Pretentious Apes

Christmas was always a good time at Da Baa. The banter tended to be light-hearted and the mood was more jolly than normal. The bartenders were happy because the tips flowed freely. The lights and the crowds made for a festive feeling for all.

This was definitely not a place of worship however. The crude jokes, the singing of lyrics from goofy songs, and of course the constant razzing of each other continued as normal. Even the teetotalers got totaled. "Worship the throne" would result for some of them.

Mel pointed a girl out to Philbert. "She is a magnet girl, I was attracted to her until she turned around," Mel said.

"Careful asshole, that’s my sister" Philbert replied. She was not his sister but it was good for a laugh.

Philbert noticed a lapel button that read "Jesus would kick the shit out of you."

Overheard comments were also entertaining:

"I thought I smelled pussy" when a buddy walked in.

"Pussy!" "Yep, I get that a lot"

"I’m still warm to the touch" in response to "How are ya doin."

"I’m on a whiskey diet. I’ve lost three days already."

"There’s too much blood in my alcohol."

The Christmas music was the normal fare of songs about Santa and the winter wonderland. Not much about the meaning of the holiday though.

---

Passant started right up as soon as Philbert entered the shop.

"Good night at Da Baa eh?" Passant said with slurred speech.

"Yep."

"It is an odd thing for me to witness," Passant said.

"How so?"

"You humans get together to celebrate but there is not the first mention of what you are celebrating," Passant said.

"Well, there is a good reason for that. Lucy forbids talk about religion in the bar. It causes too many heated arguments," Philbert explained.

"True, but still very sad that what should be a unifying time can become so divisive."

"Well opinions are like assholes, everyone has one," Philbert observed.

"Heh, heh, dimmy.

Take the story of the Three Wise men for example. The verses say that they brought gifts of gold, myrrh and frankincense, worldly things but with much symbology.

What the wise men actually brought was wisdom. They had seen signs, and believed that this child represented hope for mankind. The wise men were the sages, the philosophers and scholars determined to impart The Graces to the child.

Early humans worshiped all manner of idols and gods. There was animal and human sacrifice. There was slavery and oppression by the strong. They basically lived by the Old Wiring. The wise men could see that this system did not work. They saw that living by the Graces did work.

The Graces are a hard sell to people who are needy and suffering however.

They needed a messenger, a charismatic symbol, one who could spread the message of the Graces. Jesus was that messenger. He concentrated the Graces into a single symbol, God is Love, Love is the Graces.

"Love, Hope, Faith, of these let Love abide," was the message.

- Love encompassed all of The Graces in one Word.

- Hope is the promise that if we live by The Graces we will thrive.

- Faith is the directive to follow The Graces.

Remember that we Fen were there. What we saw does not match the story told today in churches around the world.

How the Three Wise Men found Jesus is a story for another time but they did select him as the messenger for The Graces. The Wise Men visited Jesus in his childhood. They schooled him. They brought gifts to help him thrive. They defended him from those without virtue.

With their help, Jesus became a very special human being indeed. He was a perfect physical specimen. His face was calm and attractive. His voice was mellifluous and commanded attentiveness. His walk and body language was graceful. He was the ultimate charismatic personality. Wherever he walked eyes would follow and crowds would accumulate and listen.

He saw the suffering and felt the pain of others. He saw the dishonesty and greed of the kings. He understood that we are all "Children of God". His message was clear and concise - if you follow these teachings you will thrive. "Seek and ye shall find."

He had humility. He did not ask for the worship of him, but rather to worship the Graces. To Jesus, the Graces were the word of God.

Soon the kings and the wealthy saw the power and the danger in his message. Honesty, empathy, edification, modesty, charity, patience, and generosity are ideas that once heard cannot be forgotten by the virtuous. The wealthy and the kings were not virtuous. They were jealous of Jesus and fearful of his words for good reason. The Graces cannot be forgotten once heard, but they can be obscured, buried, and amended.

The kings and the wealthy maintained their power with violence, deception, thievery through taxes, and domination of the essentials of life.

The death of Jesus was a necessary political assassination by the kings to preserve their power.

Jesus, on the cross said "Father why have you forsaken me?" and "Forgive them for they know not what they do." God did not save Jesus from his suffering on the cross. What message does that send?

The message was clear to his followers:

- That those who put Jesus on the cross should be forgiven because they had been corrupted by the power of the kings and the forces of the Old Wiring.

- That God will not intervene in our suffering. If so, then we would have no reason to live by The Graces, we would be no more than trained animals. We must suffer for our transgressions to learn.

The resurrection of Jesus was not of a physical body. It was the resurrection of his message. The kings needed to assassinate the message as well.

The scribes at that time were agents of the kings. The message of Jesus was filtered with the desires of the kings and the wealthy. When written the kings added self-serving text to the words of Jesus.

They wrote that the man, Jesus, to be a God, which allowed them, as men, to themselves be of God, to be agents of God.

They wrote that the lands and resources are the domain of the kings in the name of God.

The kings also needed servants and slaves. The scribes wrote of servitude to the kings as equal to the servitude to God and the Graces. This was a big deal, and the most destructive corruption of the words of Jesus.

Jesus spoke of the inspiration to serve as coming from God. But service to The Graces does not include serving the needs and wants of the kings. This message was corrupted as well.

