While on the road, my early morning coffee stops have provided me with a place to meet new people, watch the world go by and to gather my plans for the day. If I’ve the mind, it’s also become a regular moment when I might write some rubbish about LUE (life, the universe and everything)

Today’s LUE is obviously about habit, not just the morning coffee shop type but the habit of a costume – the wearing of a religious uniform.

“Hey, look at me I’m an XYZ god-botherer and this is my hat, or my headscarf or my beard, or my symbol to tell you that I belong to this or that clan. And by the way, you, you who look like a real tosser, no good atheist in your blue jeans and t-shirt don’t (belong to my clan, that is) .”

It’s Saturday morning in Golders Green, London NW11. The time is approximately 08:00 and I’ve just walked the 15-20 minutes from mother’s home to Caffé Nero for my double-shot espresso with hot water on the side. They make a good espresso at Café Nero and so far I’ve managed to down 2 cups on each visit. Three more stamps on my card and I will get a free one, and since I’m of that faith where anything free is worth grabbing with both hands, I am looking forward with consummate delight to that momentous day when I will receive my due and just reward.

The walk from my mother’s home is almost as interesting as a short stroll along the Ganga. There are no painted sadhus here, but there are holy (well maybe I best call them religious) men and women a plenty. Young boys and old geezers alike dressed in the garb of their various religious sects. Some wear broad-brimmed, tall black hats that sit high on the head and look particularly uncomfortable and ungainly, especially on a 16 year old.

Others sport large round fir hats (a streimel) and wear black or white tights and long silk looking coats.

And both have their white tzitzis trailing out from beneath long coats or dark suit jackets..

Some have jaunty skull caps worn on the side. And for the first time ever I saw a few young men wearing baseball hats as they walked to their synagogues for prayer and instruction.

No doubt there are very good reasons why these people parade their religious uniforms. One reason is it’s Saturday and another is probably because they like it. So who am I to nay-say their experience.

Maybe in some way wearing a religious uniform enriches people’s god experience. Maybe these things are occupational health and safety measures spelt out in their scriptures.

On the other hand, maybe they’re nothing more than a habit.

The old Horlicks jug reminded me of my youth and cold nights sitting in front of the TV with my parents. My mother would make us a Horlicks and milk drink before bed. I still remember its smell and its sweet malty taste.

It also reminded me of this poem:

A few years ago while attending a Vipassana meditation course it came to me that death would be the last experience I’d have — that it was something that would definitely happen and there was nothing I could do to change it.

There is nothing terribly profound in those thoughts — except for me it was the first time I had thought them. After I’d calmed down and was able to think about it without my pulse racing, I realised I could go back and try to ignore death again or I could start thinking about it more, which is what I chose to do.

Thinking about death was not just scary, it was downright terrifying for me. I don’t believe in reincarnation, nor do I believe in heaven and hell. I do believe something carries on, but I have no idea what, and anyway, I don’t think we are conscious of whatever it might be.

I see the whole life death thing like this: It’s as if we’re a glass of water plucked from the ocean and given life and form and then one day the glass is upturned and we are returned to the ocean — death and whatever. The form in the glass, I, no longer exists — it has gone back and been mixed, diluted, joined with the ocean.

Over time, I have begun to feel differently about death and the experience of dying. Today, I would prefer to be present, I would like to experience my death in the same way I experience a sunny day. To be in it and a part of it. I can still get scared when I think about it all, but most of the time the thought of death as my last great adventure has a somewhat calming effect.

The reason I mention this word is because the United States has named a bomb test, planned for next June, ‘Divine Strake’.

Divine Strake will test a gigantic 700-ton bomb that has been developed to destroy deeply buried military targets (like bomb shelters) and will be the biggest open-air chemical blast ever at the USA’s Nevada Test Site. Link

Interestingly, in a society where 70% of the population refer to themselves Christian, God can now find a bomb test named after Him. This God-bomb or maybe I got the meaning wrong and it’s a party-pink bomb with divine’ polka-dot tassels that wave in the breeze, humming ‘God Bless America’ as they float to the ground — anyway, whatever its meaning, you can be sure of one thing — it won’t be divine if you’re on the receiving end.

Strake (noun)

1. continuous line of planking or plates from the stem to the stern of a ship or boat.
2. protruding ridge fitted to an aircraft or other structure to improve aerodynamic stability.

When you understand one thing through
and through, you understand everything.

~ Shunryu Suzuki

Stonehenge, on Salisbury Plain, was their technology and like some of ours it allowed them to sacrifice people to appease their God. Technology is this weeks Photo Friday assignment.

god’s chosen
slay god’s children
a deathly silence on high

Haiku by soji.

Evangelical Christians: another stereotype crumbles

Dear Andy,

Am I to believe that maybe you and some of Sydney’s fundamentalist God-botherers are feeling the heat? Let me say upfront that I have met too many right-wing evangelical Christians not to believe the stereotype is alive and well and not as you are suggesting, on the wane.

I reckon there’s a small record-player that sits inside the heads of people of religion — it’s just bigger and louder the more fundamentalist you are. This record-player plays a non-stop recording, that says over and over again — “I am right and YOU are dead wrong. Your beliefs are wrong, your god is wrong — in fact everything about you and the way you live is wrong. In fact, YOU ARE GOING TO HELL, you are so wrong!!”.

Andy, maaate, one swallow does not a summer make, but if the day ever comes that I hear evangelical Christians en mass (or any other religious fundamentalist group for that matter) accepting that just-maybe others’ beliefs have some validity — then I might say goodonya mate, the worm has turned and have a nice day.

Progressives have long stereotyped evangelical Christians as enemies and automatic allies of the political right, mainly because they embrace traditional values in relation to the nuclear family, opposition to abortion on demand (but not all abortion), gambling and drugs. But these positions are hardly inconsistent with a belief in economic justice; the rights of workers; opposition to war, racism and sexism (yes, sexism, because evangelicals were in the forefront of the suffragette movement); and a rejection of greed, exploitation and materialism. In fact, these values have historically been a staple of evangelical Christianity.

Andrew West | SMH | Link

This month, 30 top theologians from around the world met at the Vatican to discuss, among other quandaries, the problem of what happens to babies who die without baptism.

…it remains an interesting relic, strangely relevant to what the Roman Catholic Church has been and what it wants to be. The theory of limbo bumps up against one of the most contentious issues for the church: abortion. If foetuses are human beings, what happens to their souls if they are aborted?

Ian Fisher | NYT | Link

It may at first seem of little import, but for a poet who paid such exacting attention to typography, it must be said once and for all that his name should be written and printed with the usual capital letters in their usual places: E. E. Cummings.

Thought I’d add another of e.e’s poems that takes my fancy.