Here is a phrase in Latin that is very important, that is easy to learn, and I think everyone who is a believer can agree with:
Credo in unum Deum
I believe in one God
The "e" in Credo and in "Deum" is pronounced like a long English "a," like it would be "Craado in unum Daaum." It is sung during the Mass by the priest and is also the title of various sacred music compositions, such as by Bach, so you can hear audio clips for the correct pronunciation!
It is the beginning of The Credo, the profession of faith.
Those of you who speak English and other Romance languages descended from Latin will see that there are similarities, of course, between certain of your language's words, and the Latin that they descended from. Here is the introductory paragraph of Wikipedia's Latin entry:
Latin (lingua Latīna, pronounced [laˈtiːna]) is an Italic language historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe. Romance languages such as Italian, French, Catalan, Romanian, Spanish, and Portuguese are descended from Latin, while many others, especially European languages, including English, have inherited and acquired much of their vocabulary from Latin. It was the international language of science and scholarship in central and western Europe until the 17th century, then it was gradually replaced by vernacular languages, especially French, which became the new lingua franca of Europe. There are two main varieties of Latin: Classical Latin, the literary dialect used in poetry and prose, and Vulgar Latin, the form of the language spoken by ordinary people. Vulgar Latin was preserved as a spoken language in much of Europe after the decline of the Roman Empire, and by the 9th century diverged into the various Romance languages.
See. when I was growing up, Latin was still the language used in celebration of Mass in the Roman Catholic Church. Far from being "exclusionary" or "haughty," it was the closest to a global language that was ever achieved. Yes, English is becoming the language of both business and ordinary speech around the world. But when Latin was celebrated in Mass globally, people of wildly different native languages could attend a Catholic Mass in any church and, using their Missal (prayer book) follow along just as they did in their home land. Any Catholic could say to another Catholic "Oremus," and be understood as saying "Let us pray." People who refer to Catholic Latin speech as "gibberish" just do not understand the missed opportunity when the Church, going along with the "modern and hip" thinking of making the "Mass" "relevant" to "local people," took away the chance for one billion Catholics to have a common language.
By the way, as an aside on my teaching about "watching for hypocrisy," notice that secularists had that stupid dream of a "global language" called Esperanto (notice the spin trying to make it sound like anyone cares http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto.) Wow, that was a real success, wasn't it?
If the Catholic Church had not caved in, we'd have one billion people (with dual language Missals) being able to pray together and speak to each other of their faith.
So just as a fun and educational thing, I thought I'd provide a few sentences in this and future blogs that are "easy to agree with" basics of faith.
Credo in unum Deum.
Oremus.
Showing posts with label communications. Show all posts
Showing posts with label communications. Show all posts
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Thursday, July 23, 2009
How to compare texting etc with the Bible
I try to think of interesting but most of all helpful topics to discuss with you. I think of these blog postings as discussions, even though you cannot reply directly. I imagine being in conversation with all of you, and I try to think of what questions you might ask and I try to anticipate what you might not understand. Because the need is so urgent and things are such a mess, I felt that it was important to blog something else tonight, so I just thought of this topic.
I was reading some analysis of why some people, particularly the young but by no means confined to them, since they picked it all up from their elders, are so hooked, really addicted, to being in constant communications with friends and strangers through texting. In this article the author pointed out that people will ignore the real live friend they are with in order to constantly check for new emails and texts, even though ninety percent of it is spam or other non-human bonding type of comms like news alerts. Texting is just the latest generation of this growing addiction, since it follows, going back in time, web surfing addiction, email addiction, cell phone calling addiction, back to the very beginning when some people compulsively checked their old fashioned telephone answering machines LOL. The scale and amount of addition to texting and cell phone chatting though, today, is enormous, compared to what was before. So something very different is really taking place and it is distressing and dangerous. I don't mean just the problem of driving an automobile and texting, though that is an obvious severe problem. I mean the spiritual implication of what is going on with true texting and cell phone addicts. So I thought of a way to compare texting (and when I type texting, you can automatically realize I mean both texting and talking constantly on the cell phone) and the Bible! (Or the Qur'an).
I think we would all agree that the reason most of you who are texting/phone addicts is, at the root of it, insecurity and the undercurrent of loneliness. I mean, after all, it is called staying "connected" for a reason. Having lots of people texting you gives you the feeling of being "not lonely." My first observation is that it seems like many people don't value their "alone time" or one friend time as much as it used to be. Here's what I mean. When you have strict (in the good way) parents, and perhaps a number of brothers or sisters, you actually somewhat value and cherish your "alone time" or your "hanging with your best friend" time. It used to be that when you got to break away from the parents and the siblings and go to the mall with your friend, being on the phone was the LAST thing you would have wanted. You'd be thrilled to get a few hours away from the 'ball and chain' of close family living. That's how it used to be in the vast majority of homes. So you went to the mall really to talk with the person you were with, or to be alone and browse the stores without the parents dragging you around to what they want to do, etc. You really loved your alone or one or two best friend time.
Since you were kind of on the clock (expected home) you actually treasured the time and tried to pack in all you could do, both shopping and gabbing and hanging out. Young people of several decades ago would totally not understand why modern young people would want to waste being on the cell phone when you are having your "own" time. So what has changed? I guess not having a two parent family, having broken families, one or both parents work so you have plenty of "alone" time (too much, really), so you really don't value what the older generation of young people felt was a treasure, which was their "on their own time." Which is better? Well, of course I feel that the majority of your time as a kid living at home should be enjoying being with your family, and your friends/shopping/hanging out time is a real treat used and appreciated for just that! I think it is a real bummer that so many young people grew up in homes where you didn't have strict (in the good way) parents, where you were eager to follow mom or dad around and learn about life from them, where you had brothers and sisters who were also traditional and so you had (even if you didn't appreciate it then) the safety net of a large family, etc.
