that, but practice makes perfect. This is also why Jesus is so dismissive of our worldly relations, and emphasizes the spiritual brotherhood that flows from doing the Will of God, as in Logion 99, in other words, our reality is not who we are as bodies, our parents children, our sisters' brothers, or our brothers' sisters, nor even as parents of our own children. Who we are as brothers in spirit is only through joining with Jesus in doing God's Will, which is to forgive and to love. Not to judge. Clearly then, since we all have this propensity to judge and not forgive, we have some practice ahead. The only remaining questions is do we want to start now or later? So how long do we want to stay miserable?

As long as we stay stuck in judgment, we remain in the quandary of Logion 26, and we persist in seeing the speck in our brothers eye, and we never get around to cleaning house ourselves, forgiving our brother for what he did not do, by finally recognizing the speck in our own eyes, first, so we swallow our accusations. Likewise the Christian explanation of Jesus achieves the same quagmire, for to believe that we will be saved vicariously by someone else's sacrifice, serves to get us off the hook. It is a way of having your cake and eating it too, to sin and be forgiven magically by an external savior, and so starts the extortion by the agents of that savior. What Jesus did ask was rather to follow him in practicing doing according to the Will of the Father, and nowhere does he ask us to be perfect at it. But if we get busy practicing ourselves, we will have less and less time for judging others, and will easily be more helpful as well.

From before the formation of Christianity there were strands of Gnostic tradition where a better explanation of our ontological frame of reference was attempted, particularly in the insight that the God of Genesis, the creator God, could not possibly be an all loving and all powerful God, and was a creature of a second order. This teaching was not well understood and became suppressed by the emergence of the Pauline/Christian creed of a sacrificial, vicarious salvation. In our day and age it is making a comeback in the very profound teachings of A Course in Miracles, where one of the central tenets is that God did not create this world, and by implication that the God of Genesis is merely a projection by man, a made-up God of the second order, a creature of mythology, who bears a remarkable likeness to us, and is loving some days, and angry and fearful on others. He has friends and enemies, and he needs to be praised to remain in his good graces, and feared otherwise. Thus the Bible has become a collection of stories, which very often succeeded in nearly blotting out the memory of the real God of whom Jesus spoke, and who is all loving, because he is our source, in spirit. As long as we believe that, then the Kingdom is also deferred to something mythical, after death, because this life then is nothing but an affirmation of everything but that Kingdom not of this world, which Jesus says is our only reality.

Thus this illusion of a world, and illusion of a life, are merely the expressions of a belief system that puts my individuality central, and demotes God to a second order role, to "co-pilot," and which is the exact opposite of what Jesus advocates. This awareness is present in the Bible when a deep sleep descends on Adam, from which he apparently never wakes up. We find it in Advaita-Vendanta in the notion that the world is an illusion "Maya," and it's cause merely a play of the Godhead (Brahman), who got bored one day. But the gnostic concept as it is elaborated in A Course in Miracles, is clearer than all that, and ties in remarkably well with today's quantum physical notion of the holographic nature of this world of perception, namely that God did not create the world at all, which deprives it of any objective reality, and relegates it to purely the realm of perceptual phenomena, dreams or illusions. In Einstein's words, we are non-local beings having a local experience, or in Shakespeare's words, "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players." Instead, the mind made it up as an expression of the belief in a separate individual reality, in which we are all in conflict, and God is relegated to second place, although the primordial fear of him never quite leaves us, and stays with us as ontological guilt, which in our insanity we try to blame on everyone else. Round and round it goes, until someone, somewhere is willing to break the cycle, and look for "another way," which invariably becomes the path to a "Kingdom not of this world."