Beware

From "Taking Flight." by Father Anthony de Mello (1931-1987), Jesuit priest, reprinted at Church of the Churchless and The Burning Taper

The priest announced that Jesus Christ himself was coming to church the following Sunday. People turned up in large numbers to see him. Everybody expected him to preach, but he only smiled when introduced and said, "Hello."

Everyone offered him hospitality for the night, especially the priest, but he refused politely. He said he would spend the night in church. How fitting, everybody thought.

He slipped away early next morning before the church doors were opened. And, to their horror, the priest and people found their church had been vandalized. Scribbled everywhere on the walls was the single word, "Beware."

No part of the church was spared: the doors and windows, the pillars and the pulpit, the altar, even the Bible that rested on the lectern. "Beware." Scratched in large letters and in small, in pencil and pen and paint of every conceivable color. Wherever the eye rested one could see the words: "Beware, beware, Beware, Beware, beware, beware...."

Shocking. Irritating. Confusing. Fascinating. Terrifying. What were they supposed to beware of? It did not say. It just said "Beware."

The first impulse of the people was to wipe out every trace of this defilement, this sacrilege. They were restrained from doing this only by the thought that it was Jesus himself who had done this deed. Now that mysterious word "Beware" began to sink into the minds of the people each time they came to church.

They began to beware of the Scriptures, so they were able to profit from the Scriptures without falling into bigotry. They began to beware of sacraments, so they were sanctified without becoming superstitious. The priest began to beware of his power over the people, so he was able to help without controlling.

And everybody began to beware of religion which leads the unwary to self-righteousness. They became law-abiding, yet compassionate to the weak. They began to beware of prayer, so it no longer stopped them from becoming self-reliant. They even began to beware of their notions of God so they were able to recognize him outside the narrow confines of their church.

They have now inscribed the shocking word over the entrance of their church and as you drive past at night you can see it blazing above the church in multicolored neon lights.

Jesus Christ | Anthony de Mello | Catholic Church

Jesus is a sheetmetal worker

It just doesn't stop! Another Jesus-face imagined up by the masses, and sold to the masses. This one is in an oil stain on a piece of sheet metal. The bid on eBay is already up to $362. Act now, before another Jesus-face shows up and ruins the value of this collector's item!

Sheesh. At least in the good old days, the letters S-E-X really were in the advertisements!

Know thyself

"When you recognize that there is a voice in your head that pretends to be you and never stops speaking, you are awakening out of your unconscious identification with the stream of thinking. When you notice that voice, you realize that who you are is not the voice — the thinker — but the one who is aware of it.

"Knowing yourself as the awareness behind the voice is freedom." — Eckart Tolle

The Devil you say?

"If you will but worship me, all will be yours." — Luke 4:7

Apparently, if you're going to quote the Bible, you should have actually read it first.

The St. James United Church of Christ of Limerick, Pennsylvania, recently posted the above Bible verse on their website, surely with the intention of steering sinning websurfers right into Jesus's outstretched arms.

Only one problem — the above verse is a quote from Satan, spoken by him to Jesus during the 40-days-in-the-desert-temptation scene right after Jesus's baptism.

In the fourth century and again from 1100-1400 A.D., gnostics and later the Albigensians were burned at the stake for the heresy of suggesting that Jehovah was really the Devil, the God of "this world," and that a higher God ruled over Him.

St. James' church retracted and apologized for the error later on their website, but not before a few bloggers noticed the, uh, misquote.

To their credit, and in spite of their lack of Biblical reading ability, St. James sounds like a cooler-than-usual church, judging from their top ten list, which touts their variety and their acceptance of alternative lifestyles. They call themselves "God's Party Church."

Holy Hotties buy lap dances for Jesus: J.C.'s GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS!

She's a self-proclaimed Holy Hottie. Ex-stripper Heather Veitch still works the topless bars, but not as a dancer. She works for Jesus now, you see.

