An excellent essay by Wendall Berry.

why religion is bad for Christ.

It is so easy to fall into the trap of thinking about the old days, the glory days. And, so hard to move ahead and make the future the real glory.

"Glory Days"; by Bruce Springsteen. Reprinted with permission.

Glory Days

I had a friend was a big baseball player
Back in high school
He could throw that speedball by you
Make you look like a fool boy
Saw him the other night at this roadside bar
I was walking in, he was walking out
We went back inside sat down had a few drinks
But all he kept talking about was

Glory days well they'll pass you by
Glory days in the wink of a young girl's eye
Glory days, glory days

Well there's a girl that lives up the block
Back in school she could turn all the boy's heads
Sometimes on a Friday I'll stop by
And have a few drinks after she put her kids to bed
Her and her husband Bobby well they split up
I guess it's two years gone by now
We just sit around talking about the old times,
She says when she feels like crying
She starts laughing thinking about

Glory days

My old man worked 20 years on the line
And they let him go
Now everywhere he goes out looking for work
They just tell him that he's too old
I was 9 nine years old and he was working at the
Metuchen ford plant assembly line
Now he just sits on a stool down at the legion hall
But I can tell what's on his mind

Glory days yeah goin back
Glory days aw he ain't never had
Glory days, glory days

Now I think I'm going down to the well tonight
And I'm going to drink till I get my fill
And I hope when I get old I don't sit around thinking about it
But I probably will
Yeah, just sitting back trying to recapture
A little of the glory of, well time slips away
And leaves you with nothing mister but
Boring stories of glory days

Glory days well they'll pass you by
Glory days in the wink of a young girl's eye
Glory days, glory days"

13 Sept. 2005

Poem: "Mennonites" by Julia Kasdorf, from What I Learned from my Mother © University of Pittsburgh Press. Reprinted with permission.

Mennonites

We keep our quilts in closets and do not dance.
We hoe thistles along fence rows for fear
we may not be perfect as our Heavenly Father.
We clean up his disasters. No one has to
call; we just show up in the wake of tornadoes
with hammers, after floods with buckets.
Like Jesus, the servant, we wash each other's feet
twice a year and eat the Lord's Supper,
afraid of sins hidden so deep in our organs
they could damn us unawares,
swallowing this bread, his body, this juice.
Growing up, we love the engravings in Martyrs Mirror:
men drowned like cats in burlap sacks,
the Catholic inquisitors,
the woman who handed a pear to her son,
her tongue screwed to the roof of her mouth
to keep her from singing hymns while she burned.
We love Catherine the Great and the rich tracts
she gave us in the Ukraine, bright green winter wheat,
the Cossacks who torched it, and Stalin,
who starved our cousins while wheat rotted
in granaries. We must love our enemies.
We must forgive as our sins are forgiven,
our great-uncle tells us, showing the chain
and ball in a cage whittled from one block of wood
while he was in prison for refusing to shoulder
a gun. He shows the clipping from 1916:
Mennonites are German milksops, too yellow to fight.
We love those Nazi soldiers who, like Moses,
led the last cattle cars rocking out of the Ukraine,
crammed with our parents—children then—
learning the names of Kansas, Saskatchewan, Paraguay.
This is why we cannot leave the beliefs
or what else would we be? why we eat
'til we're drunk on shoofly and moon pies and borscht.
We do not drink; we sing. Unaccompanied on Sundays,
those hymns in four parts, our voices lift with such force
that we lift, as chaff lifts toward God.

Received from Dennis Jones.

Sometimes when I reflect on all the beer I drink, I feel ashamed.
Then I look into the glass and think about the workers in the brewery
and all of their hopes and dreams. If I didn't drink this beer, they
might be out of work and their dreams would be shattered. I think,
"It is better to drink this beer and let their dreams come true than
be selfish and worry about my liver."

Babe Ruth


An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with
his fools.

Ernest Hemingway


When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.

Paul Hornung


24 hours in a day, 24 beers in a case. Coincidence?
I think not.

H.L. Mencken


When we drink, we get drunk. When we get drunk, we fall asleep. When
we fall asleep, we commit no sin. When we commit no sin, we go to
heaven. So, let's all get drunk and go to heaven!

George Bernard Shaw


Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

Benjamin Franklin


Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is
beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but
the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza.

Dave Barry


Beer: helping ugly people have sex since 3000 b.c.

W.C. Fields


Remember "I" before "E", except in Budweiser.

Professor Irwin Corey


To some it's a six-pack, to me it's a "support group." Salvation in a
can!

Leo Durocher


And the number one reason to drink beer......One night at Cheers, Cliff
Clavin explained the "Buffalo Theory" to his buddy, Norm...

"Well ya see, Norm, it's like this. A herd of buffalo can only move as
fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it is the
slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This
natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general
speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular
killing of the weakest members. In much the same way, the human brain
can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Excessive intake
of alcohol, as we know, kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks
the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular
consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the
brain a faster and more efficient machine! That's why you always feel
smarter after a few beers!"