How to make a killing off a dead Pope!

I have to cop to a certain amount of trepedation about so visibly expressing my rancor at the incredibly twisted Catholic Church. I mean, in everything else in my internet presence, I am Russ Reina, a firetender whose oft repeated mantra is that I am here to nurture the flames of  Spirit that live in me and all things.

(Something like that anyhow. You may have noticed I tend to say the same damn thing over and over again but just in 50,000 different ways! Nobody listens anyhow so I may as well keep working on the words until they really CLICK!)

And here, in what I reserved as a personal blog of my personal musings I am so damn stuck in my outrage of the Church! For all you see, this is all of who I am. It’s not, it’s the part whose soul got ripped free of its innocense.

Just to get this out of the way, what I REALLY should be doing is trying to sell my book. Let http://www.russreina.com speak for me on that.

But, honestly, just like I’ve encouraged others to vent, I will take my own medicine and have at it. Since I never attained a place on anyone’s pedestal there’s nothing to fall off of is there? And for the record, this never was about gaining publicity; I’m just mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more!

And you have no idea how deep is the love I have for all of my Contributors because they’re all screaming out the windows as well!

What got me here was a post by Mario on this site. In part, he said…

…I was just being a jokester about that. I know he was supposed to appear in Jerusalem (2nd Coming; firetender’s note). This does give me an idea though glad you bought (sic) that up. I can go there to sell, Jesus balloons to the kids and hamburgs and hot dogs. Just think, I may be able to perform a miracle by feeding 5,000 people from two hot dogs and a bag of rolls. You’ll probably catch it on the six O’clock news. All the Christians that will be their waiting for his arrival.It’s a good time to make a few bucks. Might as well take advantage  of the occasion.

On first blush I’d have to say that’s pretty damn miserable, Mario! Look at what you’re doing; you’re suggesting that, based on inspiration you received from this tender, sensitive blog that you can justify yourself going out and ripping off a bunch of devout Christians!

That, my Contributor is DEPLORABLE!

You can do better; For Chrissakes learn from the EXPERTS!

First of all, your project is labor intensive.

The balloon thing is a pretty good idea; cheap, the images are public domain, and they are innocuous giveaways for the kids. I’m cool with that, but remember, you will have to blow the damn things up or spend 90% of your time helping the little buggers to do so on their own!!

And, really, do you think it’ll be easy to turn two hot dogs and a bag of rolls into enough to feed 5,000 without an expensive set of smoke and mirrors? You ever watch a bunch of Christians at a Las Vegas free buffet?

(Please consider pork hot dogs if you do this; it’ll keep away Jew and Arab non-believers.)

You could do what Jesus did which was (arguably) ascend to Heaven for around 75 years until a good publicist showed up (Paul) who then spread the, um, slightly exagerrated story like wildfire.

But you know what, Mario? I don’t think you have the patience, and to be in your corner, neither do I!

So let’s get weird here, Okay?

1) Let’s you and me make up a wax dummy of Pope John Paul II; the guy who they just rushed through canonization as a Saint quicker than Crazy Glue sets.

2) Let’s figure out which country eats up the Pope being God’s direct representative on earth, hook, line and sinker as evidenced by his reception there when he was alive; preferably, let’s say, a country in turmoil, where innocent people are getting murdered by thugs and the people need to hold on to that old “reward in the afterlife” thing.

3) Let’s parade around the streets, letting the faithful touch the bulletproof glass sarcopagus with their whatchamacallums…oh yeah Scapulas and, of course, Rosary Beads, hell, even panties, why do anything to discourage expressions of faith?! I think they think that’ll knock off some time in Purgatory if I remember correctly. That’s what I was taught, anyway.

(Wait a minute, something is missing….Okay, got it!)

4) Make sure, with that wax figure you’ve got some bones or something from the real body of the pope. Wait, that’s too gross. Maybe a tooth or two that didn’t make it to the Tooth Fairy. Nah, in order for that to work the wax figure will have to visibly have the teeth in question absent; it’s a credibilty thing.

5) SCRATCH 4) I got it! How about having with it a vial of the dead Pope’s BLOOD. Say it was taken from him just before he died, for some reason that has ZING! appeal to me.

6) And here’s the beautiful part; you don’t even have to ask for the cash. It will be thrown into any box labeled, “Help us take our Vicar to the next town!”