See, when you grow up in what used to be such a "normal" family, instead of the "new normal" of today, you had fullness rather than emptiness. You often had too much fullness, LOL. You had a big demanding family with its structure, and then you had your school, sports, other activities, brothers and sisters AND all the stuff you wanted to do... and then your "alone" time was also full, not empty. Your alone time was when you got to do the stuff you could not do otherwise. Your alone time was when you could go shopping in the mall and buy the clothes that your mom would never have paused to let you look at when you were shopping with her LOL.
But for the past two generations young people have had access to transportation other than their parents, tons of free time, and parents, feeling all "modernized" about it, let their little darlings make their own choices about clothes and so forth. That's cool and I'm not being old fashioned. I'm just explaining to you that alone time in the "old days" used to be a great wonderful opportunity to do what you want, cramming it in while you can, while today alone time seems to be for many young people an uncomfortable potentially lonely vacuum and abyss.
Hence it is not surprising to see young people get their time in the mall, or whatever, and compulsively chat or constantly check for something else to do, since you are filling in time, not grabbing time where at last you can do what you otherwise can't because you are working in the family or school unit of time. A kid from a big family in the old days would be annoyed if he or she got weird messages from people all the time when they only had one hour or two away from the family to be with their best friend, or shop, etc. Today it seems many young people have so much control over their time that they don't value, and even fear, their alone or best friend time. Hence you see best friends sitting together at a fast food place, not talking to each other, but texting and yapping with other people on their cell phones!
Now, let's look at the spiritual side of loneliness. What did people used to do when they had huge drudge work and responsibilities in large hungry poor families day in and day out? Were they ever lonely? Sure, people were lonely, especially if they had lost a member of their family in war or famine, to disease or poverty, but more than lonely they were desperate. As you know from my previous blogs in Biblical times if a widow lost also her only son she might well starve to death, as the husband, and then the son, were the only providers. So people weren't really lonely as much as they are today because 1) they were part of huge close living families and 2) if they were alone they were more concerned with sheer survival rather than missing the company per se of other people.
But there is also another component to the difference between older times and now. People were raised from the smallest children to know about God and to believe in his constant presence. It is unthinkable to me how many children are raised to be irreligious, to know nothing of God at all. I've blogged about this before, how it deprives children of love and comfort to not raise them to know and trust in God at the earliest age. But here's the main point I want to make in this blog. When one is raised as a child to know God, it is like you receive constant text messages from him!
Now, realize I don't mean "channeling" or that God is your shopping buddy, LOL, where you imagine he is commenting on your purchases. What I mean is that people who are raised as children to know about God don't really feel as alone and alienated as others do. The way people learn about God, through scriptures, either listened to (back when people couldn't read or afford a family Bible) or read, gave them a constant sense of companionship. To use a computer analogy, being raised with God is like having God as the wallpaper on your computer of life. LOL, I know that's a little silly, but here's what I mean.
Most people don't, of course, memorize entire parts of the Bible. They know the basic message of salvation, the do's and the don'ts, and also the events of the life of Jesus. But each person tends to carry with them, from childhood, certain parts of scripture that resonates with them. If you get two friends talking who were raised this way, for instance, even if they are discussing shopping or other events, if the conversation turns to modern events or so forth, often each person will reference automatically some part of the scripture that resonates personally. Those parts of the Bible, whether they are actually quotes or just favorite events or principles, are, for such people, like saved text messages.
Think of those few text messages (out of hundreds or thousands that are just fleeting or plain old junk) that you really treasure, and how you save them, and they make you feel good to look at them. They are not, of course, substitute for actively texting a friend. Because, however, you have saved those texts, you can revisit them and feel good, but there is an element of pathos, for if you were busy with a fulfilling conversation at the moment, you'd not be looking back on past saved texts, no matter how happy they were, since you'd be in a current event of new happiness, or at least being busy. The Bible and one's relationship with God, though, is like the best of saved texts that you can receive completely new and in the moment. In other words, each time that you "retrieve" a "saved text" from God, you ARE receiving that affirmation in the here and now, just as if you had only now received that "text" for the first time.
Let us look at an example. Suppose you have a boyfriend or girlfriend, and he or she sent you a really awesome text that you saved. If you are apart from them, you can look at the text, and enjoy seeing it, even if you are a bit sad at being apart. Even then, though, you are looking back at a point in time. But what if you have broken up? It would really be kind of painful, not comforting, to look back on that text, which once made you so happy, but now represents a gone relationship. You could look at it for nostalgia, but it probably is no comfort. So even at its best, when its an awesome text in an ongoing love relationship that you have saved, it's still just a substitute for when you are with the person again.
But let's look at a top favorite traditional "text message from God" and observe the totally different feeling from the example I gave above to you.
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
This is probably the most universally heard and beloved "text message from God" of all times.
It is from the Twenty-third Psalm, one that is of great comfort for thousands of years of Jewish and Christian life. When one looks at or just thinks about this "saved text message from God," it's not a bittersweet reminder from a past relationship, nor is it a much loved text message from someone who you are apart from. It is a real, continual, constantly renewed and validated text message from God. People who were raised as children to have God as the known and real comfort in their lives tend to have such favorite "text messages" from God, even if the text message is just a picture of the baby Jesus at Christmas time.
Psalm 23
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
In verdant pastures he gives me repose; beside restful waters he leads me;
He refreshes my soul.
He guides me in right paths for his name's sake.
Even though I walk in the dark valley I fear no evil; for you are at my side with your rod and your staff that give me courage.
You spread the table before me in the sight of my foes; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
Only goodness and kindness follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for years to come.
Many of you, even if not super Bible scholars ;-) will recognize that there are several famous well know "text messages from God" in this one great short and sweet Psalm. In addition to the first line, these are also well known passages that are recalled in heart, if not word for word, my many:
Even though I walk in the dark valley I fear no evil.
