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#2949By Albert Sidney (150.176.68.216) on Friday, February 21, 2003 - 1:19 am

These are some excerpts from Bob Dylan's .... With God On Our Side...

oh the spanish american
war had its day
and the civil war too
was soon laid away
and the names of the heroes
i's made to memorize
with guns in their hands
and God on their side...

but now we've got weapons
of the chemical dust
if fire them we're forced to
then fire them we must
one push of the button
and a shot the world wide
and you never ask questions
with God on your side...

so now as i'm leavin'
i'm weary as hell
the confusion i'm feeling
ain't no tongue can tell
the words feel my head
and fall to the floor
if God's on our side
he'll stop the next war...Bob Dylan

I have always loved this song. It has many more verses. Google it.

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#2951By mysticsdream (203.10.231.228) on Friday, February 21, 2003 - 8:33 am

Dylan was good at asking ultimate questions....
I guess Blowing in the Wind must be one of his most enduring.

Frankly I am a Paul Simon man used to love Dylan but not as much as Paul.

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#2962By Albert Sidney (150.176.68.122) on Saturday, February 22, 2003 - 2:28 am

One point I had in mind which I lost in my neverending amazement with Dylan is this. I am sure of this enough to make the following bold statement.
God has no connection with war. God doesn't go into battle with us and help us shoot strait. Would God ever be behind the dropping of a bomb that would kill innocent children.

This may happen in Iraq. I am sure God won't be on a team.

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#2966By Carlan (64.12.96.79) on Saturday, February 22, 2003 - 10:07 pm

I listen to rock n roll mostly. I hardly know one singer or one band from another. This is one of my ignorance’s which I have never gotten over. I like mostly the beat of the music. I like the lyrics on some songs but on many others I haven’t got the faintest idea what they are saying let alone what most of them mean, but nevertheless I just like to hear their music anyway. I appreciate those artists that can make me feel certain rhythms and make my mind slip away from the humdrum of an otherwise boring day. I like to listen to the violin in my classical collection of recordings when I am day dreaming or when I am reading or when I am contemplating (to me) complex suggestions and arguments and when I am going to take my daily nap. Here, again, I don’t know the names of the artist or do I know the names of the world renowned composers or musicians, but that is my own malady which I must admit is down right pitiful on my part. I cannot play any instrument nor can I carry a tune in the shower, but I sure love music for music's sake and all that happiness and forgetfulness that music can bring to the peoples of the world. I don’t ever want to pass more than a day without hearing music of some kind in the background of my life. Music makes life more bearable and more substantial to my way of thinking. I say, let the beat go on and on …

As to God participating in war or in peace I am of the thinking that God is there because God is of all that we do and don’t do. Could God direct a bomb fragment to strike an innocent Iraqi child in the streets of Baghdad? Could God kill over 90 American young adults in a nightclub near Providence, RI? I think you are right in that God isn’t on anyone’s side at any time; however, I think that God is always there! There where you are is where God is! There where they are is where God is! Here with me is where God is!

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#2973By Albert Sidney (68.59.93.19) on Monday, February 24, 2003 - 9:20 am

I am a very spiritual person. I have contemplated God all my life. It is the most engrossing thing I could imagine thinking about, but I could never get the hang of believing that a single-entity type of God is everywhere all the time, unless God is all of us and perhaps, Mountain Woman, All That Is.....

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#2977By mountainwoman (199.84.45.110) on Tuesday, February 25, 2003 - 12:57 am

and amen to that, too. At this point, that is what i believe. God is All-that-is: masculine, feminine, mineral, vegetable, animal... simply all.

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#2988By mysticsdream (203.10.231.228) on Wednesday, February 26, 2003 - 7:29 am

Mountain woman you have been so agreeable lately, that I am basking in Al's sense of peace and nirvana.

And Al I hope you read the poem I wrote for you about the mountain top. Its hard to find as I planted it among the depressive stuff, like a ray of sunshine on a dark and stormy day.

Carlen even though you don't like music too much, it seems one of Paul Simon's lyrics is still potent. If you replay his version of "Silent Night" basically you hear the traditional lyrics of the 'incarnation' of God in the nativity scene. (Now Mountainwoman and Al try not to choke on a theology which said God took a form.. I am interpreting something which you are free to disagree with, but which is conventional).

