I encourage you to write your own.

Faith Statement of Ben Somerville

12/16/11

God is a name;

and I believe in God.

I use the name to express the source, being, or non being, creator, sustainer, redeemer, forgiver, lover, abstainer, and judge;

and everything which is in charge of life animate and inanimate that we know or don't know about.

I intend to cover all bases, good and evil because this understanding of God is the only way that my faith statement makes sense;

And any limiting or confining statement of God makes God less than God.

My faith is what I trust to be true as if there were no question about it;

and I question a lot.

My faith allows and encourages me to question;

and my faith depends on the truth as it is, not as I want it to be.

When I have illusions;

and I am disillusioned, I come closer to the truth.

I believe Jesus of Nazareth, a Jew who became the Christian Messiah, is the best expression of God being fully present in a human being;

and a witness to God's full presence within each human being.

I believe God is present where there is life of any kind;

and everything contains life.

I believe that every human contains the gift of the full presence of God;

and we are responsible for how we live out that gift.

We are all in this together;

and the way we treat one another is the actual way we treat God.

Our struggle is to have our behavior be congruent with our words;

and the way we feel will fall in line.

We will know the joy of compatibility, even if it takes years;

and we are free to choose the way we live.

We are within the sovereign reign of God;

and loves abounds.  

A Letter To a Friend

The story you give concerning your faith and spiritual community sounds so much like the development of a movement turning into an institution and then being reformed in the second or third generation.   The Christian Church went through this in the early years, and has continued reforming ever since.  It is important to return to the origin and take the fundamentals and use those in reforming, knowing that you will never recapture what was, but you can establish something new based on your understanding of the beginnings.  The number of denominations and independent churches of the Christian tradition are too numerous to count.  

We have spiritual longings and needs to be met, and it is important to seek out what will help us grow and continue walking a path that is fulfilling and compassionate. I chose the Episcopal Church early in my life because it was open in thought and had a beautiful worship format. It has teachings,  but the primary focus is to have common worship.  I have gone through a million changes in beliefs, practices, and journeys in the last 50 years and the Episcopal Church has encouraged, tolerated and facilitated them for me, and that is why I stay with it.  I also think it is important for us to be part of something that is bigger than we are to help correct us along our way.  All corrections are not necessarily conducive or important or good, but they at least give us another perspective and call us to be accountable to ourselves and others.  So, my friend, if you have a call to reform, do it with humility and boldness.

Walk number 2 with Shadow my dog.

There is a shot in the movie, Edward Sissorhands with Johnny Depp, which shows the suburban residential street where all the houses are from the same model and the shrubs and lawns are manicured and all the trash cans are lined up like soldiers beside the driveways.  A model of order and cleanliness.  Walking through my neighborhood on trash collection day, we resemble the Edward Sissorhands shot from the movie.  Edward comes along and disrupts the order and seeming serenity of the neighborhood.
 As I continued my walk, I noticed one house where the youngest son had almost drowned in the swimming pool and suffered severe brain damage.  I see him once in a while and he is smiling and happy;  his parents have a big job caring for him and his older brother who is just fine, and they do very well. He is an Edward who has disrupted the seemingly ordered and serene neighborhood.
Down the street a little farther and I greet the man from a house that is very well taken care of and he has a Jeep, Motorhome, and Trailer in his yard.  He and his wife travel  and play in all their RV's.  They also go to funerals " back home".   On farther down is another immaculately kept place, their neighbor's pressured them into cutting their trees way back because all the leaves blew into the neighbor's yard.  Another one has had several strokes in the last couple months.  Another one is a Veteran with P.T.S.D. who is brought to his house once in while and he spends the day watering his yard which is mostly dirt then becomes mud.
So, this is just a small sample of my neighborhood which appears quiet, orderly and serene.  We actually have a lot of Edward Sissorhands living among us.  Sometimes I notice and other times I don't.  When I do notice, my life is richer.

Shadow and Me. Shadow is the name of my mix breed dog of Dachshund and Pit Bull Terrier. He takes me for a walk each morning and I think as I walk. Organizing my random thougts is an exersize which is fruitfull. Rather than letting my thoughts be what I think. I organize them and then choose what I actually think. Having a thought is not thinking. Thinking is processing throughts.

There is a new neighbor who has a sign hanging on the front porch which reads "Do you believe in life after death?  Trespass and find out."  This prompted a lot of thoughts, the first was "how hostile, it might be cute on an adolescent's bedroom door, but not on a front porch."  Do I want to meet this new neighbor or not?  How about keeping enemies close?  People who think this way are enemies and I'm a christian who is called to love my enemies.  How do I love this new neighbor. I'd like to avoid him.  Is that loving him?  I really do not know. 