And:
Only goodness and kindness follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord [forever].
Whenever one thinks of these three, or any other, "saved text messages from God," they are not frozen remembrances of something that was once true or relevant, but may not be anymore, or at least less so. When one "reads" these "saved text messages from God," you are receiving them anew in the here and the now, over and over, and they never age, become irrelevant, sad, or diminished. It is exactly as if whenever you think of these "saved text messages from God" that he is sending them to you on the spot, because that is the truth. That is one reason why the Bible is called the "living word" of God. It is because it is like saved text messages from God that are sent anew to you, eternally new and current, and all you have to do is think of them to receive them on your "cell phone."
Young people, why not program into your cell phone or whatever your "communications device" may be those three saved text messages from God? See, there are many easy and fun ways to learn, to plug the gap, that may exist between your previous lack of knowledge of God's reality and a fresh new beginning. Put God in your contact list! Really, do program him in :-) and then start to save texts like these.
Here is another one from Psalm 25:
To you I lift up my soul.
This is a reminder that God is always, always, ALWAYS there, and is always in reach, if only you lift up your soul to him.
So have a little fun, but also use that texting capability for some "eternal reality!" I know that people have Bible passage storing programs and capabilities for all communications devices, but that is not what I am teaching tonight. I am teaching something very approachable and very simple. Put God on your contact list and then save a few text messages from him, using the scriptures (or the Qur'an if you are Muslim). Start to get used to this analogy, which is real and genuine, that favorite pieces of scripture are EXACTLY like receiving a beloved and new text message from God over and over again, whenever you want it. That gives the modern texting person a taste of what it is like to have God as your genuine, full time, 24x7 "text buddy," one that never diminishes and never breaks up with you (you can only leave him), and is never out of date or expires. The scriptures, and the Bible events, are the living eternal word of God, and his relationship with all who truly seek him as he really is.
I hope that you have found this helpful and also fun!
I was reading some analysis of why some people, particularly the young but by no means confined to them, since they picked it all up from their elders, are so hooked, really addicted, to being in constant communications with friends and strangers through texting. In this article the author pointed out that people will ignore the real live friend they are with in order to constantly check for new emails and texts, even though ninety percent of it is spam or other non-human bonding type of comms like news alerts. Texting is just the latest generation of this growing addiction, since it follows, going back in time, web surfing addiction, email addiction, cell phone calling addiction, back to the very beginning when some people compulsively checked their old fashioned telephone answering machines LOL. The scale and amount of addition to texting and cell phone chatting though, today, is enormous, compared to what was before. So something very different is really taking place and it is distressing and dangerous. I don't mean just the problem of driving an automobile and texting, though that is an obvious severe problem. I mean the spiritual implication of what is going on with true texting and cell phone addicts. So I thought of a way to compare texting (and when I type texting, you can automatically realize I mean both texting and talking constantly on the cell phone) and the Bible! (Or the Qur'an).
I think we would all agree that the reason most of you who are texting/phone addicts is, at the root of it, insecurity and the undercurrent of loneliness. I mean, after all, it is called staying "connected" for a reason. Having lots of people texting you gives you the feeling of being "not lonely." My first observation is that it seems like many people don't value their "alone time" or one friend time as much as it used to be. Here's what I mean. When you have strict (in the good way) parents, and perhaps a number of brothers or sisters, you actually somewhat value and cherish your "alone time" or your "hanging with your best friend" time. It used to be that when you got to break away from the parents and the siblings and go to the mall with your friend, being on the phone was the LAST thing you would have wanted. You'd be thrilled to get a few hours away from the 'ball and chain' of close family living. That's how it used to be in the vast majority of homes. So you went to the mall really to talk with the person you were with, or to be alone and browse the stores without the parents dragging you around to what they want to do, etc. You really loved your alone or one or two best friend time.
Since you were kind of on the clock (expected home) you actually treasured the time and tried to pack in all you could do, both shopping and gabbing and hanging out. Young people of several decades ago would totally not understand why modern young people would want to waste being on the cell phone when you are having your "own" time. So what has changed? I guess not having a two parent family, having broken families, one or both parents work so you have plenty of "alone" time (too much, really), so you really don't value what the older generation of young people felt was a treasure, which was their "on their own time." Which is better? Well, of course I feel that the majority of your time as a kid living at home should be enjoying being with your family, and your friends/shopping/hanging out time is a real treat used and appreciated for just that! I think it is a real bummer that so many young people grew up in homes where you didn't have strict (in the good way) parents, where you were eager to follow mom or dad around and learn about life from them, where you had brothers and sisters who were also traditional and so you had (even if you didn't appreciate it then) the safety net of a large family, etc.
See, when you grow up in what used to be such a "normal" family, instead of the "new normal" of today, you had fullness rather than emptiness. You often had too much fullness, LOL. You had a big demanding family with its structure, and then you had your school, sports, other activities, brothers and sisters AND all the stuff you wanted to do... and then your "alone" time was also full, not empty. Your alone time was when you got to do the stuff you could not do otherwise. Your alone time was when you could go shopping in the mall and buy the clothes that your mom would never have paused to let you look at when you were shopping with her LOL.
But for the past two generations young people have had access to transportation other than their parents, tons of free time, and parents, feeling all "modernized" about it, let their little darlings make their own choices about clothes and so forth. That's cool and I'm not being old fashioned. I'm just explaining to you that alone time in the "old days" used to be a great wonderful opportunity to do what you want, cramming it in while you can, while today alone time seems to be for many young people an uncomfortable potentially lonely vacuum and abyss.
