Bread

If you consider yourself a person who can compose music, how many types of music do you fully understand in your thoughts?

Most of you know there are only two types of music - music that has already been written/composed/performed and music that has not yet been written/composed/performed.

Thus, when a person asks you what kind of music you write/compose, do you say new music or refer to a "genre" of music that already exists?

The walk of life.

If the rapids or waterfall of a small river creates sounds that if a person could hear would call lyrical music, what are the sounds called if no person has ever heard the rapids or waterfall in the moment?

The quality of life.

Atmospheric pressure changes in the form of wind blow the trees around in the front yard today.

All over the world, we establish comfortable comparisons of ourselves to our surroundings.  We want to know that what we do and who we are provide a strong sense of self in the moment.

This morning, I overheard a group of people gathered in a restaurant to talk about their religious beliefs - all of the people were establishing common ground on which to stand and compare themselves and their understanding of religious doctrine to that of others.

I was raised to read and compare my local religion to that of others so I could see that misinterpretation of religious text is common practice.  In other words, don't put too much weight on one person's reading of text - pitfalls await you, such as phrases taken out of context, without historical information about the local conditions the religious writers faced, including their education which determined their "natural" word / idea order.

We have grown accustomed to reading ancient text translated into modern languages because few of us have time to study ancient languages and ancient history associated with the modernised text that holds our interest.

Should we depend on educated interpreters to tell us what the text really meant at the time it was written, or trust our feelings/instincts to apply a personal interpretation of ancient text, holy and/or secular, to our lives?

After being out in the hot sun this morning, on the road and in neighbourhoods, performing my job duty as a crew leader assistant for the decennial census, I returned home around lunchtime today to find a scholarly book or two from my college days to see if I could put my earlier observations / thoughts into historical perspective.

I found one of the two books I was looking for, "Social Aspects of Early Christianity, Second Edition" by Abraham J. Malherbe. [The other, a compilation of the writings of Jesus from "books" not included in the Bible, is hiding from me right now.]

Socialising.  Our M.O.

Religion may occupy the majority of your moments or serve as an undercurrent in your daily activities.  You may not include any religious thoughts or practice in what you do.

However, we all socialise.

Very few of us till the soil, grow grain, knead dough and bake our own bread.  We primarily depend on social networks to put bread in our diets.

That's all there is to life, isn't it?  Socialising (or networking), that is.

When you see that religion is a specific form of socialising, then you see both why treating people equally is important and that how we layer our socialising is up to our individual choices, IF you want a loaf of bread readily available at a reasonable price, with all the complex social interaction and infrastructure that it takes to make inexpensive bread universally available.

What you do in the moment is your lifestyle.  You decide what you do.  You also determine if sounds are music and whether to apply a category to the music you hear.

When you think about what you're going to do in the next moment, consider the lives of others outside of your local lifestyle.  What they do, even if it contradicts your normal lifestyle habits, may add a new kind of music to your ears.  Just because others don't conform to your beliefs doesn't mean they can't provide positive contributions to your life (see how the twists and turns of words like "not" in a sentence can turn you in a positive direction?).

For instance, if you call yourself a Christian, does it matter to you if the nutritious bread you buy at the corner market was made by and from a set of people that includes Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, atheists and others whose religious affiliation you can't identify?  Should it matter as long as the social network is intact and working well for all involved?  That is, as long as people in the network live primarily positive lifestyles?  Do you need to know whether the lifestyles of people in the food/market chain that puts bread on your table are positive or negative in relation to yours?

A piece of toast for breakfast is more than the heated bread that you put in your mouth.