Kate Smith recently tried to stir up a conversation about
sprituality, spiritual values and agriculture, and I didn't see much
response. I'm curious as to why and how Bargyla's narrow minded
Bible spoutings have evoked this most recent discussion. I believe
it was Gwyneth and Beth who publically protested Bargyla's
patronizing Bible-thumping, but I don't think that either one of them
were in any way discouraging a discussion of spirituality and
agriculture. Quite the opposite. I think they were both reacting to
big chunks of raw dogma hurled into this forum. Dogma is
unprocessed, finger-wagging, ultimatum-laden "recipes" for life.
It's also pretty hard to swallow, if you insist on digesting what you
swallow. Raw dogma is what I hear when Bargyla gives her version
of TRUTH. Spritual truth, the result of one's own internal
processing and digesting, is real nutrition, and what I see as
appropriate to the discussions here. It's more than just recognizing
that there are other sacred texts (a la Alex's response; it's even
deeper than that. There are also other ways of understanding the
SAME sacred text. There is not one utterance or piece of writing
which does not deserve your own reflection, questioning, and
processing to make it your own if you are going to take it at all. I
also don't think that anyone's temporal age on this planet has
anything to do with it. A person who at even an advanced age still
does not allow sacred words to penetrate her and integrate inside of
her but rather continues to spout the raw dogma she was fed as a
child, is, in my opinion, not wise according to her years. She may
be brilliant when it comes to organic ag practices, but her
understanding of religion and spirituality is still raw and
undeveloped. And I'm not saying this in a purposefully disrespectful
way or just because I don't agree with something she might say, I say
it because it just simply sounds like the same old rhetoric you can
find on any intervenous-religion show on Sunday morning tv. There is
a difference between something which comes from *inside* you (whether
or not I agree with it) and something that is passed on, unprocessed,
from the outside.
It's this sort of lack of internal processing which allows things
like GE to go on unchecked and many other evils in the world to
proliforate. We DO need to discuss spiritual and moral values on
this list -- ABSOLUTELY, and interrated to this must be the
understanding that this means processing everything which comes
our way and making an effort to separate grain from chaff. We
might not all agree as what is the grain of truth and what is the
chaff, but we should have at least done all our own winnowing.
Anita
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