Hence it is not surprising to see young people get their time in the mall, or whatever, and compulsively chat or constantly check for something else to do, since you are filling in time, not grabbing time where at last you can do what you otherwise can't because you are working in the family or school unit of time. A kid from a big family in the old days would be annoyed if he or she got weird messages from people all the time when they only had one hour or two away from the family to be with their best friend, or shop, etc. Today it seems many young people have so much control over their time that they don't value, and even fear, their alone or best friend time. Hence you see best friends sitting together at a fast food place, not talking to each other, but texting and yapping with other people on their cell phones!
Now, let's look at the spiritual side of loneliness. What did people used to do when they had huge drudge work and responsibilities in large hungry poor families day in and day out? Were they ever lonely? Sure, people were lonely, especially if they had lost a member of their family in war or famine, to disease or poverty, but more than lonely they were desperate. As you know from my previous blogs in Biblical times if a widow lost also her only son she might well starve to death, as the husband, and then the son, were the only providers. So people weren't really lonely as much as they are today because 1) they were part of huge close living families and 2) if they were alone they were more concerned with sheer survival rather than missing the company per se of other people.
But there is also another component to the difference between older times and now. People were raised from the smallest children to know about God and to believe in his constant presence. It is unthinkable to me how many children are raised to be irreligious, to know nothing of God at all. I've blogged about this before, how it deprives children of love and comfort to not raise them to know and trust in God at the earliest age. But here's the main point I want to make in this blog. When one is raised as a child to know God, it is like you receive constant text messages from him!
Now, realize I don't mean "channeling" or that God is your shopping buddy, LOL, where you imagine he is commenting on your purchases. What I mean is that people who are raised as children to know about God don't really feel as alone and alienated as others do. The way people learn about God, through scriptures, either listened to (back when people couldn't read or afford a family Bible) or read, gave them a constant sense of companionship. To use a computer analogy, being raised with God is like having God as the wallpaper on your computer of life. LOL, I know that's a little silly, but here's what I mean.
Most people don't, of course, memorize entire parts of the Bible. They know the basic message of salvation, the do's and the don'ts, and also the events of the life of Jesus. But each person tends to carry with them, from childhood, certain parts of scripture that resonates with them. If you get two friends talking who were raised this way, for instance, even if they are discussing shopping or other events, if the conversation turns to modern events or so forth, often each person will reference automatically some part of the scripture that resonates personally. Those parts of the Bible, whether they are actually quotes or just favorite events or principles, are, for such people, like saved text messages.
Think of those few text messages (out of hundreds or thousands that are just fleeting or plain old junk) that you really treasure, and how you save them, and they make you feel good to look at them. They are not, of course, substitute for actively texting a friend. Because, however, you have saved those texts, you can revisit them and feel good, but there is an element of pathos, for if you were busy with a fulfilling conversation at the moment, you'd not be looking back on past saved texts, no matter how happy they were, since you'd be in a current event of new happiness, or at least being busy. The Bible and one's relationship with God, though, is like the best of saved texts that you can receive completely new and in the moment. In other words, each time that you "retrieve" a "saved text" from God, you ARE receiving that affirmation in the here and now, just as if you had only now received that "text" for the first time.
Let us look at an example. Suppose you have a boyfriend or girlfriend, and he or she sent you a really awesome text that you saved. If you are apart from them, you can look at the text, and enjoy seeing it, even if you are a bit sad at being apart. Even then, though, you are looking back at a point in time. But what if you have broken up? It would really be kind of painful, not comforting, to look back on that text, which once made you so happy, but now represents a gone relationship. You could look at it for nostalgia, but it probably is no comfort. So even at its best, when its an awesome text in an ongoing love relationship that you have saved, it's still just a substitute for when you are with the person again.
But let's look at a top favorite traditional "text message from God" and observe the totally different feeling from the example I gave above to you.
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
This is probably the most universally heard and beloved "text message from God" of all times.
It is from the Twenty-third Psalm, one that is of great comfort for thousands of years of Jewish and Christian life. When one looks at or just thinks about this "saved text message from God," it's not a bittersweet reminder from a past relationship, nor is it a much loved text message from someone who you are apart from. It is a real, continual, constantly renewed and validated text message from God. People who were raised as children to have God as the known and real comfort in their lives tend to have such favorite "text messages" from God, even if the text message is just a picture of the baby Jesus at Christmas time.
Psalm 23
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
In verdant pastures he gives me repose; beside restful waters he leads me;
He refreshes my soul.
He guides me in right paths for his name's sake.
Even though I walk in the dark valley I fear no evil; for you are at my side with your rod and your staff that give me courage.
You spread the table before me in the sight of my foes; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
Only goodness and kindness follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for years to come.
Many of you, even if not super Bible scholars ;-) will recognize that there are several famous well know "text messages from God" in this one great short and sweet Psalm. In addition to the first line, these are also well known passages that are recalled in heart, if not word for word, my many:
Even though I walk in the dark valley I fear no evil.
And:
Only goodness and kindness follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord [forever].
Whenever one thinks of these three, or any other, "saved text messages from God," they are not frozen remembrances of something that was once true or relevant, but may not be anymore, or at least less so. When one "reads" these "saved text messages from God," you are receiving them anew in the here and the now, over and over, and they never age, become irrelevant, sad, or diminished. It is exactly as if whenever you think of these "saved text messages from God" that he is sending them to you on the spot, because that is the truth. That is one reason why the Bible is called the "living word" of God. It is because it is like saved text messages from God that are sent anew to you, eternally new and current, and all you have to do is think of them to receive them on your "cell phone."
Young people, why not program into your cell phone or whatever your "communications device" may be those three saved text messages from God? See, there are many easy and fun ways to learn, to plug the gap, that may exist between your previous lack of knowledge of God's reality and a fresh new beginning. Put God in your contact list! Really, do program him in :-) and then start to save texts like these.
Here is another one from Psalm 25:
To you I lift up my soul.
This is a reminder that God is always, always, ALWAYS there, and is always in reach, if only you lift up your soul to him.
