Give Peace A Chance

[Ron Bulman]

Isn't this what JFK was ultimately all about?

 

[Sandy Larsen]

 

Thanks for sharing, Ron.

 

[W. Niederhut]

[Sean Coleman]

Interesting 

[W. Niederhut]

Sean,

   I must confess that, unlike John Lennon, I have a vastly higher opinion of JFK than of Yoko Ono.

   Lennon was an outstanding tenor vocalist, song writer, and rhythm guitarist, but hardly a sage-- and I say that as an amateur Beatle-ologist.

    As for our abysmal failure to give peace a chance, notice the nodal points on our historic U.S. military spending graph (above.)

    Three major turning points were 11/22/63, 1980, and 9/11/01.

[Kevin Balch]

4 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

You also have to include spending on Veterans (past wars), Atomic Energy Commission/Department of Energy (nuclear weapons), intelligence agencies and their pro-rated share of the debt.

Though if JFK was killed because he was trying to stop the nuclear arms race, why did US nuclear arms decline after his assassination while the number of Soviet arms continued to increase?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_nuclear_weapons_stockpiles_and_nuclear_tests_by_country#/media/File:US_and_USSR_nuclear_stockpiles.svg

[Ron Bulman]

Since I started a Lennon thread, I guess I should post this.  I bought the album when it came out, still have it.  I disagree with one point, there is an afterlife.  But I've always found it peaceful, uplifting.

 

[Bill Fite]

8 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

I must confess that, unlike John Lennon, I have a vastly higher opinion of JFK than of Yoko Ono.

   Lennon was an outstanding tenor vocalist, song writer, and rhythm guitarist, but hardly a sage-- and I say that as an amateur Beatle-ologist.

Agreed - and when it came time to march in the demonstrations in London against the war in Vietnam in 1968, where was he?

This guy was there.  Because you know, what can a poor boy do?

[Kirk Gallaway]

Yeah Bill

"But in sleepy London town there's no place!"

The U.S. and France went crazy but the Brits pretty much sat that one out.

****

I love John, and actually I thought with Sean's post , John had matured a lot by 1980, and I agreed generally with what he said. 

The "God" was back in his "primal scream" days, 70-71,  and so was him and Yoko's "Bed in for Peace". He was sort of the artiste basket case during the 70's, that you'd always kind of humorously check in to see what kind of thing he was going through!

Ron---I disagree with one point, there is an afterlife.  But I've always found it peaceful, uplifting.

I hear you Ron, but I think the message is that his "Imagine" vision should be done with no expectation of reward.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited Wednesday at 06:40 AM by Kirk Gallaway

[Sandy Larsen]

12 hours ago, Kirk Gallaway said:

I hear you Ron, but I think the message is that his "Imagine" vision should be done with no expectation of reward.

 

Great point.

It's the "expectation of reward" that does the damage.

 

[W. Niederhut]

15 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Great point.

It's the "expectation of reward" that does the damage.

 

Well, let me throw in my two kopeks, as a raskolnik who has been immersed in the Russian Orthodox mystical tradition for almost 30 years.

I'm, certainly, no Dostoevskian staretz, (far from it) but I have known one.

In the West, there is a popular notion-- for the minority who are not modern agnostics-- that the Kingdom of Heaven is some sort of Pie-in-the-Sky out there, associated with the afterlife, expectation-of-reward, etc.

But, in Eastern Christianity, the concept is that, "the Kingdom of Heaven is within you," and "all around you, if you can but perceive it."

Not unlike Buddhism and Taoism.  "The Kingdom" is here and now.

And a wise man once told me, "The relationship we have with God in this life is the one that we will have hereafter."

[Sandy Larsen]

37 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

But, in Eastern Christianity, the concept is that, "the Kingdom of Heaven is within you," and "all around you, if you can but perceive it."

 

Interesting.

As a young adult a long time ago, I came to realize that most things you read or hear cannot be trusted. I came to believe that religion cannot be tested, and so was agnostic most my life.

I became wiser later in life, and then accidentally came across some proofs for intelligent design (god) and also Christianity. (I subsequently searched for proofs of Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism being divine, but came up empty handed.)

I declared myself a believer in Jesus as Messiah about 15 years ago and set about reading the Gospels to see what I should believe in. I intentionally skipped St. Paul's epistles and Acts because I was interested in only what Jesus taught. I wanted to avoid any interpretations by the apostles and other disciples.

Here is the impression I was left with: The Good News (Gospel) is that God sent the Messiah, Jesus, to inaugurate the Kingdom of God (or Heaven) on Earth. So the same as what you describe, W.

As for what exactly the Kingdom of God is, my current impression is that it is the knowledge and fact that Jesus was sacrificed for the sins of all humanity -- and not just for the Chosen People -- who would therefore live forever. Obviously that would mean that there must be a resurrection... something that was demonstrated by Lazarus and by Jesus himself.

 

[W. Niederhut]

6 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Interesting.

As a young adult a long time ago, I came to realize that most things you read or hear cannot be trusted. I came to believe that religion cannot be tested, and so was agnostic most my life.

I became wiser later in life, and then accidentally came across some proofs for intelligent design (god) and also Christianity. (I subsequently searched for proofs of Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism being divine, but came up empty handed.)

I declared myself a believer in Jesus as Messiah about 15 years ago and set about reading the Gospels to see what I should believe in. I intentionally skipped St. Paul's epistles and Acts because I was interested in only what Jesus taught. I wanted to avoid any interpretations by the apostles and other disciples.

Here is the impression I was left with: The Good News (Gospel) is that God sent the Messiah, Jesus, to inaugurate the Kingdom of God (or Heaven) on Earth. So the same as what you describe, W.

As for what exactly the Kingdom of God is, my current impression is that it is the knowledge and fact that Jesus was sacrificed for the sins of all humanity -- and not just for the Chosen People -- who would therefore live forever. Obviously that would mean that there must be a resurrection... something that was demonstrated by Lazarus and by Jesus himself.

 

Sandy,

    I tend to be somewhat syncretistic-- i.e., believing that the Deity is manifest in different ways to different cultures.  As Christ, Himself, taught, "There are those from the East and from the West who will dine with our father, Abraham, in the kingdom of heaven.

    My own spiritual father (a Russian monk) told me that we should never presume to judge the spiritual fate of any man (or woman.)

     The Lakota Sioux Chief, Sitting Bull, had prophetic visions of the future (a sign of the Divine Mind in Orthodox Christian theology.)  When Sitting Bull saw poor people in New York, (as a performer in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show) he spontaneously gave them his coat and his money.

[Mark Ulrik]

This thread will eventually be moved to a more appropriate forum, right?

[Sandy Larsen]

2 minutes ago, Mark Ulrik said:

This thread will eventually be moved to a more appropriate forum, right?

 

Give peace a chance, man!