Neanderpundit

Nineteen years ago this very moment I stood next to a stainless steel labratory table holding my dead father’s hand in mine.

He had finished his shift at Ford, locked his toolbox, and run up the three flights of stairs between his shop and the locker room on the mezzanine. Just like he’d done every other evening of his life for twenty seven years. Only this time he had a grabber about halfway up. He made it to the top and collapsed. They were unable to revive him

He hadn’t had a genetically bad ticker, he had a bad ticker because of the hell he’d been through in his life. He had scarlet fever when he was young that messed up his heart valves and left him with only partial heart function to begin with. It was a wonder he’d made it as long as he had.

I stood there with the table supporting me, holding his hand in mine, for a very long time. The wrinkles in his face were gone. The hospital sheet covered him to his chest, so I could see the scars on his shoulders and arms where he’d had surgeries and other problems in his life.

An orderly came in and asked me if they could harvest his eyes now. He’d signed his donor card for the eye bank, his eyes went to fix cataracts on a couple other people. I squeezed his hand and left.

I’ve never been able to talk about this in nineteen years. It’s killing me to do so now.

We had dad’s favorite meal, which we always do on the anniversary, pork chops with mashed potatos and milk gravy, sauerkraut to mix in witht he taters and gravy. Mom cracked open a mason jar of corn we canned in 1978, one of the last years dad had the big garden. Dad would have put the corn into the jar, we ate it in his memory.

I don’t know if this will ever not hurt.

or have no idea what any of this is all about, here is a nutshell version of the history of Judeo-Christian religion.

Most of the shit we deal with today starts with Abraham. Christian, muslim, and Jew all have Abraham in common.

It is, remarkably enough, rare to find anyone who knows this.

Anyway: Abraham’s wife Sarah can’t conceive. Sarah has a slave girl named Hagar who is Egyptian. She gives Hagar to Abraham, and he has a kid by Hagar, and calls him Ishmael.

In his hundredth year, or therabouts, God speaks to Abraham, and says “Look, forget about Hagar and Ishmael, you’re gonna have a kid with Sarah”. Abraham, a little freaked about the idea of having a kid when he’s 100, (Sarah herself is 90) says “but how can this be?” God says “Duh! I”m GOD!”
So Sarah has a kid. Sarah’s kid is named Isaac. You might remember Isaac as the kid who God asks Abraham to offer as sacrifice as a test of his faith. Sarah sees Ishmael playing wiht Isaac and thinks “Hey, that kid is gonna get all of Abraham’s stuff when he croaks” and throws Hagar and Ishmael out. Hagar and Ishamel and crew get treated like redheaded stepchildren for generations.

Christ comes along. If you read the bible, it’s pretty clear Christ didn’t want everyone to be “Christians” he wanted them to be good Jews. For good or ill, Christ’s followers took it upon themself to be “Christians” instead of “Jews who follow Christ” and here we are today.

Anyway, a couple hundred years after Christ dies, some offhand distant offspring of the clan of Ishmael, calling himself Mahomet, gets sick to death of being treated like a redheaded stepchild. He could go to Jesus’s followers and be whole and move on to bigger and better things, but he’s reeeeeeally pissed at having been left off the guest list at the Table of Abraham so long, so he decides to make up his own religion. He makes up a bunch of new laws, too, that cater to his specific whims and perversions, and writes an unparalleled document of hatred of everyone. He aso rewrites a lot of the Torah (to Christians, the five books of the OT called “the Pentateuch”) to agree with his peculiar notions. Lots of people too stupid to understand the concept of “cult” start following him around. This grows like a cancer around the world.

The main body of Christianity after Jesus dies gradually divides itself into Roman Catholics and Eastern rite. With that much power comes politics, and there are a lot of bad people Claiming to be Christians doing bad shit all around. At several times over the years, different people, fed up with the political way the churches are being run, split off from the various Christian churches to form their own Christian churches, which immeditately fall prey to the kind of political bullshit that they attempted to escape. At each schism, some part or parts of the Christian Bible are removed because they don’t agree with what was said in them. Some, like the Calvinists, intent on being holier than everyone else, convince themselves that the really only need to read and understand John 3:16 and everything will be OK, which was yet another leaders way to get followers- “Hey, to hell with that being good all the time, just do this and you can get out of jail free!” as you might imagine, people beat down their doors to get in.

Any time any human tries to tell you that the creator wants you to do X, punch that human in the mouth. Humans are not capable of understanding the Creator or his desires. Any human who claims he does is not only mistaken they’re trying to divert you from the truth and into their own twisted bullshit. Say no. Make your relationship with the Creator personal and don’t share it with anyone. Let your informed conscience be your guide.

There were 11 in all. Some decent sized bucks. The one to the left is less than 12 feet from me. I could kill it with a big rock.

Instead I’ll go pour another bucket of corn out there. I love living in the country.