Non Heterosexual Practices and Organized Religions, in 2024

Non Heterosexual Practices and Organized Religions, 2024

    In the United States and the Western world there is a bigger than ever movement of people who are accepting and engaging in non-traditional practices of sexual behavior, marriage and human relations in homosexual and other LGBTQ+ identities and mind sets. Traditional religions have their influences and impacts, methods and ways of dealing or handling non-traditional (male and female) relationships and lifestyles, both in physical and social ways.

    Which religions are most compatible and least resistant to LGBT+ ways?

    Perhaps Buddhist philosophies are compatible? I had a Buddhist group leader who was lesbian. Makes sense, perhaps Theravada versus Mahayana versus Tibetan is different when it comes to same sex or transgender statuses.

    What about Hinduism?

    Some Christian, and Jewish sects and strains are more open to Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender-Plus all the other alternative sexual orientations and identities. Many are not.

    Islam? Not so much.

    Sikhs? Not sure. Shintoism? Daoism? Not sure.

    Animist and nativistic traditions? I don't know.

    What do you think?

 Was He The Say Hey Kid? Willie Mays Passes

    He played long (relatively) before my time, but I always heard of his greatness on the field. I came to believe, perhaps as a teenager in the 1980s, or later as a young adult in the 1990s, that he probably was the best player of all time. Better than Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle, or any of the more recent greatest players in the more modern era.

    Willie had all the tools and was the best. I thought, and I still think.

    Yeah.

    Way to go, Willie. Thanks for being great. Or the greatest. 

    Whatever he was in the scheme of baseball, the United States, and world history, he was great.

    We appreciate and honor a life well lived, and the contributions to the game that have pushed us along in life.

    Say, hey.

 Hablando, Pensando, Comunicando

    Este ensayo, que se yo, o tal vez entrada de Blog, sera en espanol pero sin los diacriticos adecuados que merecen el idioma de castellano. Perdonenme, todos. Perdon.

    Yo, al menos, si se donde...

    Perdi el hilo de lo que estaba pensando, escribiendo.

    Yo pase mi examen ayer bien. Hoy fui al templo en espanol.

    Manana la iglesia. Que lindo.

    

 My Day was Not Great; Jerry West Was

    I was driving home in personal defeat. I was driving, thinking, searching. I was close to Three Mile Island, so I drove by there. Took some pictures. This crisis took place when I was eight years old, in the spring, so it is rather burned in my long-term memory, or my psyche.

    My psyche.

    I will be all right. Years of effort and expectation not met. 

    I was able to go by the Pennsylvania veteran's memorial cemetery. I tried to track my Uncle Harry's resting place, with his wife, my aunt, beside him who had passed 25 years before when I was in South America. 1990. I tried calling my dad, who was celebrating his 87th birthday, but then I finally remembered he was on a vacation trip. Not picking up. 

    An older man, a long-time veteran, told me that when he arrived in 1987 there were three thousand souls buried or contained there. Now there are 66,000, of which there are many spouses. Likely my uncle and aunt. Was his name Henricksen? No...

    My memory. It failed my yesterday, and then days before, and throughout my time trying to memorize such exercises, commands, and moves. Movements. Not all ingrained.

Jerry West, at age 86, lived a very well renowned and celebrated life. Accolades as the greatest, his impact as a player, coach, manager, for so long.

When I was learning more of the history of the game when I was a teen in the 1980s, I thought surely this Jerry West guy was 6'7" and an imposing figure on the court, like other big dudes who could run and shoot over the years. But he was only 6'2". His skills transcended the sport, despite his smaller stature.

    Me, I am yet shorter, and I have less impact, in greater life, and certainly on the court. I have played some hours there. In my respective circles I have had some successes, but on the day this luminary has passed, I have had another life setback.

    On my dad's birthday. Looking for my old uncle who died at age 100, in 2015. Driving home, in some defeat. Failure. A setback. Life... altering. Sort of.

    I have a few more years, hopefully, to alter the script to my favor.

    To be in my late eighties, like my dad, or Mr. West, or like my uncle who lived a few more years beyond, even a decade more. Pretty happily. I just have to do a few more things here, now.

    I know that Jerry West had some tough times across the width and breadth of his life. We all do. But we try to compensate or strive hard to make ourselves into something better, bigger. More than our height or accomplishments, on paper, we try to do and be what we want to achieve.

    May we do so. We will be better and bigger than our less successful days, and the time and circumstances of our final breaths and moment and cause of death should not define us, either.

    May we strive for the better things.

    I re-read a "Clean, Well-Lighted Place", by Ernest Hemingway. About life, age, contentment, living into the older times. Dignity. Peace of mind. Nada a nada, but clean and quiet.

    There we are.

    Three Mile Island was traumatic, but the crisis was averted, and as far as I know the place kept producing energy. Now decades later it is safe and productive. By its looks that I saw yesterday, that is what I presume.

 

    May we all be thus.

    Energy and power. Movement and momentum.

    Living and reflecting. Push on.

