Institutions

I’ve always felt that the word progressive followed by the word conservative is an oxymoron. I understand the conservative part of the term. What I find confusing is the interpretation of the word progressive. Does the phrase suggest measured and controlled change, or does it mean progressing a conservative agenda?

Depends who you ask I guess.

If the wording were reversed to read conservative progressive I think I might be amenable to the concept, but I can’t shake the sense that most of the political adherents to this brand are more interested in preventing change through conservative institutions than they are in any form of progress. 

Repressive conservatism if you will.

Institutions are a confusing concept for me. For example, how it is that a church is an institution but women’s rights is a movement? Apparently any group whose mandate is to resist change is an institution but a group advocating for change is a movement, so institutions are inherently conservative and movements are suspiciously liberal. I guess you need a building and maybe a book and a Priestess to be an institution. I think women in Canada should start buying and repurposing flockless churches and then they can become an institution. A tax free institution. I’m not sure though how you come up with the priestess. Maybe get creative and establish a female seminary or madrasah with a curriculum that includes the study of evolution but excludes hating gays, raping alter boys, and whacking infidels.

But I think to get a feminine religion out of the starting blocks with a goal of becoming an institution it’s going to be necessary for someone to write a sacred text. Because apparently the whole seminary thing is dependant on having a book. Priests, Rabbis, Mullahs and Ministers all have a book. Joe Smith has a book and his has been accepted by huge swaths of Utah since  God spoke to Joe in 1827. To be fair, God didn’t speak to Joe. Joe spoke with Moroni who was the last prophet to write in the book. Moroni was the last of a series of prophets who lived on the American continent from around 2500 years before Christ up until around 400 years after Christ. Moroni was an angel when he and Joe spoke though and he basically turned Joe into the first American picker when he instructed him to dig up the golden tablets somewhere in New York. Under some hill I think.

I think I need to explain why Joe and his latter day book is important.

The book of Joe and the tablets is important because it demonstrates that God can still help with a book post electricity, so the intervention of the divine doesn’t have to be two thousand years ago to be legitimate enough to qualify for tax free institution status.

The prize at the end, is that this book and its study then bestows you with wisdom enough to dictate to the herd, (or flock) your specific Gods preferences regarding diet, dress, sexual behaviour and whom to hate. As an added bonus, the rest of the world needs to respect your rules for how to live because those rules are God given and therefore sacred.

Petty good gig if you can get it right?

So, we need a female bible. I think this shouldn’t be too difficult. Mother earth as divine with the emphasis on mother is as good a place to start as any. Gaia mixed with some Wiccan and a dash of the virgin Mary and I’m reasonably certain that the beginnings of the expression of femininity as a religion is at least possible.

I would recommend not including Fatima into the new text though. Even though she is one of four perfect women and would be a fine addition, my best guess is that Islam at this moment wouldn’t be all that receptive to appropriation of their book in whole or in part without express written consent.

Not to say some of the Christian sects or Orthodox Jewry will be thrilled either but the odds are that they won’t detonate bombs or shoot up one of the new female religious institutions to let you know they’re unhappy. 

On second thought, maybe leave Mary to the Christians. I think that eventually some mouth breather will see a female religion as a threat to their concept of established order. There’s really no point in providing them the handy excuse of being an instrument of Gods wrath aimed at those uppity bitches. 

But you need a book and a story of divine direction during the editing process. I’m not sure how to go about facilitating a face to face with God or an angel, but the good news is that previous contact would suggest God is relatively secretive about these meetings. There seems to be a pattern of one person getting the message and then passing that message along to everyone else. So given the narrative of established religions it seems reasonable that any communication with God is going to follow the same divine M.O.

One person contact, no cell phones or other recording devices and everyone else just needs faith in the messenger.

So, it’s doable in my opinion.

Then once the messenger acquires some believers those believers might even get their own one on one with the earth mother God. That’s generally how it works in the established religions and I don’t see any reason to mess with a proven game plan. The chosen ones who get the one on one then become prophets or apostles and most importantly, authors of the fiats of femininity.

Everyone else in the congregation just needs to have faith.

These fiats and their authors are very important. All the good religions possess a long list of commands and sanctions from God that spell out how the faithful will behave in this life. The ten commandments are a good example of Gods pragmatic side. Not murdering, or stealing are Gods wisdom that coincidentally serve to maintain law and order. Law and order in turn provides the framework for society and the advancement of the human race. I’m sure this is also just a coincidence but it does seem kind of odd that the people that talk with God get to be in charge afterward.

It appears that tablets are also a good thing. Moroni and Moses are great examples of tablets from God providing proof that the prophet is genuine and needs to be taken seriously.

Evidently an e-mail or a message on snap chat from God isn’t going to pass muster. That message might be spam or Russian trolls, so the new female prophets need a message from God and that message is best if it’s written in stone or etched into golden tablets so people know they aren’t dealing with fake news.

So now with instructional tablets in hand it’s time to get busy with the book. 

I’m not female and God hasn’t spoken to me in any way, shape or form so I’m aware that I’m not a candidate for contributing to this book. Also the only tablets I’ve ever received were from a pharmacist so I understand I don’t fit the criterion for contribution to this new feminine tome of sacredness.

But I’m keeping my fingers crossed that this book will include the gospel of Germain and the song of Simone.

Because if an instruction from God to men can make eating pork a sin for a huge percentage of the population then it shouldn’t be too much of a leap to believe that God might have some interest in providing divine guidance to feminine prophets. Prophets who coincidentally have basic female interests built into their psyche and their writings.

I would expect that a verse from the Song of Simone would read something like, ” And the Goddess spoke with Simone and Simone was led to understand that neither the female body nor the female mind was the property of any man.”

The planet would be a much better place in my opinion if female rights were considered sacred and challenging those rights was sacrilege. So hopefully the ladies get to work soon on their own book.