“The first cities of the Americas were spaces marked out for the ample expansion of celebration, joy, worship, play, praise! In the space of celebration built by the people themselves and for themselves, they came together in joy, in beauty, and each recognized the other as a fellow creator of the common celebration. Their city came alive! The streets of those cities were not streets in which they watched somebody else going someplace else where all the joy was hidden behind expansive walls. The streets were places where everyone sang together, converging upon the central dance which was the life and identity of the city...
Obviously there was something radically different about the way those cities were planned. The streets led to open spaces that were free for everybody, not to closed buildings reserved for the few. Those early cities knew what to do with space. And what they did with space made human life joyous, real, fully credible. The Bible tells us that in the end it will be like that again, in a city of pure celebration…” (4)
Hip hip HOORAY! For the Bible. This is the book the Franciscans were shoving down the throats of the natives while they burned their libraries and owners alongside them. We dealt with that aspect of the 'Invasion of Paradise' in 'CtIC' but think about it! Here you would think the church of Thomas Merton is really supportive and enabling kind people in search of beauty and the respect of the Mayan people. It surely is beyond just the word -'HYPOCRITE!' The Mayans left these cities and hid in the jungle. Their luscious and playful nature that so respects everything was centered in marvelous structures built on the earth energy grid in ways we are only now beginning to intuit - but still they left them! Rather than have their mothers and daughters suffer the indignity and rape of the Spanish heathens! Perhaps he is just naïve or following some researches that mislead him you might say. The fact is he wrote a whole book on them. He displays an incredible belief of the paradigm that foists the opposite behaviour upon the people of earth - even if he is just naïve. Listen or contemplate these words from later in this same book as he talks about 'tribal cults':
"Spiritual rebirth
{Read 'Resurrection' and 'Salvation' fictions, not the true rebirth that Jesus and the Gnostics seek.} is the key to the aspirations of all the higher religions. By 'higher religions' I mean those which like Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam and Christianity, are not content with the ritual tribal cults rooted in the cycle of the seasons and harvests.?(5)
That is clearly not what 'pagan' or the Mayan religion was all about. The Christians took over those same celebrations like Yule and changed the names. What is going on here is revolting! Demeaning and ridicule as well as destruction of the libraries and culture aren't enough. They even have had the audacity to create 'blasphemy laws' which aren't even off the books everywhere as yet (It took until 1951 for the British to remove them, no doubt thinking they had everyone duped or doped up on fictions such as Britannica feeds our kids.).
The churchians take advantage of any possible situation like claiming to have rid Ireland of snakes. They revive old knowledge and put their face and mark upon it with impunity. They are thieves and worse! The inside flap of Jesus Through the Centuries says it a little more conservatively as it documents the changing perceptions of how to sell society on stupid attitudes through putting a new 'spin' on Jesus. How they do this is a masterstroke of genius and demonstrates there is one area where man has certainly achieved a 'god-guided' evolution towards a zenith of cultural reality ~ lying!
"Jesus of Nazareth has been the dominant figure in the history of Western culture for almost twenty centuries. Each age has created Jesus in its own image, finding its own thoughts in Jesus, and discovering in his life and teachings the answers to fundamental questions of human existence and destiny?Studying the images of Jesus cherished by successive ages-from rabbi in the first century to universal man in the Renaissance to liberator in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries-Pelikan suggests that the way a particular age depicted Jesus is an essential key to understanding that age... What happened to the political fabric of the Roman empire when Caesar decided that Jesus was to be called King of kings? How do we explain the irony that a tradition which began with the prohibition of sacred images went on to produce the greatest explosion of religious art in human history? How did the vision of Jesus Christ as the disclosure of the rational structure of the universe contribute to the rise of science? How could the Crusades, both medieval and modern, invoke the name of the Prince of Peace??(6)
Of course I would respectfully ask - 'How did they have the gall to remove women from a position of ecclesiastical import in the church? and a lot of other questions as well? Am I raving mad? Does it not seem that sick and perverted MEN have been having their way with the people of this world? It is a disease of immense proportions and leads to all sorts of heinous acts like genital disfigurement {with broken glass if necessary}. And all the native people who showed respect for women had to be dealt with in an expeditious manner starting with calling them 'heathens'. God should be damned if this church has anything to do with his work and energy - but it doesn't!