I like to see Demographic Growth and Changes, especially Growth of the Church of Jesus Christ

    To see Zion, or the Gospel of Jesus Christ, grow locally is great. We meet individuals and families that join the faith; we see them join us, and hopefully their lives feel better to them, and they add to ours.

    I like to see the bigger picture, in towns, cities, countries and regions.

    Like Tanzania, for example.

It is doing pretty well. Small numbers, but dynamic.

Where are people joining this Church?

Where is it decreasing?

What countries are losing population? Russia, Japan.

One is at war. How is that affecting growth?

What country is the above?

I failed to label it. I think it is Senegal. Ivory Coast.

Yes, must be.

13 June 2024.

 Bible and Scripture Misunderstanding Leads to Support of Government of Israel in Modern Day

    There are at least one hundred different Christian theologies, ideologies, doctrines, and/or interpretations of the Holy Bible. There are actually more like millions, because as each of us believers have our own ways and thoughts of what things are meaning and how to apply them within the sayings, prophecies, narratives, principles, and doctrines of the Holy Bible, we each have our own understandings and interpretations of what the words and concepts mean.

    Take the word and name and understanding of Israel, for example.

    The meaning of it in Hebrew is "God prevails", from what I have learned.

    I think is safe to say that most of us can agree on that meaning.

    However, what is Israel in 2024? 

    There is the nation state of Israel, which is currently entrenched in a brutal war in the Gaza Strip, which also has resulted in the deaths of more than five hundred Palestinians in the West Bank. Some evangelical Christians and Eretz Israel (all Jewish Holy Land advocates) refer to the sides of the places in the main Holy Land as the Biblical names, Judea and Samaria. There is no Israel proper, as named and designated in 1947 by the United Nations. The original Jewish, or Tribe of Judah area is what is interpreted by Israel being named throughout the Bible, both in the past and into the current future. Now, and what will transpire in the next years, which is prophesied or documented within the verses and chapters of the Torah, or Jewish holy scripture, and the Christian Bible, which includes the New Testament, which is mostly anathema to most things of Judaism.

    Yet, evangelical Christians, of many various sects and denominations, ardently support and claim that the modern state of Israel is the Biblical fulfillment of what the Bible, in particular the book of Revelations or Apocalypses, predicts or foreshadows will happen in the Last Days or End Times, in the time of the Advent of Jesus Christ for the second time. 

    My way of understanding is that there are Twelve Tribes of Israel, one of them being Judah, and the others all have their promises and blessings as well. Ephraim and Manasseh, which are millions of us, if not billions, are highly favored and chosen groups of people of God, as much of the covenant of the Lord and his plans as those of Judah. Most Christians have no idea about the identity and purpose of all the tribes of Israel.

    Judah has its place, but the country of Israel, as currently constituted, is not necessarily the religious and spiritual embodiment of what is promised to Judah and Israel, as according to the Torah (which admittedly I know less about), and the Christian Holy Bible, both the Old and New Testaments.

    Incidentally, the Roman Catholics, which may be a billion or more adherents, also include the Apocrypha in the Bible, which is the time between the Old and New Testaments. Many other Christians believe that those are historical documents with little or no religious, spiritual, or doctrinal value.

    Hopefully this makes sense to many of us...

   There is little consensus as to how Israel really functions today, as an interpretation of the Bible or not.

    Many of us, or even all of us, have it wrong. Who is right?

The Quest for .400 batting - Will It Happen before I Die?

    Maybe not, the short and sweet. This is an achievement that perhaps has become harder with time. The last time it happened, there were no Blacks and effectively no Asians in the sport.

    The Triple Crown, similarly, was an elusive feat, until Miguel Cabrera did it with the Tigers in 2012. For those who do not know, that is being tops in the major leagues in batting, home runs, and RBIs. (Runs batted in). He batted excellently that year, as have so many batting champions before and since.

    But hitting .400? Not since Ted Williams from before World War II. That is like when my dad was three and my mom was being born. I think this was with the Red Sox, so they were not too far away. But in 2024, my dad is almost 87 and my mom has been gone for ten years.

    One guy flirted with hitting .400 when I was a kid, and my friend's older brother was freaking out around 1979, maybe 1980. George Brett! Are you kidding me? .390 or so in July? Wow! Brian Murray got my attention, and the magazine Boys Life, which I got as a kid because of Boy Scouting, or Cub Scouting, the authors touted and venerated baseball greats! Huh. Literature about a sports.

    Huh. Later I saw that Hemingway wrote about sports and sporting things.

    That is all right. Even baseball. A. Bartlett Giamatti, a poet laureate, loved baseball.

    So, we have to care about this sport in life, in art, in the scheme of things, right?

    .400 is a thing.

    In 1994, a bittersweet magical season, Tony Gwynn was coming up close to .400 when the season was ended with the money-grubbing strike. Curse them all, owners and players.

    So, now Luis Arraez has me excited 30 years later.

    Still a fan, a mere boy in the scheme of things.

    I hope that he does it. Make Ted Williams a thing again.