Here’s where this firetender guy is truly out of his mind, isn’t he? Clearly, he deserves to lose what little credibility he had. I mean, what does he think; people from the impoverished ghettos will flock to the display and part with the spare Pesos they need to feed their children so the Church can continue to parade around with what used to be called a “graven image”?

SOMEBODY THINKS SO! And I’m sorry, Mario, in the time it took me to write this (I Googled, of course, to make sure I wasn’t stomping on anyone’s Copyright!) I found they beat us to the punch!

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/08/25/2374691/pope-john-paul-iis-relics-displayed.html

For once, this firetender doesn’t know what else to say.

An Aye for an Aye!

I think it’s fair to say that we, who have been Spiritually abused, have, at one time or another, questioned the existence of  god or the justice of ANY God. In my world, moments like these were fueled by outrage at the ripping away of my innocence. “How could I be so stupid as to entrust my fate to a god with such twisted sisters?!”

HE is their reflection, is He not?

How could I or you or anyone of us NOT be immersed in rage at some point? Note, I keep stressing that such things are in the moment. As with all emotions it is up to our choice how long we occupy any one of them.

Clinging to them can be debilitating as me and many of my peers have experienced, but sometimes, that’s what happens.

So when someone here expresses an “Off with their heads!!” toward God, his/her minions or their philosophies no matter how expressed, I can hear it. In fact, I want to hear it precisely because no one else did!

You’re right when you say ALL Extremists should be banned from having contact with our children — I have said it myself — but then I want you to listen to each other as well and hear that that puts you into the realm of Extremism.

An eye for an eye makes everyone blind.

And please, don’t forget that there ARE many of us who, through whatever means DID, in our childhoods, connect honestly and truly with the Central Force that our teachers abused. THAT connection has sustained our lives.

Take me, for example. Somehow, through singing, I established a visceral connection with the best of what I was taught Jesus was about. That initial absorption by me, by some magical entrance, helped me to distinguish between the good that came from that Source and the evil of what was made up by twisted minds and heaped on me and my classmates.

I abandoned it all after Grammar School and went about a perhaps 10 year quest to UN-learn everything I had been taught in Catholic School. That meant tossing out the baby with the bathwater. I had to, otherwise I never could have had room to let fresh water in to nourish something new. No matter how I looked at it, that baby was presented me as a burden, not a gift.

Sorry, but THAT baby had to die for me to live. I couldn’t really see at the time that what I was really doing was spinning a cocoon around it until it entered its appropriate stage of development and I had room to let it live inside me again.

Somehow, I REALLY got a tremendous amount of comfort from that — enough to have the strength to question and abandon it!

And there were MANY times I found myself railing at, protesting against and defiling everybody else’s gods who reminded me of the one who became the vehicle of my Spirit’s abuse. I had to work hard and fast to NOT allow those voices to dominate my life because that would place my focus on THEIR gods rather than cultivating my own.

Why?

Because what I found was that being godless just doesn’t work for me!

The connection is the Connection and that never changes; if I listen, through it I gain a little wisdom. Maybe it’s that damned simple, but you know what? Those little pieces of wisdom that seem to come from outside of myself are often…just…enough…to keep me wanting to live and continue to contribute.

I’ve learned to do what I’m told, but I know Who’s REALLY asking now!

Now that may be a far cry from the kind of fealty to Jesus that was beaten into me. But you know what? It’s enough!

So, what I’ve learned is that God has many faces. They are fluid and often times you have to really work hard and sacrifice a lot to get to see the one that you need right now. But they are there to choose from.

There’s that word again; CHOICE!

So, yes, I have a request here, as well. I want to hear the pain and I want to hear the reactions AND I want to hear the coming togethers as well in understanding and tolerance for each other. Out of that comes mutual growth.

Holding on to positions, or being subject to being held TO immutable positions is what got us to this site in the first place!

So let us be gods FOR each other. Let us find the places where we can hear the children in us crying out in pain and then extend hands to sooth it.

Remember, a big part of this Blog’s purpose is to be a vehicle for us to help each other move forward and my hope is ON so that the damage no longer lives inside of us.

This is not about revenge; it’s about self-restitution using mirrors.

And you know what? You ALL are doing a wonderful job!

I suppose I’d still like this Blog to attract somebody(s) to nail the Catholic Church on this, the underlying iceberg of its true abuse. But honestly, I’ll really “settle” for a bunch of us to see each other, help each other find perspective and hope, and then carry a living Jesus out to others, whatever form that may take.