ABOUT THE NATURE OF BEING CHRISTIAN .... November 26, 2017

"It is no easy matter to live a life that is modelled on Christ’s, but it is unspeakably harder to live one’s own life as truly as Christ lived his." ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Par 522

Each of our unique lives has a very different arrangement of facts and challenges and disturbances than those of Jesus'. Maybe even ones he would not have had  the resources to handle.(For example he did not have the challenges of parenting or a spouse  or a livelihood job except carpentry. Neither  did he experience being a human woman.)

So there is  no way we can successfully copy him, let alone conform literally to the  doctrines  and ideals that have come from the church's reflections on him for two millennia.

But we can conceivably  set out to accept and face our own personal capacities , limitations and circumstances  with a similar  honesty, courage, trust in life  and compassion for self and others that he is depicted doing.

 And we would anticipate there is no escape from significant  psychological  adult suffering for neither was there for him. He carried his unique mortal cross so we might as well, and we will experience our own purifying fire as he did his. We would  rightfully also expect an inner strengthening of unspeakable joy which is always just enough to sustain during troublsome times without and within.

This is more I think  what it has meant  to be 'Christian'.  This emphasis would seem to give a correct focus for the Christian approach to life.

TEXAS CHURCH MASSACRE AND WE STANDBY AS IF HELPLESS....November 5, 2017

America has a significant record of spending time, money and effort to  curb the serious downsides of high technologies which have become common the past 100 years. But in the case of gun technology our ancestors will without doubt ask, “ How could our forebears have been so unconscious?” But humans are known to pick unconsciousness over consciousness when they fear their emotional wishes, fantasies and irrational beliefs are at risk of being shown as unfounded. How many more mass murders until most Americans quit convincing ourselves that we collectively have nothing to do with this bloodbath? Before we see that it is not only the shooters that are responsible but all of us?

Until we take our nation's Massacring Syndrome as our personal loss,  and not only saying  ," I'm so sorry for your loss. I'm praying for you.",  I don't think we  will  begin to seriously do something.

We will not  in earnest  ask associates and legislators to stop following the marketing wishes of an enormously powerful lobby   and insist we collectively take  this  ever increasing  cultural horror  for the complicated multifaceted  evil phenomenon it is.

These facets include  our  deep  but often  denied national history of psychological attachment  to violence.  We have in many respects been a violence -prone culture from our beginnings. We need, not to put our nation down but to know better who we are, to finally own this attraction to violence.  Some might even argue that this dark national side has strangely, so far, served us well. But its tide has fully turned against us all now. Violence brings violence.

Another factor is that  otherwise good and well intentioned  Americans elevate and celebrate, rather than insist on responsible monitoring,  what is our  land's single  most psychologically powerful symbol  of public murder ;  the human ever-more-murderous technology to which we all are emotionally  and unhealthily  connected. This American  symbol of violence , passed on to our children, stirs up a   mesmerizing devilish cultural influence with its not -so -subtle  promise of national liberty and individual freedom. This presently living emotion-packed symbol is the god  almighty  American Gun.

We see again, to our horror, our nation's Massacring Syndrome   reenacted each time an emotionally  crippled  citizen  takes  these  powerful symbolic   promises of our gun culture  to heart  and acts them  out on our loved ones. Unstable persons in other developed countries are much less likely to mass kill. It is in part something about us we don't yet understand....Truly, Americans and our legislators have a  multifaceted problem to address.