Monday, March 8, 2010

A green Boulder, my hometown: Gods we worhip if we are Irish Catholic, Momon, Protestant, what have you


I told Doc I was going down to see if they still need volunteers for the newly renovated video room in the WHo. I thought I would offer some time to check out movies, etc. a couple of times a week.
I want to move on from the Sunday paper agitation that caused me to blog again and make a video on the subject of abortion. This is the result of many long years of keeping track of the Arizona Republic, the main newspaper in Phoenix where I live. I depend on the Arizona Republic to keep me up with all the crises Arizona has been enduring in the recession. The state, the city, and ASU with a downtown campus now, have been hit with budget crunches. I get to read a lot about Sheriff Arpaio and his shenanigans who likes to bill himself as the toughest Sheriff in the west. The five Maricopa Country Supervisors have been getting a good deal of publicity, some of it bad, the last few years with a feud with the Sheriff and his willing sidekick Attorney Thomas. My first cousin, Max Wilson, is one of the elected supervisors so although I don't talk to him about his supervisor troubles I am always interested just because he is a cousin. His wealth separated us socially a long time ago, since I am in a much different category having been disabled and run completely out of any inheritance. This caused me to have to apply for disability benefits, seek subsidized housing, and in general live at poverty level the rest of my life. The rich and the poor do not always speak the same language.
I have always striven to make my mark by writing, but recognized that even there I would have to be careful not to get too successful or the stress would very likely kill me. As a result I have hardly gotten successful at all. My blog and my video numbers on counters indicate just how well known I am.
I have also been pro life since 1973 when Roe vs Wade necessitated the need to make a choice between pro life and pro choice, or just generally not concern myself at all. I see most successful people in Hollywood as staying on the side that would make them the most popular or just being neutral. Most would not be so foolish as to come out as pro life in a society that is generally liberal, if they wanted to continue to be successful that is.
Since I have always taken the stand of pro life I accepted that this would be an unpopular position to take in a legalized pro choice world. So be it. I fight with blogs and videos and then I subside and rest and talk about other matters, and then I fight again. That has been my cycle for a long time.
I told Doc I would be back to watch another couple of episodes of the Tudors this morning. I am very fascinated with this series made with mostly English actors about Henry VIII who helped the Protestant world to get up and running in England in opposition to the Catholic one which had gotten him thoroughly out of patience by not granting him an annulment to his first marriage to Queen Katherine when he wanted to marry Anne Boleyn.
Now there is an uprising in northern England as the result of his ordering the sacking of the monasteries so their great wealth could accrue to him instead of to the enrichment of the Catholic Church. He therefore gained more money to put down such uprisings despite the protests of the people who had become attached to their monasteries and priests and churches and by then were rather disillusioned with having to worship King Henry as the head of their church instead of the Pope. I did not realize that he broke his promises not to punish the protesters and we have just been witness to a bunch of hangings of the rebels, quite an unsettling sight. In fact, it seems to have driven his main commander in charge mad. His third queen has just died following childbirth, so Henry is beginning to have his troubles to, although he prays and cannot imagine what he has done to bring such calamity into his life!
I thought wow, did the Protestant movement get a rough start under King Henry, but it endured and changed the way England would worship for good. The domination of the Catholic church was broken in England but the two factions have continued to war in Ireland to this day.
I am fascinated with how religions are born, I suppose coming from Utah, which was a Mormon state that the Prophet Brigham Young strove to make Mormon country after the mob killed Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon Church, back in Nauvoo.
I had to make up my mind to change my plans to visit Utah this summer after a three year absence as a result of not waiting until my sisters are all dead before proceeding to write and try to publish my memoirs. Since I am the oldest I figured I might not outlive them, so instead of holding up on writing my memoirs I would just not go to Utah any more, or as long as I think there will be too much hostility toward me generated by my memoirs which I intend to publish in my blog, too, as I go along. I want to get reactions to keep me going. I guarantee there is plenty in my history to cause reactions since I was at odds with the church before I even went to grade school as a result of what happened to me at a very young age. I felt it was just too complicated for the church to handle so I began to withdraw any reliance I had on the church despite still being pressed to attend at various times by different relatives.
I did not take my troubles to the church. I did not deem myself even a Christian although all throughout childhood I felt Jesus was my best friend. I probably used his help more than anybody's besides the creator's whom I consulted every day, the one who had created me and set me down in a world of troubles. I felt this creator did understand me and would help me, but he was not always at one with the Mormon God.
It doesn't look as though the people thought Henry's God was superior to the Catholic God which is why they rebelled from time to time, especially when he did things like contrive evidence to behead his second wife, Anne Boleyn, so he could take still another wife. The Catholic God during the torturing and killing of people for heresy seems so cruel if he would actually countenance such stuff it is no wonder Henry and his Protestant God seemed like a more understanding God at times, who did comprehend why a wife had to be put aside when all love was gone. A King could not be expected to give up being happy just because the Catholic Pope said so.
So it follows that people's ideas of God pretty much depend on the church they belong to and what they may want to believe their God is saying to them. Joseph Smith claimed God spoke to him and told him all the churches were false and he had been chosen to establish the only true church of God on earth, which everyone would have to recognize before they could enter heaven. Hence Mormon baptisms for the dead giving those who never had a chance to become Mormons passageway to heaven.
As a child, I greatly doubted this could be reasonable even though I did enjoy going to see the temple where I had the unique experience of being baptized for the dead.
So our God reflects what we believe to be the propensities of the God we want to worship and think is reasonable, even though he might not seem credible to others. It is no wonder factions in the different religions sometimes quarrel for centuries over what God is right and true, in Ireland, a Catholic God or a Protestant God? In the US, a Lutheran God, Catholic, Protestant, Mormon, Charismatic Christian Fundamentalist, Mormon Fundamentalist God, etc.
I find reading about all this fascinating and even more so when it is pictured in a very good movie or a series like the Tudors. And I like to think that we are all God's children and there is a creator who understands everyone of us!

1 comment:

kanyonland King 2.blogspot.com said...

Nice header..that works. It sounds like you have been reading how religions are born. Interesting blog.


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