Hi There Reader!

It's Saturday Night, and I'm sitting with the notebook at the dining table with a hot cuppa tea and a bag of popcorn, racking my bean to come up with a worthwhile post.
I'm looking forward to going to my Church tomorrow morning. I can't imagine a more wonderful and fun way to spend my morning than among the brilliant congregation of Palmer's Church of the Covenant. While I'm not big on the going out in the cold thing, it's worth it to hang out and praise my blessings from Heaven with the intellectual, and well read, and accepting group there.
And that's what sets it apart, the intellectual, literate approach to the bible. One that places the human stories about God, the mythology and the history, into it's proper context and therefore allows us to see something besides mere Bibliotry.
The old testament is fascinating as a window on a cruel and violent world, but the New Testament is something else. It's the crux, if you will, of the idea of Civilization
Jesus expresses it as; Love God, Love your nieghbor, and love your enemy as though they were family. Jesus tells the wealthy over and over again to give it away, share, and be free of it. He tells us that judging others is a wicked business to get into. That the proper business of mankind is the loving care of each other.
To be a Christian is to accept unconditional love from God, and then, to share it UNCONDITIONALLY with everyone else. A true Christian, one I would call a real follower of Jesus, sees the web of interdependence of all living things. Is obligated to reach out to those others despise, those labeled as wicked, and unlovable. The mean and the ugly and the abusive with all our powers of healing. There is no room for condemnation in the Kingdom of Heaven. No labels that divide and dehumanize.
There is no room for twisting Justice into Vengeance. No excuse for killing.
Living up to the Kingdom is hard. I have to admit a heart that throbs for revenge. I'm often petty, and I condemn those on the Right of the political spectrum more easily than I'm willing to listen to the concerns. This isn't the way to the Utopia.
In today's cynical, war torn, over-commercialized and downright corrupt world, we've come to laugh at Utopian visions. But that's what the Kingdom is. Utopia. Christianity is Utopian. A endless table of friends where one is warm, well fed, happy, and safe just being yourself. That's the good news. The concept of a free democratic and safe world.
It's a world we will find once we conquer our inner fear of others, of government, of foreignness, of the unfamiliar. It's the promise of the Rainbow. But it is for us and must be built by us.
Blessings to you. May you be well, find joy, and see the beauty around you today.
Brianne