In the Beginning there was the animal, and the animal was killed, and we did eat of him. We thanked the animal for giving us its body for our meal.
The stick and seed were thereafter the planting way, but then came the ox and the plow, and vast tracts of land were farmed. The sky was heaven.
We no longer thanked the animal for having given its life, but instead thanked the Gods.
Then one God in the Middle East emerged, and so was now the recepient of our oblations, our prayers, our thanks for having given us the animal--an animal whose spirit was no more. We thanked the one God for our shelter, for our good fortune and for our very lives. Thank you God.
Then somebody noticed that Nature was Over There and God was Somewhere Else, and did say "If God is separate from Nature, and God is separate from Man, so too Man is separate from Nature." And we cut off our body.
Then God became a human, a particular one-time-only event, and volunteered to have the absolute shit kicked out of Him so as to rectify a wrong between the Father and the First Born. Whatever.
To this day, any conversation about the mystery of our lives conjures up aspects of this monotheistic story, so as to choke off and guard against other ideas and feelings about a life lived in concert with a spiritual principle, and to actually and actively serve to block the music that pours forth through many different instruments. The hands that wield the firmaments crush potentialities, even to the point of serving to disrespect other views, other myths as false: lastly, some will deny the possibility of the beauty and poetry of secular views of the wonder and marvel of being alive, of the sheer limitless grace of participating in the manifested Universe without a specific, binding contract from a tribal deity. Some have suggested that God made mankind because He did not believe in Himself, and needed external verification: God as the first atheist.
Some say this, some say that. Beware of those who say there is only one path to understanding, to "safety-land" for they stop at the very first river they see. There are many rivers, many ways to cross, and many ways to actualize the yearnings of the heart and self into the fabric of life itself.
Start by thanking the animal.
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Image of Lascaux cave painting from here.
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Comments
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Fear keeps us tied to montheism.
We need the fear to feed the fear we watch the storm roll in not by the sky, but by electronic eye on television. Our leaders have always fed the fear and bred the fear to keep themselves ahead and us behind.
Don't thank the animal, don't thank the trees, thank the God that has kept you in fear of the animals and the trees. Don't hug the tree, it only serves as shade in the summer and heat in the winter. Don't respect the animal, just pay the man who raised it and gave some to God. Pay the man who processed the carcass and gave some to God. Pay the man who sold it and gave some to God. Pay the man who taxed it and kept it all for himself.
The storm is coming in. Don't watch it from the porch, watch it on the Doppler radar and pay the man who brought it to you.
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