The Thomas discussion group has this weird guy who shows up occasionally, as I'm prone to do, as I have done, who has taken to whining about the traffic or rather lack of traffic that happens in the group these days. He misses the old days (at least three years ago) when there were a lot of people participating, and it wasn't unusual to get a hundred e-mails a day or more from this lively group. Not so much any more. There are some days when there is not even one post from the group. It's been that way for a while.
Lots of people have speculated about why the participation is at such a low ebb, and I have too. I'm gone speculate some more right now. E-mail as a personal medium ain't what it used to be. Lots of people are using text messaging and other formats like Twitter to communicate these days. As far as the Thomas group is concerned, the topic itself ain't rocket science to figure out what it's about. People come and go there for their own interests to be satisfied, and when they are, they move on.
Some people try to make the Gnostic library into the excuse they need to tell the traditions that raised them that they're hypocrites. I might have started out studying Thomas for a similar reason myself, but I thought I might be able to use the Gnostic library writings, particularly The Gospel Of Thomas as a way of mediation with the crowd I live amongst here in the Bible Belt. It hasn't really worked the way I wanted it to, but studying the sayings and participating in the discussions have had a powerful effect on my religious views.
To wit: My religious views are not all that much about religion. Not religion as viewed here in the Bible Belt, but finding out what "religion" means to me lets me live here in relative peace. The coastal plains are a great place to live, and enough so that I'm willing to make a few concessions if I must appear to.
The attitude that I have decided to take about religion and hypocrisy is that a person's TRUE religion is what they approach religiously, and act like attending to whatever that is makes them religiously devout. That obsession, whatever it is, is what God means to them. They may not know what that is, but there is one thing I'm experientially certain of, and that's that they're never hypocritical about what they actually treat religiously. Their church affiliation may be up for grabs in a moment of temptation, but they're never untrue to what they truly worship
My friend Rainey has seem to got religion about playing the mandolin. You wouldn't believe what this religion is causing him to do. I get the impression without knowing the truth of it, that he might spend more money than he can actually afford to go to the various musical venues to find people to play with and be mentored about what's going on with the mandolin. The final straw is that he has been letting his hair grow longer. He's done for now.
You might not realize how obsessed Rainey has become with the mandolin unless you've heard him play the guitar. Rainey's a fine guitar player with a taste for jazz. Even more puzzling is that it's been only recently that he finally bought himself a top shelf guitar to play what he so melodiously does. Now, he's playing a ratty-ass borrowed mandolin like it's the cat's meow. Religious fanatics are just technically insane. :-)
I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
