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Blind Chihuahua

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More to religion
than pleasing
your imaginary friend

Leaving so soon? You are now looking at the outside of the Blind Chihuahua.

Outside

Outside. Consider any part of the world outside your mind, a rock, a cloud, your own body. The atoms in it were made twice — once in the big bang beginning of the Universe which made hydrogen and helium, and again in the thermonuclear furnace of a star (or stars), which burned the hydrogen and helium into all the other elements before it (or they) exploded, scattering the new elements until they coalesced into new stars and planets — among them our earth and our sun.

And the earth was a giant pile of dry rocks until a Mars-sized body struck it, melting them both into a rapidly spinning dumbell shape that broke into our present earth and moon. The melting through of the earth gave us a world with a crust of rocks floating on a sea of magma above an iron core — a planet with plate tectonics that recycles its crust, liberating the carbon dioxide that would otherwise be pulled out of the atmosphere by the sea and deposited on its floor as carbonate rock, leaving us cold and barren, like the seismically quiet Mars. Earthquakes and volcanoes are earth's respiration.

Improbably, the earth has formed in such a way as not only to give rise to life, but to sustain it. Many catastrophes shaped the earth after the dawn of life in order to produce an atmosphere containing free oxygen, and to mold its flora and fauna so as provide a place congenial to the continued existence of ourselves — creatures without any specialties other than athletic endurance, nimble fingers, and a capacity for abstract reasoning which we encode in speech.

It is so improbable that I wonder if there is not some kind co-evolution of matter and spirit going on, each influencing the other, and both guided to an extent that, the Biblical image of God hand-making Humanity out of clay without benefit of even a potter's wheel captures it as well as any image can.

Wondrous thing, life in the world. And painful, too. But without pain, would we take life seriously, would we fully engage, or would we treat it as a game with morality merely an intellectual pastime? Would we waste our time here, because no matter what, it isn't going to hurt?

Such a torrent of ideas from the thought of outside! Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was right when he said that all creation alludes to the presence of the Creator.

Speaking of outside, here are links to some exceptional places. Each opens a second window, which may hide this VCBC window. This enables you to use this page as an internet guide.

First, here is a list of sites that link to us!

Skepticism — The Doorway of Doubt, through which some of us have come to faith.

Christianity — The Way of the Cross, for those of us who are called to come and follow:

Sister Parishes — Real and Virtual Congregations, many with links to VCBC!

Religion and Intellectual Life — When enter into faith, bring your brains.

Religion and Public Life — The church and society.

Gender

  • Links have moved to our School.

World Religions — Take off your cultural blinders and see your own faith with new eyes.

Religious Humor — The church satirized and winked at.

Intellectual & Spiritual Experiences

  • Places to get online graduate education
  • Places to become a Master of Divinity
  • Burning Man — an annual week of secular/pagan participatory performance art and nudity in the desert. Recommended by some physicists we know, and several journalists seem to have had a good time.

Ezines, News, Commentary

Get off the World White Web

Link Collections

Reference

Health of MindBodySpirit

More than Merely Personal

Gone to the Dogs

What else?

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You didn't think we'd let you get away so easily, did you? Remember, we are everywhere.