So have a little fun, but also use that texting capability for some "eternal reality!" I know that people have Bible passage storing programs and capabilities for all communications devices, but that is not what I am teaching tonight. I am teaching something very approachable and very simple. Put God on your contact list and then save a few text messages from him, using the scriptures (or the Qur'an if you are Muslim). Start to get used to this analogy, which is real and genuine, that favorite pieces of scripture are EXACTLY like receiving a beloved and new text message from God over and over again, whenever you want it. That gives the modern texting person a taste of what it is like to have God as your genuine, full time, 24x7 "text buddy," one that never diminishes and never breaks up with you (you can only leave him), and is never out of date or expires. The scriptures, and the Bible events, are the living eternal word of God, and his relationship with all who truly seek him as he really is.
I hope that you have found this helpful and also fun!
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Urgent warning about secret languages/scripts
I’m going to interrupt the discussion I have underway regarding confession and so forth because I thought of a GREAT analogy to explain to you a great danger in modern society. This is especially for you, young readers, because it is essential that you understand the trouble inherent with a way of life that you were all born into and assume, wrongly, that it is beneficial and good.
The way of life that you easily use and could indeed say has molded your personalities and spirituality, and not for good, is the use of acronyms, code words, secret languages, and slang with double and “symbolic” meanings. I am going to explain to you why this is totally harmful to you and to humanity in general. Now, I’m not trying to be a hypocrite or alarm you, since I of course use acronyms such as LOL and others that come from computer or phone language. But because I have a foot in both the old/traditional world and the new/messed up world, I can explain to you the problems so you can recognize them.
I’ve explained to you that human bodies exist as they do today because of both biological processes (such as evolution, natural section, survival of the fittest, and the marvelous complexity of life organisms) and spiritual processes (being created in God’s image, being given the conditions on this beautiful earth that allow life, and the ability to know and understand God on his terms). So the bodies that you have, as humans, are suited for the reality of life. Remember, more than ninety nine percent of the time humans existed they did not know how to read or write! Your bodies and your minds, which house your soul as its temple, became optimized simply by living, just living… not through technology, writing or speech. Modern capabilities such as communications have not done one iota to provide better bodies, minds or spirits. Modern capabilities, such as when humans started to speak and write, are benefits only in the collective (the group) because it gives what is called a “survival advantage.” In other words, families and other groups by speaking with each other can survive better.
Now, here is the problem. Let’s start with the analogy using, let’s say in Africa, a deer and a lion.
Deer, like humans, came into marvelous being without speech and writing or technology. The same is true of lions. Thus when a lion starts to stalk a deer in order to hunt it for food, each one, the lion and the deer, are using bodies and minds that exist and are optimized for survival and thriving without any technology or communications. Deer “know” they are potential prey, and they tend to be alert when grazing or at rest. Lions “know” that deer “know” they are prey, so lions know that they have to sneak up on deer or else the deer will run away. For millions of years this relationship has not only worked well, but thrived, with each population becoming healthier and healthier until as much as the earth can sustain of them exists. They thus become kind of their “optimal” condition.
Now, when the deer is grazing it is not wasting “thought time” thinking about lions or other stalkers. It is able to graze or rest and at the same time be alert. Lions also do not have to remind each other using communications to “be quiet” and “sneak up” on deer. They have both the instinct of their species, and they also learned from their parents and other herd or pride members when they were young. So it’s not like one deer has to keep reminding itself to “watch out for predators,” while one lion has to keep reminding the dummy in the pride to not try to walk up to a deer, but to use stealth and sneaky stalking instead. Animals arrive in a natural and REALISTIC harmonious state with each other and the environment.
What if we waved a magic wand and now imagined that deer and lions had these great “gifts” of human types of communication, but only for the stalking/being stalked circumstances? In other words, each animal does not naturally know its own role and responsibilities, but has to use speech and deliberate cues among each other.
Natural scenario: Lion stalks a herd of deer. Deer sees the lion at some point and run. Lion catches one deer that is unable to flee as fast as the others.
Unnatural scenario: Lion stalks a herd of deer, but he needs to hear in his earpiece coaching from other lions about whether to be fast or slow, stalk to the left or to the right. The old lion nags into the earpiece of the stalking lion that he should “be totally quiet” and “avoid walking through branches that might snap and give him away.” However, the brashest of the lions is also speaking into the earpiece of the stalking lion, “Don’t listen to that old coot. Go through the snapping branches but just be fast about it and you’ll catch one.” Odds are the lion will be so confused that he never succeeds in concentrating on what used to be natural to him. Eventually the lions would die out as the gift of “communications” in stalking destroys their natural and seamless integration with reality.
Now, I have been concerned about the unnatural and artificial means of communications that humans have adopted for a long time. I can actually tell you my “Oh, oh” moment, when I got REALLY worried about this problem for the first time. You can even look up on the Internet what year this was (I’m not online as I’m writing this so I’ll just tell you what to search for). It was when I started reading articles about this new “craze” in a “secret language” that English Cockneys, such as taxi drivers, were using. It’s called Cockney rhyming slang. The way that it works is that instead of saying what they mean, they say words that if you do kind of a inner “word association” process to make a link to another word or phrase, and then substitute rhymes of those words, you can figure out what he or she is saying. It made my head hurt when I first read examples, and the decades have not changed my distaste for that trend. Part of the culture is that there is kind of a smirking smugness at having a secret language that is intellectually challenging being used by people who are often dismissed by society as being “lower class.” In other words, the people pushing Cockney slang often had a subversive political chip on the shoulder kind of agenda.
