Taxes and prayers

I went to get the taxes done this morning, but the place was having computer problems so I have to reschedule. No big deal.

While I had the time, I stopped for a little meditation break at the park in Hamilton at the Rabbit River. It's a nice spot with the dam on one side and the old wooden railroad bridge on the other. As I was relaxing, watching the big snowflakes fall, a swan paddled up the river and stopped to dive under the wooden bridge. As it dove into the cold water for a snack, its feet stuck straight up in the air and kept paddling. Can you see those orange flippers just spinning in the air? The scene was comic and cosmic at the same time. A spiritually funny moment.

You see, the swan is part of a symbol for some Vedanta societies, the spiritual path I have been following for almost two decades. So I was sharing a laugh with an image that Ramakrishna and Vivekananda must have smiled at, too.

It had reminded me that I was going to write a rant here about The Holland Sentinel's Sunday editorial on prayer. I'll keep the rant short.

The editorial was praising the community for starting public meetings with a prayer. This practice floored me when I started covering meetings here a million years ago -- what happened to the separation of church and state?

Well, I've come to accept the practice despite my personal disagreement with it, though I still get ruffled by what usually closes the prayer. You see, most often the prayer starts with a general thanks for existence and the bounties of the community -- that's OK -- but it almost always ends with the phrase, "In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ ..."

That's what gets me. It just excluded non-Christians and the State should not do that. I always figured that if I was not a reporter or editor, and that this action wouldn't get me fired, I'd write a letter and stand up in the meeting to ask the boards not to exclude me from the prayer.

That's what has always been my turn-off to the "Big Three" religions -- they are exclusionary. They say to believe in them or else. You must, for example, believe Jesus is the only way to salvation, period. Islam and Judaism are just as exclusive. They spend lots of timing belittling other beliefs and condemning others. Muslims destroyed pagan temples just as Christian missionaries today rip away local cultures and beliefs in Asia and Latin America.

So, that's what set me on my spiritual path to chuckle about swans sticking their feet in the air on a cold, snowy morning when I should have been having my taxes done.

Thought: Consider the "Family Guy" episode when Peter received an unexpected bonus, so he exclaimed, "Thank you, Jesus!" Next frame, you see Jesus lean over the Krishna and say, "Oh, that was you who did that! I'm so sorry." And Krishna responds, "That's OK. It happens all the time."