February 28

A Poem in Honor of my Birthday

My birthday is a time to pause
Along life's busy way
And cherish golden memories of this aupicious day
A time to raise in gratitude
Life's overflowing cup
A time to blow your nose with this
In case you're all choked up


O happy day when I was born
Long ago on a sunny morn
The world rejoiced and the doctor said
Oops, I've dropped him on his head!


But How do I know my youth is all spent
My get up and go has got up and went
But in spite of it all I'm able to grin
And think of the places my get up has been.

Cave Raves

Sunday, January 30, 2005

Sixty per cent of eligible voters turned out for the Iraqi election. These people spit in the face of those who tried to disrupt the expression of the will of the people. Despite threats of voter deaths and despite deadly incidents on election day most Iraqis understood the importance of the freedom that was being offered to them on January 30, 2005.

Osama Bin Laden and others like him urged the Iraqi people to boycott the election. The insurgents want to dictate how Iraqis will live rather than allow each citizen of Iraq to have a say in that decision. Suitably, Osama delivers his raves from caves. Caves were an ancient and primitive home for humans. Coercion, as a tool of dictators, is a primitive and abhorred method of rule. Osama and his ilk desire to return to more primitive times with themselves at the top of the power pyramid. Their bloody quest is futile because democracy is a more powerful and desirable form of government. This was demonstrated again on January 30, 2005 in Iraq. Listen to the comments of the voters as they left the polling stations. Each voter dipped a finger in ink to prevent double voting. The ink on their fingers became a badge of honour among voters. It was a time of celebration.

May the primitive ideas of Osama Bin Laden be buried in the caves from which he raves.

Why didn’t Noah swat those two mosquitoes?

The title provides a chuckle and makes you wonder how the members of Noah’s family
managed to restrain the natural reaction to a mosquito bite. Swat! Slap! Take that! Did the
female mosquito not eat for the duration of the voyage on the Ark?

Isn’t there a deeper philosophical point to the humour in the title? The story (aka Bible)
asks us to suspend our critical faculties and believe that it was possible for someone to build an
ark ample enough to contain two (Gen. 6:19) or was it seven (Gen 7:2) of every kind of animal
extant on the planet at that time. Who rounded them up? Who travelled to Australia and the
Americas to fetch the native animals who lived in the far reaches of the world? How long did it
take? Did Noah provide food for all the animals? Some of the animals are food for some of the
others. Perhaps this is why God changed His mind and told Noah to take seven of each creature.
Where did Noah store their excrement? Noah and his family (Gen. 7:11-13) must have been kept very busy
feeding and cleaning up after many of the animals as well as sailing the Ark.

The amusement in the title exposes the absurdity of the story and thereby the imaginary
nature of this Biblical offering. It calls into question the accuracy of the Word of God and
suggests a different genre for the supernatural stories in scriptural pages: mythology.

Same Sex Marriage

On December 9, 2004, the Supreme Court of Canada released its decision concerning same sex marriage. The court ruled that the Federal Government has the right to change the definition og marriage to be more inclusive because of the changing times that we live in.

Regardless of the reasons that the Supreme Court ruled in favor of same sex marriage Canadians can be proud that once again human rights have trumped archaic religious beliefs. Our government will now introduce legislation to change the definition of marriage to be more inclusive while protecting the rights of religious denominations to follow their beliefs and not be forced to perform gay or lesbian marriages.

Gay people can now stay within their chosen relligion and work from within to change attitudes that are not respectful of their lefestyle or they can switch to a denomination that can change with the times.

The superstitious ideas of our ancestors should not be an inviolable guide to human behaviour. Their God is not our God. The definition of God has been altered many times in the past to allow us to become more tolerant of human beings who fell into disrepute with the biblical deity. We no longer burn witches, stone women who become pregnant out of wedlock, permit slavery, or continue to see women as second class citizens. While there are are still bastions of repression within the relgious community, birth control is seen as a boon to humankind not a transgression against God's will. Many of us prefer to believe in a more humane God than that presented in the Bible.

And usually, people are way ahead of both the Bibilical God and their government when it comes to tolerance and compassion for the peaceful differences of others. Modern day humans are more humane than the Biblical God and prefer to believe in a God who reflects these values. We make God in our image. As we recognize human rights so does our God. As we act to rectify past injustices contemporary God approves.

To save God we must change Him.

Getting feet wet

This BLOG is maintained by JLS - Canadian, male.