Now, so you young people can better understand this, it was not a short hand for convenience as are texting acronyms. For example, the acronym BRB means “be right back,” a realistic real action that is written quickly using the first letters of each of the three words. I have no quarrel at all with acronyms, even as your spiritual mother who may not be up to date with every acronym, LOL. They are simply quick ways to state real things and it is parents’ responsibilities to learn the lingo of their kids and modern youth. I’m not a hand wringer that using texting acronyms will cause modern youth to read less of the dusty gems of English literature, LOL. But now let me show you how BRB could be changed into either the Cockney rhyming slang, the forefather of the secret languages that I worry about, or an agenda filled cult tool. First, let’s pretend we are doing smug Cockney rhyming slang. I’m going to figure this out as I’m typing it so you can see the process, and thus the danger.
The first word in “be right back” is “be.” Here’s one way to represent the word “be.” You think to yourself that “be” sounds like “bee.” Bees are associated with honey. Honey rhymes with “funny” so you start your “be right back” phrase with the word “funny.” The second word, “right” can mean quickness, as in the phrase “be right back,” but “right” also means direction (to go toward the right) or politics (conservative), or even degree of correctness (to be accurate about something). Suppose that you are a leftist and hate the right wing of politics. If the conservatives were in power, especially if a woman was the figurehead, you might think of the “right” (politics) as being a “bitch.” “Bitch” rhymes with ditch so you substitute “ditch” for the word “right.” You pat yourself on the back a bit how clever you are and how you got “a dig” (pun) in on your imagined enemy, the “right,” even though politics has nothing to do with the expression “be right back.” The third word, “back,” means to return, since the phrase “be right back” means “I will return soon.” However, the word “back” can also mean the reverse side of the body, where the front is the chest and the other side is the “back.” For example the buttocks are also called in English the “backside.” So perhaps you decide to use the word “rump” to invoke the word “back.” You then think of a word that rhymes with “rump” so you might use the word “dump” or “bump.” You’d probably not use “bump” since it starts with the same letter as the word you are replacing, “back,” and that is not clever enough, so you pick “dump.” Thus in your secret language, instead of saying “be right back” you say to your equally clever friend “funny ditch dump.”
You watched me actually think of this example as I typed. So now we look at “funny ditch dump” for the first time as the oh-so-smartass secret language substitute for “be right back.” Fans of this type of secret language would receive special glee from “funny ditch dump” because notice the irony. Without my planning this I’ve come up with a phrase that actually implies the opposite of what you were actually meaning to say. Does a “funny ditch dump” sound like someone planning to BRB? You can giggle when texting your friend who shares your nutty and damaging secret language “FDD” which stands for “funny ditch dump,” which sounds like you are laughing while dumping your text friend in a ditch while at the same time meaning that you will be right back.
When I first read about Cockney rhyming slang I was immediately alarmed on behalf of humanity, seriously. I realized that this thirst for secretive elitist cleverness was corrosive, like acid, on reality and on human mental and emotional connectivity with reality. And I was correct, even more than I had guessed I would be, for there are now millions of people who speak, perform daily task “scripts,” and who have programmed, without realizing it, their own minds to have totally unreal wiring.
So the lion is now stalking the deer. He hears in his earpiece the old lion shout “fee fade ram!” The stalking lion stops dead in his tracks thinking “What?!” He starts to try to decode. What rhymes with “fee?” Is it “he” or “brie?” If he decides the “correct one,” “he,” what word association is with “he?” Is it maybe “she?” What rhymes with “fade?” Is the correct rhyme “jade” or “made?” If it is “made” what does “made” mean in association with? Fortunately the lion watches a lot of TV detective shows and realizes that to be “made” means that a person being followed by someone else has recognized that he is being followed. A follower who reports back to his handlers that his quarry has recognized that he is being followed states “I’ve been made.” So what does “ram” rhyme with? He goes nuts trying to figure out and never does. Needless to say the deer herd is now long gone. When he goes hungry back to the other lions, they berate him for not figuring out their rhyming slang fast enough. Sure, he got the “she made” part but he never figured out what rhymed with ram. The old lion then admits it was a rhyme followed by an association, not an association followed by a rhyme. They were trying to say “she sees you,” referring to the deer he was stalking. “You” was replaced by “ram” because “you” rhymes with “ewe” and the old lion was born under the sign of Aries so of course he put a little self congratulatory “insider’s joke” by linking you-ewe-ram.
Do you notice that no one freaking cares about actually catching the meal that they need to survive?
This is what millions of people, as best as I can tell from my observation (which is pretty thorough) are doing, as yes that many seem to subscribe to cult beliefs and activities that include such highly symbolic, with often reverse meaning and plenty of weird agenda, secret lingo.
They not only add weird layers to what they are trying to say, but they exercise the “unreal” circuitry of the brain, rather than the reality based circuitry. Whenever they hear individual words or phrases in their secret language they no longer have the original content and meaning of any of the plain words, but they also have infested, like with cobwebs, using weird agenda the simple thing that they were trying to say, presumably, in the first place.
For those of you who are not part of this mess, understand that those who use this weird form of acting out and “communications” have filled much of modern media (TV, films, music) with such secret language, messages and phraseology. I have found that many of them grind to a halt in speech when I talk to them as they are, like the lion with the earpiece stalking the would be deer meal, trying to “decode” what I am “really” saying. Um, but I’m just saying what I am saying. They have reprogrammed their own minds to lose all survival instinct because they no longer actually seamlessly process reality: word=what it really means + word=what it really means + word=what it really means resulting in sentence or phrase=what it really means. Over the years I have routinely knocked people I’ve spoken too off of their scripts and secret language because they actually are flustered trying to have a simple exchange of straightforward reality based sentences. I watch them as their eyes flicker and they look away when they wonder if I meant something other than “Nice day today, isn’t it?” And even if they decide I really mean that I think it is a nice day today, they struggle to use some of their secretive agenda driven symbolic “language” to reply. It would be funny if it was not so awful and so lonely. Part of what I hope to do is to teach people to speak simple words that mean simply what they mean to each other again. It’s pathetic and dangerous when I say “nice” day and they are thinking, “she must mean the spice girls” or, rather, to rhyme and word associate the “spice boys.”
