My religious background

I AM now, though

I was born after the summer of Love, to a happy hippy. She reads about nature and various religous literature. She talks to her friends in her head, as a well-adjusted schizophrenic. (Her friends are mostly schizophrenic). You might want to call it telepathy, instead. Annette named me Jesse.

I was adopted at age 4 by the Tesharas, Peggy and Larry, a school administrator and a social worker. Heaven is a kind of library, and service to others is God's work. Teshara anagrams to 'as earth.'

My mom's sister is a Catholic nun (Dominican), and my mom goes to Mass every day, if she can. My dad became Catholic when I was young. His mom was into seances and Christian science, and his dad was a boxer and milkman. I think of God as a man of war, with the fighting spirit. As for milkmen, that's why I made the musical impulse purchase of The Dead Milkmen, whose album, Soul Rotation, especially, totally rocks, in my opinion. They also sing I Dream of Jesus (on Not Richard, but Dick), I am the Walrus, Jellyfish Heaven, I Hate You I Love You, Methodist Coloring Book, Now Everybody's Me, and God's Kid Brother.

I am not Methodist, but I do have a Godfather named Richard/Dick, and a kid brother. There was some story about Jellyfish gathering off or in the SF Bay awhile back, like they were having a pow-wow or something.

I went to St. Stephen's (the first martyr, stoned) grammar school and St. Ignatius (founder of the jesuits, a soldier) College Preparatory, both in San Francisco (St. Francis, communer with nature). I was an altar boy, and considered becoming a priest in high school. I went to Mass with my family every Sunday obligatorily, and was a sometime attender of the Newman (a Catholic cardinal, an ex-Anglican priest who had believed the Pope to be the Antichrist) Center in college. I took a theology class freshman year, where I wrote a Credo (3 parts: On God, Morality, and Human Nature) as a (newly self-described) agnostic, which can be defined as alternatively a) there is no way of knowing if God exists, or b)there is 50-50 evidence for God's existence. In college, I went to the round table introductions of the various religous perspectives, which I highly enjoyed. I also took a class in Anthropology of Religion.

I read the book, Native American spirituality, by chief Eagle Feather or something (he's a lawyer, I know that), a Lakota Sioux, and identified strongly with it, as a lover of Nature, who identifies more strongly with the "divine" away from the city. To this day, though, I have never taken part in any Native American rituals, which I would sometime like to do.

I have read much of the bible, if not all of it (I'm not sure if I have or not); that is to say, I think I have. In any case, I don't remember it all. I also attended a few Buddhist prayer meetings. I both respect that their path to happiness can work, and resent that I should have to take any path at all, besides "my own."

This blog is the current chapter in my spiritual evolution. I'm on a "God kick" as they say.

By the way, mr. Adi Da, I'm an Aith level adept, lol.