I haven't got one single fucking PRAYER for hurricane victims:

[castiron]

only THOUGHTS. I don't even have a chant, a mantra or a vibe. I have not one spiritual arrow in my quiver. I have just seen natural phenomena toss humanity around on a wave of predictable indifference. The radio personalities pray, the newscasters pray, and most gratuitously, Bush fucking prays and offers prayers and asks people to keep sending prayers.

Has anyone else ever thought of converting to Islam as an act of resistance or am I a total lunatic?

[Moochy]

1. Total Lunatic

:-) :sarcasm:
We in the God Squad are praying for your soul too.
Wear your Religiousity on your sleeve, like an armband.

cheers!

[castiron]

3. And I hope you

have a nice day and stay in more religious fora with your prayers. I've had enough of them. Not a believer. Never will be.

[Moochy]

6. Sorry i was just joking

I'm an atheist too, and tried to make my sarcasm more clear, but failed. :)

So no good vibes coming your way from me, my batteries are spent! :-)

[castiron]

8. OMG, I'm sorry....

Wait, OMG? What is this?! AAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGHHH. Anyway, I'm a jerk who is pissed and did not see your dripping thingy. Blush.

[lateo]

2. Become a Pastifarian instead...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster

[castiron]

4. HA! Good one - - thanks!

[ret5hd]

14. or a follower of Bob...he gives SLACK!...

and slack beats noodly appendages EVERY TIME!

[lateo]

17. Bob rules!

[dogday]

5. I light a candle every day and blow out at night

for the victim of Katrina. I started before the Hurricane hit because I knew this would be bad and have decided to keep lit for a while....

[castiron]

10. I really like that candle idea.

I liked it for the peace vigils, too. Fire is appropriate, ancient, symbolic.

[whatever4]

7. One thought

Yesterday, I had a thought, and that was that this disaster, horrible as it is, might have been a way to stop the monster that is our federal government from moving on to bigger atrocities. I mean this in a spiritual sense, that our combined spiritual being, or god if you will, caused a disaster, to hopefully show this government for what it really is. To show them up for the murders they are. Maybe this happened so other, even more terrible things don't have to happen.

Maybe this wakes our nation up. Maybe it stops us from destroying the world? A wake-up call?

Just to offer that up. It gave me a little comfort, the thought that these people gave up their lives and their welfare, though consciously unwillingly, in order to save us from greater dangers and more death. Maybe there was a larger purpose, however senseless it all seems.

In any case, it has been a wakeup call, and no matter how these monsters spin it, there's still a few hundred thousand American souls that KNOW firsthand they can't trust this government, in anything, not even life-and-death issues.

[castiron]

12. It's in our nature to think like that, I think.

But is also our wishful projection. I love the literary and narrative qualities to stories like that and I love how naturally they come to us, reflecting our beliefs like they do. And maybe, just maybe, there is an intelligence directing such a catastrophe as this. I am comfortable not knowing, though.

[StellaBlue]

18. Nope

I can't believe in any being who would slaughter thousands of innocent people for some 'plan'. That sounds chillingly like *co to me.

Nope.

Don't buy it.

But, yes, I do think that's in our nature, too. I try to distill any impulses that I have like that into pure HOPE which fuels my actions. All those impulses... to pray, send vibes, worship, repent, etc. - I just think they are all ways of coping and ways of retaining HOPE.

[whatever4]

20. Well

If you think like I do, just to add a little here, I believe we ALL play a part of god. And so, to me, it wouldn't be so much a "being that would slaughter thousands", but more like thousands agreed, on an unconscious, spiritual level, to make this happen. To me, they agreed to play a part in a large event, and that perhaps it was to help the rest of us see what's going on.

Not so much murder, but more like many, many sacrifices from many people.

It's really what I believe, and I wanted to share it. The thought that our own spirits play a large part in what happens in our world.

[StellaBlue]

21. I agree

But I would subsitute 'consciousness' for 'spirits', but I think we are largely talking about the same, not necessarily supernatural, thing.

:)

[whatever4]

24. Cool, thank you, and well wishes to you, in this awful time nm

[Book Lover]

23. That means you, in essence, are calling me a murderer

Which I do not care for.

[whatever4]

25. I am sorry

I didn't make this whole world, only my small part of it. We're all murders. And saints. We're all participating in this creation of a world. So, you aren't just a murder. You are part of all things of this earth, good and bad.

Though I find it hard to understand why a horrific, vengeful godlike figure murdering humans and animals by the thousands is a better philosophy.

I figure people believe what they want to anyway, they believe what makes them happy. So I believe we're all god, and, it makes me happy :)

Meaning nothing spiteful in all this. I'm not qualified to lecture even if you wanted me to ;)

[StellaBlue]

19. AND

Why the hell is it always African Americans who have to suffer for the greater good?

HUH?!

HUH?!?!?!

If 'God' wanted to teach us a lesson, he would hit the gated McMansions and SUVs and botox clinics and ... you get the idea.

[whatever4]

22. I have no idea why

But, I'm tempted to say it's because they're a better class of human.

Looks that way from here anyway. Rose themselves up out of slavery, in a nation that didn't even want them to read, still striving, while drug laws and policies hold them down, still striving. There's nothing I can think of that's much more American THAT. That strength and perseverance? Heck, I can say my ancestors ran from Ireland, but once they got here, all they had to do was loose the accent, and they were white as snow, right? No, don't get me wrong, I don't think black folks "deserved" this at all. Just the opposite. I'm a ninny from white suburbs, what do I know about the black experience, only what little I can understand. But even I can see how much racism there is, here, now, still.

But to clarify, I didn't mean God in that sense. Some people do, and for them, I guess my thought is just as true, that this horrible thing could serve a larger purpose. What meant to say, though, is that since I believe all people have a part of god, ARE a part of god, that then all those people agreed (on a spiritual level) to die for this. They agreed to participate in this huge disaster. I have to wonder why. I think it was to help the nation, and the whole world really, to stop the monsters from doing even more damage. Maybe from starting more wars. Maybe from making a police state here. Maybe it worked to show them for what they are.

Maybe a lot of people felt that it was worth the price, deep down inside, where we all have what we think of as a spirit.

[StellaBlue]

28. I'm sorry, I just don't get it

Those black people in NOLA wanted to die?

And it seems to me that since we DO now have an ACTUAL police state in NOLA, their deaths aren't preventing THAT happening.

:/

And 'better class'? Are Native Americans 'noble savages' to you, too? I thought that's what we were trying to rise above. We're all HUMANS. Period.

[dogday]

27. All I know is we are on our own people.

People have had some great ideas on what to get together in case you are stuck like chuck in a disaster. Maybe we need to pool them all together somehow...

[lateo]

9. I have a poem for New Orleans...

Not mine...

Philip Larken - "The Mower"

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
Killed. It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.

[castiron]

15. That's beautiful.

It reminds me of my own passionate sympathy for the animals still stuck in houses or treading water from island to island there. I can't bear it.

[lateo]

16. I heard this on "The Writer's Almanac" on NPR...

about 2 months ago. I wrote it in my journal because it touched me so. I have since written it on the white board in my conference room.

[WiseButAngrySara]

11. I pray for BFEE, the nation, and the families affected. And not in that

order! I pray first for the survivors, my prayer, plea to God for the countryis that the Nation will be relieved PRONTO of this evil administration, and I pray that B* will regain his humanity and resign.

[DS1]

13. hmmmm

ok

[Fescue4u]

26. Well if thats makes you feel good

then thats all that matters.

[NNN0LHI]

29. Islam is as good as any other religion n/t