Neanderpundit

One of my daily stops, and possibly the prettiest black man in the blogosphere, makes a comment in this post about a guy delivering pizzas in a Lexus SUV.

When I worked in the mills, there were hundreds of expensive luxury cars in the parking lots.
No, not NEW expensive luxury cars.

Everytime I see someone spending 53,000 bucks on an Audi, I think, you know, in ten years, some millrat is going to be driving that to Inland. The power windows won’t work and they’ll be too expensive to fix. The transmission will have problems and he’ll go broke trying to fix it. A tuneup will cost him more than a nice dinner for four at a very expensive restaurant. He’ll get a cheap set of steel wheels and Wal-Mart wheel covers because they’ll cost less than the P-Metric radials the car came with. The driver’s seat will be torn up and nasty, and he’ll use an old rag rug to cover it up. He’ll have a rubberband to hold the key in place because it will fall out otherwise. The radio, long since stolen, will be replaced with an Audiovox special. bare wires twisted together will be visible under the dash. The carpet will be matted with years of crap. The trunk will long since have failed to be openable, so there will be a spare tire and a jack in the backseat.

Mercedes is looked on in Europe as Dodge is looked on here. Crappy cheap cars. They have a reputation here because of marketing- nothing else. Fact is, people spent more money on benzes and they last longer becuase they’re taken care of better. Any car you maintain will last a long time. My truck has a quarter of a million miles plus, and everything still works. People that own big SUV’s and don’t ever take them offroad are just goofy. You should see the shit Dick does with his bigass truck- THAT is what an SUV was meant to do.

Yeah, drive that Lexus around. It’ll be toting pizzas in a few years. Meanwhile try not to spill anything on the seat.

Cadbury’s creme eggs make my flapjacks pork roast in the calimari. If there were only ice cream sandwiches in the whipped cream, I could fried eggs me some prime rib. For the time being, I cheeseburger a couple of filet mignon in a corn on the cob.

Anyway, four days on the liquid diet. I am doing fine with it, why do you asparagus?

Don’t make me laugh.

Several people, in coments and in IM and in emails have said to me that they had no trouble wiht faith, but with organized religion.

And I can’t fault them a bit.

Here’s the thing: I have been a Roman Catholic all my life. I am techically excommunicate for personal reasons but I still attend mass. Once you are a catholic (and I mean, truly a catholic) you can as much not be a catholic as you can start being a hog.

Being a Catholic, however, is not a prerequisite for faith in a Creator. In fact, I think that some of catholicism is a specific impediment to faith.

I KNOW a lot of the calvinist beliefs are an impediment to faith. I suspect a great deal of Liberalism is an impedimen to faith.

Whatever the case, at least as far as the Catholic Church is concerned, I have put my fingers into the soil where the bodies are buried, and have felt the bones.

A good spiritual leader can inspire you to closer contact with the creator, and brotherhood and peace with your fellow man and woman. But the acts of brotherhood must come from you. No organization can control what is within you unless you allow it- and allowing it has led to some of the worst nastiness in our history.

Look: Establish your relationship with your Creator yourself. Keep that relationship personal. And keep it to yourself. Don’t think you deserve to enforce your belief on anyone else, because you do not.

No, you should NOT stop going to mass- or to services- in fact, do so more so than before, if you can. But be aware that the building, the minister, the people, are not the source of faith. You don’t need anyone else. You need to be at services so you can maintain that sense of community, and to increase your awareness of a specific thing.

The awareness that there are others just like you.

Others who have found how to use that faith in their lives, and are whole within themselves. People who have arrived at that equilibrium between the teachings of organized groups, and the wisdom of their own hearts. They are there looking for you. They are there to support you. Get to know them and it will help strengthen your own relationship with the Creator. The ones who are very obviously there to show off their new dress, or to be seen in the right pew with the right crowd? the ones that make a big show about their wonderful faith and how great it is? ignore ’em. They suck. they are as much in touch with their creator as.. well, as you could become a hog.