Tag Archives: Henry VIII

Consume

Consume: (v) to eat, drink, or ingest food or drink

Last night, in the spirit of the holidays and expressing great affection, one of my sons made me a huge shrimp cocktail and regally paraded it to the table and set it down in front of me as if I were Henry VIII himself.

It was a beautiful sight. It took time to put together. It was gorgeous (if can bestow such a title upon impaled shrimp).

Yet less than ten minutes later it was consumed. The little fellows had departed, and all that was left behind were little tiny pieces of tail.funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

I was not sad. Matter of fact, I was quite satisfied with the offering and how it landed deep within my innards.

But it was gone.

I began to look around to see if there were friends of the shrimp which might be available for further consuming.

There were.

I soon forgot the sacrifice of the initial “little swimmers,” as I consumed more and more of their family members.

I felt no guilt whatsoever at destroying a whole generation of crustacea. Appalling.

Certainly to them, I must seem a monster, invading their safe place in the bay, lodging right next door to their pals, the scallops.

But one thing was sure–after my second, and even third, pursuit…

They were gone.

Consumed.

The only thing I took from that experience is that even though shrimp probably do not have souls (at least I hope not), I do have to be careful not to consume people–human brothers and sisters–who do possess such a gift from God.

We are all consumers.

But every once in a while, we need to realize what we’re consuming–and try to put a little back into the sea.

 

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Anglican

dictionary with letter A

Anglican: (adj) relating to or denoting the Church of England or any Church in communion with it.

If my only job were to teach and promote atheism, I would choose, as a platform for my presentation, to just share pieces of church history.

In no time at all, the most ardent believer, based upon the information I shared, would shake his or her head, turn his or her back and walk away from the “stinky pew.”

Why? Because faith is meant to be a leap, not a step.

When men like Martin Luther, John Knox and John Wesley decided to depart from the Catholic Church, they eventually got around to holding committee meetings about who they would become, and ended up keeping much of the religious ceremony, traditions and superstitions of the Mother Church from which they allegedly wanted to orphan themselves from.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the Anglican Church, which, when it came to America by boat, became the Episcopals. With its founder, Henry VIII (an unlikely theologian) it continued to take on the heavy burdens and abstract practices of the Church of Rome, while loosening the belt on the underbelly of less important issues.

It is the problem with the religious system–at least in the Christian faith.

Even though we have a movement which dubs itself Protestant, there really isn’t a lot of protesting going on. What actually occurred in the Reformation was a reaction instead of a revolution.

Rather than returning to the teachings of Jesus, which would have expanded the vision of the Christian movement to include all cultures and all people, the Protestants basically embraced the teachings of the Apostle Paul, while sprinkling in portions of Catholicism.

Therefore, Christianity is the most “choiceless” option of spirituality available. This is why many of our young people end up dashing among Buddhism, Muslim, Judaism and agnosticism. Even the denominations that are much more relaxed in their approach, like the Pentecostals, still maintain the seeds of the Vatican, with communion, offerings, trappings and ritual.

The Anglicans essentially left the church of Rome because their King, at the time, wanted a divorce. There’s nothing spiritual about it, and until we actually have a soulful awakening, returning us to the tenets of our founder from Nazareth, the church will continue to be a jumbled mishmash of ingredients, thrown together in a dark kitchen, baked in the oven … with the aspiration that it will end up to everyone’s taste.

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