I think that there is fear and anger behind the sign and I wonder what it is about the person's life that creates such fear.  It can be a multitude of things in a person's life such as being abused as a child or being bullied as a kid.  It can be a chemical imbalance in the brain or some kind of mental illness or emotional disability.  The variety of possible causes remind me that there are so many people who do not have access (even though it is available) to proper diagnosis or treatment, and there are those who do have the access and don't seek it or don't till late in life.  The more I think about it, the more I realize that it is primarily a social and cultural issue and then a personal one.  We have the culture we want because we are the ones who create it.  It may not be what any of us individually prefers but it is a result of what we as a group produce.  There is still too much in our society that encourages fear of one another and violence as the answer for security.  Something happened after Franklin D. Roosevelt declared that "all we have to fear is fear itself".  We have progressively become a more fearful society since the 1950's.   I personally think that with our climb to the top powerful nation, we turned our fear in on ourselves; with the recent 9-11 event in our lives we also now have fear of ourselves and others.  We have moved into a nation of people who know no safe place except behind force.  This is false security because there is always someone else who will come along with a bigger or better gun.

My neighbor and I live in this social environment together and I choose to leave him alone.  If we are brought together somehow, I will do my best to love him as myself, and do unto him as I would want him to do to me.  Not be fearful of him and not try to change him and not be bullied by him.  I have been referring to him and it may be a her or a them.  At this point all I know is the sign.

THIS SENIOR CITIZEN NAILED IT.

The following was sent to me via email from a friend.  I have no varification of who wrote it, but it could have been me.


Alan Simpson, Senator from Wyoming , Co-Chair of Obama's deficit commission, calls senior citizens the Greediest Generation as he compared "Social Security" to a Milk Cow with 310 million teats.August, 2010.
Here's a response in a letter from a unknown fellow in Montana ...I think he is a little ticked off!   He also tells it like it is !
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Hey Alan, let's get a few things straight..
1. As a career politician, you have been on the public dole for FIFTY  YEARS.
2. I have been paying Social Security taxes for 48 YEARS (since I was 15 years old. I am now 63).
3 My Social Security payments, and those of millions of other Americans, were safely tucked away in an interest bearing account for decades until you political pukes decided to raid the account and give OUR money to a bunch of zero ambition losers in return for votes, thus bankrupting the system and turning Social Security into a Ponzi scheme that would have made Bernie Madoff proud.
4. Recently, just like Lucy & Charlie Brown, you and your ilk pulled the proverbial football away from millions of American seniors nearing retirement and moved the goalposts for full retirement from age 65 to
age 67.  NOW, you and your shill commission is proposing to move the goalposts YET AGAIN.
5  I, and millions of other Americans, have been paying into Medicare from Day One, and now you morons propose to change the rules of the game. Why? Because you idiots mismanaged other parts of the economy to such an  extent that you need to steal money from Medicare to paythe bills.
6.  I, and millions of other Americans, have been paying income taxes our entire lives, and now you propose to increase our taxes yet again. Why?
Because you incompetent bastards spent our money so profligately that you just kept on spending even after you ran out of money. Now, you come to the American taxpayers and say you need more to pay off YOUR debt.
To add insult to injury, you label us "greedy" for calling "bullshit" on your incompetence. Well, Captain Bullshit, I have a few questions for YOU.
1. How much money have you earned from the American taxpayers during your pathetic 50-year political career?
2. At what age did you retire from your pathetic political career, and how much are you receiving in annual retirement benefits from the American taxpayers?
3. How much do you pay for YOUR government provided health insurance?
4.  What cuts in YOUR retirement and healthcare benefits are you proposing in your disgusting deficit reduction proposal, or, as usual, have  you exempted yourself and your political cronies?
It is you, Captain Bullshit, and your political co-conspirators called Congress who are the "greedy" ones.  It is you and your fellow nutcase's who have bankrupted America and stolen the American dream
from millions of loyal, patriotic taxpayers.  And for what?  Votes. That's right, sir.  You and yours have bankrupted America for the sole purpose of advancing your pathetic political careers.  You know it, we know it, and you know that we know it.
If you like the way things are in America , delete this.  If you agree with what a fellow Montana citizen says,  PASS IT ON!!!!

This would change everything and should be retroactive!
No one has been able to explain why young men and women serve in the U.S. Military for 20 years, risking their lives protecting freedom, and only get 50% of their pay. While politicians hold their political positions in the safe confines of the capital, protected by these same men and women, and receive full pay retirement after serving one term. It just does not make any sense.
On Fox news they learned that the staffers of Congress family members are exempt from having to pay back student loans. This will get national attention if other news networks will broadcast it. When you add this to the below, just where will all of it stop?
35 States filed lawsuits against the Federal Government
Governors of 35 states have filed suit against the Federal Government for imposing unlawful burdens upon them. It only takes 38 (of the 50) States to convene a Constitutional Convention <http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,590083,00.html> .
This will take less than thirty seconds to read. If you agree, please pass it on.
This is an idea that we should address.
For too long we have been too complacent about the workings of Congress. Many citizens had no idea that members of Congress could retire with the same pay after only one term, that they specifically exempted themselves from many of the laws they have passed (such as being exempt from any fear of prosecution for sexual harassment) while ordinary citizens must live under those laws. The latest is to exempt themselves from the Health care Reform... in all of its forms. Somehow, that doesn't seem logical. We do not have an elite that is above the law. I truly don't care if they are Democrat, Republican, Independent or whatever. The self-serving must stop.
If each person that receives this will forward it on to 20 people, in three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message.. This is one proposal that really should be passed around.
Proposed 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution: "Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators and/or Representatives in Congress;  that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States ."