In this song Simon juxtaposed the cozy family scene (singing carols) with the harsher reality of what was happening in the world and the "Seven O'clock News".
eg 'Richard Speck condemned murderer of several nurses was sentenced today..' and the news goes on and culminates with Richard Nixon saying 'opposition to the war in Vietnam is the single greatest enemy facing the state'.

Forgive me if I misquote some of the words, its a long time since I heard the song.. but its so potent, and in a way Al sums up your desire to take a stand for peace. It sort of underlies that other conversation we were also into about how our leaders try and shape opinion, as sort of thought control police. When you think about the thought within the lyrics... we are singing 'peace' while perpetuating war.. we think of 'holy nights' while people are being murdered etc etc. again its a song about myth and reality.
I have to do this in two parts. But read the second too.

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#2989By mysticsdream (203.10.231.228) on Wednesday, February 26, 2003 - 7:34 am

Changing the subject and bound to get a reaction here.. for Islamic people God and war are clearly compatible. We need to recognise that the concept of Jihad is revolutionary in essence.

For the real story of the incarnation.. ie the real social situation into which Jesus was born.. his parents were homeless refugees, the stable was not really a sanitised and pretty place... but shelter in the night. As a result of the birth, a large scale slaughter of male children resulted. In short the traditional birth took place in a horrid situation, which you might describe as like war. In other words a theological explanation is that when God took form, he/she did so not in the palaces of the intellectuals or powerful, but amongst the horror of those who are victims of oppressive regimes.

What I am trying to say is that in orthodox Christinity the God is born into the heart of the conflict..he is "down and dirty". .. "vulnerable".. an the end of this God is crucifixion on the rubbish tip, by the Roman rulers (ie invaders/ conquerors)...
and so the story of the God who took shape and tried to be a mediator reconciling the world to each other and to 'himself' seems to be end in defeat. But paradoxically that death is the means to peace.

Mountainwoman you gave an intellectual assent to the dialectic approach, thesis, causes antithesis, causes synthesis.

I guess if we looked at history as a process unfolding its hard to say what is the intitial thesis.. what was the reaction.. where did it begin and end. For a synthesis, might be the thesis of the next step.

But in this orthodox understanding of Christianity's incarnation (God taking form), the thesis is intervention (mediation) the antithesis is opposition culminating in death, and the synthesis was the emergence of a powerful spiritual life etc. The church of course began as underground movement, now it has more similarities to an oppressor.

Sorry for confusing you all.. don't try to find one point here.. its like a series of artistic works you may choose to respond to. But if there is one point its this. The God I believe in took war on. He was born into one, and killed by one.. but in the process gave new insights into peace.

I'd have to say that historically, if you read the OT, it is a saga of war stories, and man's understanding of a God who used events to shape history, more often than not, the 'people of God' were invaded, but sometimes their enemies suffered plagues. etc. Historically the concept of exodus and the journey to promise .. the promised land of milk and honey .. is one that takes place within a war. The 'promised land' represents a place of people..it was the end state the people sought.

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#2990By mysticsdream (203.10.231.228) on Wednesday, February 26, 2003 - 7:41 am

It seems to me that with this "Christ event" the vision of peace was transformed from being a physical place or state, into being a spiritual quality, a way of being within the world.

Carlen in so far as the US began as a pilgrim people on a journey to the promised land.. there has been a vision of God and country interconnected.

(The sort of stuff that Paul Simon writes about).

But for me the problem is if peace is a spiritual quality, what are we trying to achieve on the broader scale between nations. Probably its got more to do with "justice" and order.

Well I look forward to many responses...

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#2991By mysticsdream (203.10.231.228) on Wednesday, February 26, 2003 - 7:44 am

refer to comments on "how we can better communicate with one another" sorry for the length

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#2996By Albert Sidney (150.176.68.52) on Wednesday, February 26, 2003 - 9:03 pm

Hey....I can amen most all of what is being said. However.........I have friends who are Islamic and they do not see God and war in the same statement.

They see God as peace and forgiveness. The Qu'ran states over and over to the point of nauseum...."God is all powerful and all forgiving."

So, I don't think the religion issue is the crux. I know southern baptist who like to irradicate everything not like them.

Now.....back to nirvana....you broke my connection to bliss.....I say with tongue in cheek, and a mischievous twinkle in my eye.

