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| Woke Frankly |
Addressing the presiding officer, Franklin said, "Our prayers were heard, sir, and they were graciously answered... How has it happened, sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of Lights to illuminate our understandings?"
And on that note, they all agreed to bow their heads before every session in silence honoring a higher power. Period! No Jesus, no Deuteronomy, and most definitely, no Blasphemy!
These men were followers of the "Age of Enlightenment," which the USA was to be a beacon, with beliefs like those of the French philosopher, Denis Diderot, who once said "a Deist is someone who hasn't lived long enough to become an atheist." (Diderot was a close friend of our beloved Benjamin Franklin.)
It is wrong for today's Extremist Christofascist to say the USA was founded on Jesus. It wasn't. Franklin's father was a Puritan priest, a practice Franklin left as a young man. In his life, Franklin went from a Calvinist to a Deist. "I believe," Frankly wrote at the age of twenty-two, " there is one Supreme, most perfect being." Sixty-two years later, he wrote that although he harbored "some doubts" as to Jesus' divinity, he believed "in one God, the creator of the universe...who governs by his Providence. He further wrote: "the most acceptable service we render to Him is doing good to his other children."
Now, to this Buddhist who believes in the Mystic Law, anytime I hear the word "providence," I think of the universal Mystic Law that Nichiren Daishonin wrote about over 700 years ago in Japan. The law of the universe. Hmmmm, I guess the USA is a Buddhist country after all, founded on the law of "Light" and "Providence": The Mystic Law.
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Now for my dream.
So you all know about how I recently lost my best friend. I wrote about it a few days ago in my Don MaClaren's Not Dead... post. Well, he came to me in a dream the other night. It was one of those dreams like I had the night my mother died and I dreamed she leaned over me and kissed me good bye.
In my recent dream, Don and I were in the hotel room in Chelsea New York we once stayed in for a weekend of fun and drinking. He said he was tired and wanted to go to sleep. Before I could answer, I sensed there was someone on the front porch of the old house I lived in when I was around nine years old. I left the room and there were two people snooping around the porch.
Next thing I know, as dreams go, one of the people on my porch is in the room with me. He's got long hair, well built, and he starts pitching a fancy imported beer I should try. He has samples with him. I questioned him about how he got in, he lies. I know he is lying, but I am afraid of him, very afraid. "Where is the other guy that was on the porch with?" I ask.
"What guy," he answers, handing me a beer.
"I no longer drink," I say, "thanks anyways. I'll pass."
Suddenly, I am back in the room where I left Don, he isn't there. He has walked to the room across the hall. It's my old bedroom where we lived when I was thirteen. I open the door. Don is there on the floor, and there are several Japanese futon's around him. He motions for me to take one.
"I not tired yet," I say.
"It's here when you are ready," he says.
"I'm not ready!"
End of Dream.
Wow, I'll be analyzing this dream for a longtime, but it's obvious Don is on the other side with a room ready for me. The man with the beer, death himself, enticing me to have a drink. The drink I am not ready to take. The drink of death.
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| The Daishonin Has Risen |
And the two people on the porch?
As we see, one was death, and the other?
I'm not sure, but the next evening, my neighbor showed me video footage from his security cameras of a man trying to break into my patio, which I had locked from the inside -- something I rarely do. I looked at the timestamp of the video footage, 1:15am, around the time I was dreaming of Don, Beer, and people on my porch.
It's obvious death was at my door, and Don was there to greet me. And the man I couldn't see? The living man trying to get into my house. Maybe, the criminal who breaks in my house and kills me in another reality. The reality I have avoided to write another day.
Esoteric.
~~ Eso Terry
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| "What am I doing here?... Heck, what are any of us doing here?" |