This is simply the work of misogynists and power-mongers. Paul was one of the major culprits and we shall delve deeper into the history of this major con artist. The lack of planning families and breeding more problems such as poverty and over-population aren't even as bad as keeping 'women barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen' (though in large parts of the world there is no kitchen). Nature suffers mightily and the collective soul of all life is wounded, but Americans sit at home tacitly supporting and allowing this insensitive carnage to continue. Who can sleep easily knowing their tax dollars are used to keep things the way they are? It isn't enough to say you didn't know or don't know for sure. It isn't RIGHT to say 'What can one man do?' If you don't know it you are probably close friends with a deviate who does things you wouldn't think possible to his children or wife.
In China there is population control. Kill the females! In many cultures the male offspring are the only ones who get any respect and recently a man killed his wife in front of his two daughters with a knife. This was in Mississauga just outside of Toronto, and she bled to death slowly because she couldn't bear him a son. Just remember King Henry the Eighth (that syphilis ridden 'Divine' creature) who started a new branch of Roman Catholicism. This Mississauga man is affected by the religion of Islam but it could just as easily been some other religion Merton called 'higher'. They are pouring acid on young women's faces in India and the authorities don't prosecute the 'perps'. How can we just sit back and talk about our 'perfect fantasy'? How can we listen to evangelizers and priests who are constantly found to be the 'perps' of sexual crime? In Rome there was a time when stealing money from the public coffers led to the official being put in a bag with a wild animal and having his nose cut off. Then they would take him to the river and throw him into it. They were having lots of 'fun' with slaves and women in their bath houses that couldn't possibly cleanse their souls.
Man was jealous that women could commune with God easier than they could. Man was jealous that women have a better sense of what is right and MAN was small enough to be so stupid as to engage in a war against the very salvation that the soul of a good and equal woman can bring to a miserable person without compassion. There is a judge in British Columbia who lectured a three year old girl for being 'promiscuous and sexy' in her appearance during her rape case. Incest and rape is often an accepted thing in some cultures and the statistics in North America are of epidemic proportions according to C. Everett Koop the one-time Surgeon-General. Children are still thought to be inventing stories when they tell the truth.
My second wife's story and that of her grandmother made two thirds of her university class on communications cry out loud or leave the room. I am a victim of what happened to her and what happens to women throughout the whole world. This is not some literary license or authors trick. Yes, it is a sad thing to know the terror that caused her to grind her teeth in her sleep when I met her. She was unable to lubricate herself, after having been raped from the age of six to sixteen by an important top dog executive who was her step-grandfather. Her mother didn't believe her. When she ran away at thirteen a Tennessee State Trooper... I tell the story in other books and the images haunt me still. I will say no more because of the pain in my soul! Another of the Dag or Nag Hammadi scrolls is the Sophia of Jesus which tells the reader about each person’s feminine nature.
People who turn away when they see parents beating their kids in grocery stores and 'public places?are becoming fewer. Oprah has done great work in raising our public awareness about incest but the statistics aren't even gathered to really know whether it is 30% or 70% who suffer sexual abuse and violence. That is the range that my 'expert' 'TWIN' who was born the same day as me and was a Doctor of Psychology said was the case. Koop said it was over 20%. Any such figure is horrific. The understanding of sexual issues in the part of society that doesn't have the extreme problems, is even more of a concern. It isn't taught in school and there is no political will to address the issue. Like many of our problems the right questions aren't even being asked.
To do a real analysis of more than just a superficial nature takes time and effort. People like to quote the 'expert' who says what they want to hear in order to sleep comfortably and so they won't have to find out the truth they suspect might be real. Politicians serve these people well. They talk a lot about problems but don't expose the reality they are part and parcel of: in their own 'conflict of interest' cronyistic environment that includes drug companies pushing Ritalin to make up for poor teaching and a lack of academic freedom. How many of these problems should we endure? Would a government based on the ideals of the Great Earth Mother and inclusive of women as full participants put up with the 'status quo'? I could go on about the illness that the Sphinx stands as a beacon in the desert to warn humanity about, but we must get back to the 'his'-story we are committed to cover in this book.
Author of Diverse Druids, Columnist for The ES Press Magazine, Guest writer at World-Mysteries.com