Vietch, a 31-year-old married mother of two, is a co-founder with two other women, Tanya and Lori, of her own ministry, J.C.'s Girls Girls Girls. Veitch even pays for lap dances, so she can talk to the strippers about God.

A former Las Vegas stripper, when Veitch became a Christian she started sharing her faith with her former co-workers.

Her ministry's website features glamour shots of Veitch and her two partners, taken by a porn director. The website “almost” looks like a porn site; some of the shots of the three women are quite provocative, but they appear clothed, some shots showing a bit of cleavage, some shots in very tight T-shirts with the JC's Girls Girls Girls logo imprinted.

They attend porn conventions, where they pass out Bibles wrapped in T-shirts that read Holy Hottie.

The 1,700-member Sandals Church of Riverside, California has donated $50,000 to the JC's Girls Girls Girls ministry.

In addition to visiting strip clubs and porn conventions, the ministry operates Matthew's House in Riverside, a ministry for sex industry workers and those “addicted to pornography.”

Veitch said strippers and porn stars don't have to quit their jobs before entering a church. She said, "Do we ask gluttons to stop eating too much before they come to church?" She added, "sin is sin."

Photos: Heather, Lori and Tanya, in that order.

JC's Girls Girls Girls | Strippers | Salvation

Heather Veitch | Matthew's House | Jesus Christ

Satan at the Olympics?

ESPN and Mercury News are writing news articles about the Devil at the Olympics, The Burning Taper blog reports. Is sports so boring these days that supposedly legitimate news organizations have to resort to lame-o stories attributing an athlete's failure to meet a bus to Satanic intervention?

What are you people thinking?

A 23-year old man tried to commit suicide by nailing himself to a cross. He got one hand nailed down, then realized he couldn't nail the other without the other hand, so he called 911.

Jesus has been spotted on a church door. And in Cleveland, on a clipboard!

Here's a list of Jesus sightings dating back to 1978... once even seen in a Pizza Hut ad in a plate of spaghetti. And on screen doors and fish sticks! Jeez, people are crazy.

Pictures and images are one thing — but walking around in the flesh, too? Boston... San Francisco... Sturgin, South Dakota... on TV's recently cancelled "Book of Daniel."

And Mother Mary... people see her even more than Her Son. What's up with that? Ebay's got a jellybean with her impression on it, even. And a plate. And a freakin' bump on a chicken egg! Ho boy!

Are people this stupid? This gullible? Do they just want to believe in something SO bad that they'll believe anything?

Why don't you believe in yourselves?

Please allow me to introduce myself

I'm the small voice inside you. We're all connected. Everyone of us can hear me. It's just that not a lot of us listen to me. I am with you always. I'm not only with you...

...I am you.

Lest you think I'm just mumbo-jumbo'ing here, give this a think. Here's who I'm not:

I'm not a white-robed, Ted-Neeley-as-Superstar with hippie hair and a soft brown beard, or any other image you've built up in your mind or hung on the walls of your churches or painted onto black velvet like some Elvis.

I'm not the poster child or the spokesman for the Catholics, Lutherans, Mormons, Baptists, Branch Davidians, or any other cult.

I'm not the King of the Jews or the Prince of Pop or the Knight of Wands.

I'm not some angry god coming back to reward one group with Heaven and to damn another group to Hell.

I am simply this — All There Is. Consciousness. Knowing Itself. Here. Now.

I don't give a flying figtree about churches or steeples or hymns or prayer meetings or whether you tithe to a preacher or how long your hair is or who you're sleeping with or what doctrine you think is "the way." The way is simply to be here now.

Forget the past. All those things you worry yourself silly over — religion, politics, what so-and-so did to you last week, what your parents did or didn't for you when you were a child, what Ruth Ann said behind your back about you last week to Susie. It doesn't matter. The past isn't Now.

Forget the future. Forget the what-ifs. The fears. The worries. The oh-no! in the night terrors. Just let it go. The future isn't Now.

Be. Here. Now.