Bits and pieces that dance at the edges of theology.
Collected conversations, recordings, scraps and memories of Father Alkire. Some are germs of papers, sermons, and a few confessions. Some are the right length for printing on posters and bathroom walls.
We’ve become as smudged as our clothes.
I’m in no rush. I’m retired. The only rush I have now is with mortality. And i sure ain’t rushing.
The new religion focuses entirely on living. What comes after life is of no consequence….a well lived life will lead to a well-warranted afterlife.
Caught in a collision of age and
fantasy
It makes no difference if you believe in God of not.
This is it!
This is all you get.
This is Paradise.
Accept this as God’s gift or accept it is happenstance. Either way this is it.
To ask the Universe for something more than Paradise is ignorance. To ask God for something more than Paradise is blasphemy.
The idea that there is life after death leaves us with the idea that there’s potentially something better coming.
How can there be anything better than Paradise?
God has provided us with the ultimate place to be. We literally come from the soil of this Earth!
Any problems here are ones we create.
Change ourselves and return to Paradise.
Imagine the sun being the same size as a pea. Then the nearest star to our system is 126 miles away.
Imagine the Universe the same size as a pea. Then infinity is….
beyond measure.
Describe your religion assuming there is no life after death.
Is it still a valid belief?
Will you still be a member?
My life is a wonderful succession of failures.
God is omnipresent and omniscient. Throw in infinite and never sleep peacefully again.
Life after death should be an afterthought.
If we are like sheep, are angels Border Collies?
New Year’s resolutions are a confessor’s bread and butter.
It’s always best to go on a diet with a full stomach.
‘Lord we just….’
Never say ‘just’ in a prayer! It is blasphemous!
There is a human tendency to believe that when things are going well it’s because of what I did. My good judgment. My good decisions. If things are going wrong it’s somebody else’s fault.
Just because there is no way right now to explain a miraculous happening doesn’t mean that we will never explain it. After all our need to understand is a God given miracle.
The Earth is Paradise! We literally come from the Earth’s dust, which is made of stardust.
My mother is an historian. Embracing what has come before. My father is a futurist. Embracing what will come.
Is the important thing that Jesus dies for us or that Jesus lives for us.
Gusts of music wafted up from the apartment below.
In darkness the beginning began to end.
Religion is built on belief. Don’t look for proofs.
newhouse notebook 