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#2998By Carlan (205.188.209.6) on Wednesday, February 26, 2003 - 10:07 pm

I think that God is all of us and all other living things as well. I think that all living things are how God is everywhere at once. I think through all living things is how it is that God knows all and sees all and feels all. I think that the entire material world and universe around us is things manufactured by God to allow us and all other living things a means and a sense to live out our lives in. It is what I call; God’s Realm and God’s Realm will exist because of God and will go on as long as God insist that it does.

I think that we as humans and knowing about the possibilities of things such as God, we cannot help but to believe that God is on our side in all that we do. I think that we use God as we choose to use God. I am not of the opinion that God uses us. I think we use God to convince, to advocate, and to manipulate that which we deem useful and satisfying, in order, to gain our wants and desires and dreams. I think that when we cannot understand a thing or an event or a situation that we like to invoke the use of the God word, to give what worries us or concerns us some validity and some concreteness. I think it natural for we humans to look for something bigger and better than ourselves when we are faced with that thing that occurs of which we, either, have got no understanding of or that we just don’t want to believe that such a thing is possible could have just happened. For example, when we face a dear one’s death or crippling episode we find that we first blame God, then, we forgive God, and then, we commiserate with God, and then, we welcome God back as our all knowing and all forgiving God of old. But, through the whole process starting from when the person dies God does what God does and that is God knows and waits.

Oh, and I think that one of the base problems about many religions and too many religious followers is the constant repetition of daily devotions and repetitive liturgy that makes them mechanized factories turning out robots that cannot get through a day without performing repetitive devotional sayings and doings, instead of building men and women that allows each of them to become human beings made capable of thinking, feeling, and reasonableness and better enabling them to access independent and objective thought, thereby, causing this realm to function much more agreeably and comfortably all over the globe.

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#2999By mountainwoman (199.84.45.153) on Thursday, February 27, 2003 - 2:46 am

Well!!! How very fascinating this has become! Mystics, what is OT?
I have less than no problem with the idea of G-d taking form. In fact I believe all form is g-d - as well as all non-form.
Re thesis, synthesis, antithesis: maybe synthesis is thesis to one offshoot while antithesis to another. The concept can be expanded such that one point (in time, space, ideology, etc. etc.) functions as a point of creation, initiating factor, end of, etc.
As for God taking in war,(at the risk of being a ticket to nirvana ; ), I must agree with you. If God is all, then It encompasses hurricanes, earthquakes, a rush of violent anger experienced, and all manner of other events. There is in wiccan tradition a life-death-life goddess with pointy teeth and skulls around her neck. Life is sacred and contains more than we can really reconcile and/or conceive of.
The next factor, then is choice. The kingdom of heaven is within. Maybe the efforts some of us are making now are attempts to make it "without" as well.
Carlan, I agree that for some, practicing rituals has little to do with true connection to God. These things, I think, are largely unrelated. However, there are people who practice ritual as a conscious means to get closer to godliness. And I have myself experienced rituals that lifted my spirit so it soared.

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#3002By mysticsdream (203.10.231.228) on Thursday, February 27, 2003 - 10:55 am

Smile..

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#3003By mysticsdream (203.10.231.228) on Thursday, February 27, 2003 - 11:44 am

Al I think you are right Southern Baptist v Jihad is likely to be a Superbowl event! Is Bush a Southern Baptist? Does he have a red neck? (Sorry just being cheeky).

Mountainwoman OT is Old Testament or Torah.
I agree what you say about thesis etc...

Glad to hear the Amens.. and thanks for your stimulations..

Carlan you and mountainwoman seem to agree that God is in all.

And I agree that heaven is both within and beyond.. here and not here.. partial and perfect

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#3004By Albert Sidney (150.176.68.108) on Thursday, February 27, 2003 - 9:45 pm

In some sort of spiritual structural sense, I sometimes envision we and the planets and all else much like atoms in the makeup of God. So we are piece of God and he is within and without.

You all do know we are sounding very Zen with a twinge of Hindu, don't you?

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#3010By mountainwoman (199.84.45.195) on Friday, February 28, 2003 - 2:05 am

OT!!! I C!!! Thanks for the added vocabulary.
I don't feel the need for labels, AlSid. I sit here and smile, thinking: "This all sounds goooooood to moi!"