Good Morning Digital Neighbors! Happy Monday Add Irregulars, WSN Curators and all you other Vagabonds and Wanderers that have waltzed into Padre's. I am glad you are here, and even more thankful as I get to know and appreciate your story, your humor, your perspective and experience with this current chapter of humanity and its extra heaping of BS, gaslighting and almost complete loss of credibility. I may not be certain of what I do know when it comes to the world of politics and culture, but I do know what I don't know or believe. Searching for more factual threads and touchstones of truth is not easy, in fact it is often tedious, but I can't think of a better group of sojourners to be with in the mutual questions and puzzling out of this chapter. The most difficult of journeys is always made easier by good company. Happy Monday friends & neighbors!
Longing - for something more than this current chapter of human experience, for something more than just this reality. Something beyond the harsh cliff of death and an unknown afterlife. For any of us Deistic minded folks, we hopefully believe in a Divine that offers redemption and a place of communion on the other side. Of course there is decision, judgement and a coming home to your true eternal self or your self-absorbed limited self that is a pale shade of the humanity you once possessed. The Luminous wants a homecoming, but HE/THEY is not about imposing of will as much as invitation to follow, to be converted, to yield in loving trust. The message doesn't always get communicated that clearly because humans like power and many feel more of with the imposition of their wills on others. Religion is an attractive avenue for these false shepherds who care more about themselves rather than the flock. Divisions aplenty abound in religions because of the human taint of willful power in the life of community.
It is easy to want to drop religion and just say I am spiritual. Nothing wrong with that, but I often wonder how the spiritual non-religious types love their neighbors when they have cut out a ready supply of challenge cases by leaving behind the pain-in-the-asses that many "religious" people can be. Compassion, patience, forbearance, forgiveness can grow on their own, but the muscles grow more rapidly by exposure to challenges. Not that we want that many challenges, but the call to love neighbors is an expansive circle rather than a restrictive one. Again, I am not haranguing anyone who is spiritual and nonreligious, just wondering about the opportunities to grow in love with our neighbors. Religion is not the culprit of human misfortune, it is just the most convenient vehicle for rapid tyranny over others.
Well, that was a much longer detour from longing than I wanted, but longing is on my mind. Longing for God, longing for His/Their blessing and presence in my life, longing for goodness for others and myself. While not celebrating the saint of the day, I was curious to see what this most recently one added in 2015 had to say. Longing was right in the forefront of the search for some information on St. Gregory of Narek. Enjoy and my friends and neighbors and thanks for listening to me.
Today marks the three hundred and thirtieth birthday of the Frenchman François-Marie Arouet, better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire (1694-1778).
Born into a bourgeois family during the reign of Louis XIV, the “Sun King” (r. 1643-1715), Voltaire suffered tragedy at a young age when his mother died. Never close with his father or brother, Voltaire exhibited a rebellious attitude toward authority from his youth. His brilliant mind was fostered in the care of the Society of Jesus, who introduced him to the joys of literature and theater. Despite his later criticisms against the Church, Voltaire, throughout his life, fondly recalled his dedicated Jesuit teachers.
Although he spent time as a civil servant in the French embassy to the Hague, Voltaire’s main love was writing—an endeavor where he excelled in various genres, including poetry, which led to his appointment as the royal court poet for King Louis XV. Widely recognized as one of the greatest French writers, and even hyperbolically referred to by ...
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2026 Coffee Talk with the ADD Irregulars
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XIII
The Proud Minister
One day there came into the Garden a man in torn clothes badly bruised and cut, who said to the Lover, “In the name of the Beloved I demand your help.”
So the Lover and the Disciple let him in and dressed his wounds and prepared the best of the vegetables from the Garden for him to eat. When his wounds had been dressed and he had eaten and rested the Lover asked him how he had fallen into this plight, to which the man replied, “I was Minister of the Beloved in a city near this place, where I preached His gospel and expounded His doctrine to the people. I pointed out to them how their sins had made them wholly hateful to the Beloved and how therefore they were utterly beyond the range of His love and He would condemn them to eternal torments, whereon some fell into despair and wept bitterly but many were angry. One day the magistrates called me before them and begged me to leave the city and preach elsewhere for they said I had made many people so angry and desperate that they feared there might be a riot and they might not be able to protect me but that I might suffer some injury. I, however, very zealous for the Beloved and believing that the magistrates only feared that their own sins might be proclaimed, preached the more vehemently, denounced the magistrates and made it abundantly clear that the whole wicked city was foredoomed to eternal punishment by the just provision of the Beloved. Whereon a mob, stirred up no doubt by the corrupt and venal magistrates, fell upon me with sticks and stones, nearly killing me and driving me out of the city in the state in which I came to you.”
“My friend,” said the Lover, “this was not a good deed of yours, for besides denying the unfathomable compassion of the Beloved, you have by your obstinacy caused these people to commit a grievous sin, and this cannot be pleasing to the Beloved, that through you who profess to be His minister the people should become worse. Surely you remember that He Himself said, ‘If they persecute you in one city flee to another.’”
Therefore the man was very angry, and cursing the Lover, said, “I see that I have had a very false report of you and I do not believe that you are a servant of the Beloved at all. When I came to you so injured for the Beloved’s sake you set before me only herbs and fruits although the garden is full of birds which you could have killed to make me a worthy meal. I shall proclaim everywhere that you are no true servant of the Beloved but a mere falterer who dares not suffer in the cause of the Beloved. Be sure that you are foreordained to eternal torments who suffer nothing here.”
For the man was so blinded by his own pride that he could not perceive the scars on the hands and feet and the brows of the Lover nor how the cloth beneath the armpits of his tunic was dyed with a red dye. So he went out of the Garden cursing and shouting.
But the Lover looked sad and said, “A man like this does much harm to the cause of the Beloved, for by thus speaking falsely about the Beloved he may bring men to fear Him but none to love Him, and by love alone can any man approach the Beloved.”