I’ve talked about the dangers to mentality, biology and emotions of these secret languages and their warped agendas. You can also infer that the spirit of the authentic human being is damaged by this. As spiritual director I also have to discuss sin with you. Secret languages are a violation of the Commandment that prohibits false witness. Each use of a secret language is an commission of this sin of false witness. Repent and convert before it is too late to even pick up the pieces, the scraps, of what remains of what humanity should and could have been. Young people: if you don’t do it, fix these problems and reclaim your humanity, no one will.
The way of life that you easily use and could indeed say has molded your personalities and spirituality, and not for good, is the use of acronyms, code words, secret languages, and slang with double and “symbolic” meanings. I am going to explain to you why this is totally harmful to you and to humanity in general. Now, I’m not trying to be a hypocrite or alarm you, since I of course use acronyms such as LOL and others that come from computer or phone language. But because I have a foot in both the old/traditional world and the new/messed up world, I can explain to you the problems so you can recognize them.
I’ve explained to you that human bodies exist as they do today because of both biological processes (such as evolution, natural section, survival of the fittest, and the marvelous complexity of life organisms) and spiritual processes (being created in God’s image, being given the conditions on this beautiful earth that allow life, and the ability to know and understand God on his terms). So the bodies that you have, as humans, are suited for the reality of life. Remember, more than ninety nine percent of the time humans existed they did not know how to read or write! Your bodies and your minds, which house your soul as its temple, became optimized simply by living, just living… not through technology, writing or speech. Modern capabilities such as communications have not done one iota to provide better bodies, minds or spirits. Modern capabilities, such as when humans started to speak and write, are benefits only in the collective (the group) because it gives what is called a “survival advantage.” In other words, families and other groups by speaking with each other can survive better.
Now, here is the problem. Let’s start with the analogy using, let’s say in Africa, a deer and a lion.
Deer, like humans, came into marvelous being without speech and writing or technology. The same is true of lions. Thus when a lion starts to stalk a deer in order to hunt it for food, each one, the lion and the deer, are using bodies and minds that exist and are optimized for survival and thriving without any technology or communications. Deer “know” they are potential prey, and they tend to be alert when grazing or at rest. Lions “know” that deer “know” they are prey, so lions know that they have to sneak up on deer or else the deer will run away. For millions of years this relationship has not only worked well, but thrived, with each population becoming healthier and healthier until as much as the earth can sustain of them exists. They thus become kind of their “optimal” condition.
Now, when the deer is grazing it is not wasting “thought time” thinking about lions or other stalkers. It is able to graze or rest and at the same time be alert. Lions also do not have to remind each other using communications to “be quiet” and “sneak up” on deer. They have both the instinct of their species, and they also learned from their parents and other herd or pride members when they were young. So it’s not like one deer has to keep reminding itself to “watch out for predators,” while one lion has to keep reminding the dummy in the pride to not try to walk up to a deer, but to use stealth and sneaky stalking instead. Animals arrive in a natural and REALISTIC harmonious state with each other and the environment.
What if we waved a magic wand and now imagined that deer and lions had these great “gifts” of human types of communication, but only for the stalking/being stalked circumstances? In other words, each animal does not naturally know its own role and responsibilities, but has to use speech and deliberate cues among each other.
Natural scenario: Lion stalks a herd of deer. Deer sees the lion at some point and run. Lion catches one deer that is unable to flee as fast as the others.
Unnatural scenario: Lion stalks a herd of deer, but he needs to hear in his earpiece coaching from other lions about whether to be fast or slow, stalk to the left or to the right. The old lion nags into the earpiece of the stalking lion that he should “be totally quiet” and “avoid walking through branches that might snap and give him away.” However, the brashest of the lions is also speaking into the earpiece of the stalking lion, “Don’t listen to that old coot. Go through the snapping branches but just be fast about it and you’ll catch one.” Odds are the lion will be so confused that he never succeeds in concentrating on what used to be natural to him. Eventually the lions would die out as the gift of “communications” in stalking destroys their natural and seamless integration with reality.
Now, I have been concerned about the unnatural and artificial means of communications that humans have adopted for a long time. I can actually tell you my “Oh, oh” moment, when I got REALLY worried about this problem for the first time. You can even look up on the Internet what year this was (I’m not online as I’m writing this so I’ll just tell you what to search for). It was when I started reading articles about this new “craze” in a “secret language” that English Cockneys, such as taxi drivers, were using. It’s called Cockney rhyming slang. The way that it works is that instead of saying what they mean, they say words that if you do kind of a inner “word association” process to make a link to another word or phrase, and then substitute rhymes of those words, you can figure out what he or she is saying. It made my head hurt when I first read examples, and the decades have not changed my distaste for that trend. Part of the culture is that there is kind of a smirking smugness at having a secret language that is intellectually challenging being used by people who are often dismissed by society as being “lower class.” In other words, the people pushing Cockney slang often had a subversive political chip on the shoulder kind of agenda.
Now, so you young people can better understand this, it was not a short hand for convenience as are texting acronyms. For example, the acronym BRB means “be right back,” a realistic real action that is written quickly using the first letters of each of the three words. I have no quarrel at all with acronyms, even as your spiritual mother who may not be up to date with every acronym, LOL. They are simply quick ways to state real things and it is parents’ responsibilities to learn the lingo of their kids and modern youth. I’m not a hand wringer that using texting acronyms will cause modern youth to read less of the dusty gems of English literature, LOL. But now let me show you how BRB could be changed into either the Cockney rhyming slang, the forefather of the secret languages that I worry about, or an agenda filled cult tool. First, let’s pretend we are doing smug Cockney rhyming slang. I’m going to figure this out as I’m typing it so you can see the process, and thus the danger.
