We haven’t even sat down to Thanksgiving Day dinner and the pulpiteers at Focus on the Fambly are already trotting out their annual Christmas In Peril fantasy. Focus Action spokescreature Carrie Gordon Earll breaks it down for us in Palinesque style (and I’m not talking Michael here):
“The eradication of Christmas is a politically correct idea that we can’t have sacred ideas in our culture.”
Uh huh. Can someone please ask Spock to pop round with his Universal Translator? I assume it handles Cretinese.
The more I see of industrial Christianity, Bibleburg style, the more I like Zen. You never see a mob from the local sangha berating the manager of a Best Buy because he won’t hang banners inscribed with the Four Noble Truths on Shakyamuni’s birthday. George Carlin had this crowd nailed, you should pardon the expression.
Meanwhile, thanks for all the music recommendations. I’d forgotten how much I like some of your suggestions, especially The Band’s “The Last Waltz.” Wouldn’t you know the sumbitch isn’t available on iTunes? Yo, Carrie, forget about that eradication-of-Christmas bullshit — we got a real problem right here.
Mad Blog Media 
Patrick, You’ve moved me to write something on your comment of “Industrial Christianity.” I like that phrase! As a retired Christian clergyman who once lived in Bibleburg, Bomb Town too, I’ll be up front saying there is little Christianity left in the Christian Church. Much of Christianity has become big business, not all of it, but much of it.
There are lots of churches out there trying to study and live up to the teachings of Jesus. The church will survive, but it must put up with those intent on merely pushing their own petty agenda. They do this all the while raking in the dollars. After all, there are bills to be paid and non-thinking people to be milked.
Ah, and people wonder why I gave up “organized religion” for Lent one year in Catholic school?
Sadly most christians (maybe a few actually named Christian) forget that there is a simple rule that most major organized (and a few disorganized ones too) follow: do unto others as you would have them do to you. Or words to that effect. Seems that the ‘religions’ conveniently forget that when yelling about their relative largesse, merits, and oh so important, “better than the next guy.”
Give me a Zen moment riding down the trail in relative peace and quiet over the Sunday morning gymnastics of a Catholic Mass anyday. I gave up on organized, mainstream, Western, profit-driven religions two-and-a-half decades ago….and I don’t think I’ll go back. Unless ‘their God’ – as opposed to who else’s God? – can figure out a way to deal with nasty goatheads killing the Zen buzz with a dreaded hissing sound.
Industrial Christianity be damned. So to speak.
When I was finishing up my Ph.D. dissertation at Stony Brook, we had a great set of priests who didn’t buy into the latest bullshit, but concentrated on a synthesis of faith and intellect all tuned to Gregorian chants and some beer parties.
Fast forward to the Univ. of Hawaii at Manoa’s Newman Center, staffed by a gang of fire-breathing Jesuits just back from Central and South American Liberation Theology. Well, that was my heydey of involvement with organized religion. I even read Milton’s Paradise Lost. It was a lot like being in an academic department, just with a bit more ceremonial wine and bread.
Nowdays, all of us, including my priests from Stony Brook and Manoa, would be burned at the stake of religious conservatism and rank stupidity. So I have bailed out on all that jazz. Zen and the art of walking the dogs to the back of the mesa on a Sunday morning suits me just fine. Not to mention the dogs like it, and that counts for celestial brownie points.
Its actually kind of depressing to see how these industrial morons have dumbed it all down and sold it out to the same sort of fools that are taking over Asshatistan.
Peace be with you, and have a great Thanksgiving.
So Bruce, where did you work in BombTown?
Khal, White Rock from 1976 until 1980, the UM congregation back when it met in Chamisa Elementary. Good times. I also “Moonlighted” with E-Division. Okay, I guess clergy “Daylight” as we work so much in the evenings. I have a degree in math and physics and a background of technical writing. I wrote some documentation on the Helios Laser project and a couple of mini-reviews for the Lab. I still have a soft spot in my heart for Bomb Town.
Theology needs to be “worked at.” Christianity has a lot to offer if you work to understand its past, its present, and its future. Theology is in context.