The first word in “be right back” is “be.” Here’s one way to represent the word “be.” You think to yourself that “be” sounds like “bee.” Bees are associated with honey. Honey rhymes with “funny” so you start your “be right back” phrase with the word “funny.” The second word, “right” can mean quickness, as in the phrase “be right back,” but “right” also means direction (to go toward the right) or politics (conservative), or even degree of correctness (to be accurate about something). Suppose that you are a leftist and hate the right wing of politics. If the conservatives were in power, especially if a woman was the figurehead, you might think of the “right” (politics) as being a “bitch.” “Bitch” rhymes with ditch so you substitute “ditch” for the word “right.” You pat yourself on the back a bit how clever you are and how you got “a dig” (pun) in on your imagined enemy, the “right,” even though politics has nothing to do with the expression “be right back.” The third word, “back,” means to return, since the phrase “be right back” means “I will return soon.” However, the word “back” can also mean the reverse side of the body, where the front is the chest and the other side is the “back.” For example the buttocks are also called in English the “backside.” So perhaps you decide to use the word “rump” to invoke the word “back.” You then think of a word that rhymes with “rump” so you might use the word “dump” or “bump.” You’d probably not use “bump” since it starts with the same letter as the word you are replacing, “back,” and that is not clever enough, so you pick “dump.” Thus in your secret language, instead of saying “be right back” you say to your equally clever friend “funny ditch dump.”
You watched me actually think of this example as I typed. So now we look at “funny ditch dump” for the first time as the oh-so-smartass secret language substitute for “be right back.” Fans of this type of secret language would receive special glee from “funny ditch dump” because notice the irony. Without my planning this I’ve come up with a phrase that actually implies the opposite of what you were actually meaning to say. Does a “funny ditch dump” sound like someone planning to BRB? You can giggle when texting your friend who shares your nutty and damaging secret language “FDD” which stands for “funny ditch dump,” which sounds like you are laughing while dumping your text friend in a ditch while at the same time meaning that you will be right back.
When I first read about Cockney rhyming slang I was immediately alarmed on behalf of humanity, seriously. I realized that this thirst for secretive elitist cleverness was corrosive, like acid, on reality and on human mental and emotional connectivity with reality. And I was correct, even more than I had guessed I would be, for there are now millions of people who speak, perform daily task “scripts,” and who have programmed, without realizing it, their own minds to have totally unreal wiring.
So the lion is now stalking the deer. He hears in his earpiece the old lion shout “fee fade ram!” The stalking lion stops dead in his tracks thinking “What?!” He starts to try to decode. What rhymes with “fee?” Is it “he” or “brie?” If he decides the “correct one,” “he,” what word association is with “he?” Is it maybe “she?” What rhymes with “fade?” Is the correct rhyme “jade” or “made?” If it is “made” what does “made” mean in association with? Fortunately the lion watches a lot of TV detective shows and realizes that to be “made” means that a person being followed by someone else has recognized that he is being followed. A follower who reports back to his handlers that his quarry has recognized that he is being followed states “I’ve been made.” So what does “ram” rhyme with? He goes nuts trying to figure out and never does. Needless to say the deer herd is now long gone. When he goes hungry back to the other lions, they berate him for not figuring out their rhyming slang fast enough. Sure, he got the “she made” part but he never figured out what rhymed with ram. The old lion then admits it was a rhyme followed by an association, not an association followed by a rhyme. They were trying to say “she sees you,” referring to the deer he was stalking. “You” was replaced by “ram” because “you” rhymes with “ewe” and the old lion was born under the sign of Aries so of course he put a little self congratulatory “insider’s joke” by linking you-ewe-ram.
Do you notice that no one freaking cares about actually catching the meal that they need to survive?
This is what millions of people, as best as I can tell from my observation (which is pretty thorough) are doing, as yes that many seem to subscribe to cult beliefs and activities that include such highly symbolic, with often reverse meaning and plenty of weird agenda, secret lingo.
They not only add weird layers to what they are trying to say, but they exercise the “unreal” circuitry of the brain, rather than the reality based circuitry. Whenever they hear individual words or phrases in their secret language they no longer have the original content and meaning of any of the plain words, but they also have infested, like with cobwebs, using weird agenda the simple thing that they were trying to say, presumably, in the first place.
For those of you who are not part of this mess, understand that those who use this weird form of acting out and “communications” have filled much of modern media (TV, films, music) with such secret language, messages and phraseology. I have found that many of them grind to a halt in speech when I talk to them as they are, like the lion with the earpiece stalking the would be deer meal, trying to “decode” what I am “really” saying. Um, but I’m just saying what I am saying. They have reprogrammed their own minds to lose all survival instinct because they no longer actually seamlessly process reality: word=what it really means + word=what it really means + word=what it really means resulting in sentence or phrase=what it really means. Over the years I have routinely knocked people I’ve spoken too off of their scripts and secret language because they actually are flustered trying to have a simple exchange of straightforward reality based sentences. I watch them as their eyes flicker and they look away when they wonder if I meant something other than “Nice day today, isn’t it?” And even if they decide I really mean that I think it is a nice day today, they struggle to use some of their secretive agenda driven symbolic “language” to reply. It would be funny if it was not so awful and so lonely. Part of what I hope to do is to teach people to speak simple words that mean simply what they mean to each other again. It’s pathetic and dangerous when I say “nice” day and they are thinking, “she must mean the spice girls” or, rather, to rhyme and word associate the “spice boys.”
I’ve talked about the dangers to mentality, biology and emotions of these secret languages and their warped agendas. You can also infer that the spirit of the authentic human being is damaged by this. As spiritual director I also have to discuss sin with you. Secret languages are a violation of the Commandment that prohibits false witness. Each use of a secret language is an commission of this sin of false witness. Repent and convert before it is too late to even pick up the pieces, the scraps, of what remains of what humanity should and could have been. Young people: if you don’t do it, fix these problems and reclaim your humanity, no one will.
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