The Graces of Education and Understanding were dangerous to the power of the kings and needed to be corrupted. The kings needed ignorance.

The Grace of Generosity was dangerous to the kings and the money-changers. They needed more than their share of resources. "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s." gave the kings the God given right to take what they wanted.

"Give and be rewarded ten-fold" became "Give to the church and be rewarded ten-fold."

The Grace of Modesty was incompatible with the desires of the kings. Jesus abhorred the opulence of the kings and the priests in their majestic castles and churches. He said "It is easier for a cable to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God". This was obscured by changing the word ‘cable’ which was a thick rope, to ‘camel’ which makes no sense.

But the scribes were not fools. They were the most educated and capable people of the time. Despite the pressure to corrupt the message of Jesus, they managed to embed The Graces into their writings. These writings were later interpreted and incorporated into the early Bibles.

The early churches, still mostly teaching the message of Jesus, were also a threat to the kings and their wealth. The wealthy and powerful needed control of the churches as well. It was the kings that ordered the translations and content of the story of Jesus.

The faith in the teachings of Jesus was supplanted by blind faith in the divinity of the church and the kings. The humility and modesty of Jesus and his followers was sullied by the greed, self-service and opulence of the kings and the church. The corruption was complete and continues to this day.

Jesus, Muhammad, and the Buddha all walked with the down-trodden, the sick, and the poor, including the thieves and prostitutes. They had no worldly possessions. Their sermons were spoken on hillsides and in homes, not in opulent cathedrals. They were the givers.

All of our kings, church leaders, government leaders and business leaders wallow in wealth and opulence and power. They walk with the wealthy, they lust for gold and power over others. They are the takers.

Can you think of a single prominent voice in the church, business or government today that lives modestly?

The message was buried. The Graces were not being taught or followed by the church. For the most part, humans continued with The Old Wiring," Passant finished with the sound of a deep exhale.

"Well, lah-di-dah Passant. That’s the way of the world isn’t it? We need strong leaders to keep us from falling into anarchy. The powerful have strong egos. How do you get around that smarty-pants?" Philbert said mockingly.

"Jesus would smack the shit out of you for that, puffy.

Of the thousands of belief systems in human history, why do you think that these particular religions survived for thousands of years? Was it the sages and philosophers? Was it the charismatic founders? Was it the churches? Was it the kings and the wealthy?

So boy, tell me why," Passant challenged.

"Look, I never much believed in any of these religions so you are asking the wrong person," Philbert replied.

"You must need your little nap, baby boy. You are not thinking. Bye bye," Passant said with the sound of an airlock sealing.

Philbert was a science guy. All of this talk about God and religion was a distasteful distraction to him. Objective, observable reality was all that mattered to him.

"But still, I have this feeling nagging at me," he thought as he was falling asleep.

---

Wednesday afternoon was a favorite time for Philbert at Da Baa. The group was completely different from the nights and the Christmas season made it even more enjoyable. The patrons brought silly gifts, bought each other drinks and made generous offerings. There were the hats, costumes, lights and decorations. There was an unusual level of playfulness and good humor.

Dichotomy was the word that Philbert used to describe Da Baa patrons. There were the smart and dignified people. There were bone-headed morons.

There were the witches, the Women God worshipers, the pagans, the Druids and the tattooed. Philbert was entertained at the irony of these women singing Christmas songs.

There were the professional women blowing off the pressures of the day. They spoke of the pressure from the company to deceptively market their product.

Wiley was appropriately named. He was a clever and skilled pool player. He was also a pool shark. He had the quickest wit of anyone Philbert had known.

The landlord complained how hard it was to keep responsible tenants.

There was the group of retired boys, permitted by their wives to have Wednesday afternoon at the Baa.

There was the cowboy and his wife that talked of the difficulty in managing a farm.

There was the couple who only stayed if there were no foreigners in the Baa.

A conversation occasionally turned to aliens and UFOs and government conspiracies, hidden agendas, blah, blah. Most everybody had their stories.

Lou piped up with "Hey, It’s fun to think about but it is an absurdity in the real world. Do the math people! The nearest sun to us is Proxima Centauri, about 4.24 light-years (25 trillion miles) away.

Let’s say that a typical flying saucer would weigh about as much as one of our airliners. Using E = mc², the energy required to make the trip in five years would be equivalent to converting about 160 metric tons of mass directly into energy, at 100% efficiency, which no real process achieves.

And space ain’t empty dudes. Hitting a grain of sand would be like a tactical nuclear weapon going off at that speed.

That an advanced civilization would spend its time and resources buzzing cornfields and hovering over highways, rather than announcing itself to us asks us to believe not just in advanced physics, but in a bizarre set of priorities as well. They would be much more likely to send tiny probes, perhaps too small for us to see.

If flying saucers and little gray men are real then it is much more likely that they are from right here on good old Earth.

But Hell, we don’t even accept human beings of another color as brothers, what makes you think that we would accept a race with green skin or tentacles? It would not be long before the shooting would start."

So, that’s my diatribe for the night. I need another beer and some music on the juke box."

That ended the conversation about aliens. Philbert giggled to himself at Lou’s ability to terminate stupid conversations with just a few well-chosen words. He had come to Da Baa for a distraction, but there was that nagging feeling again. Something was percolating in his head.

Here in this pool hall was the entire spectrum of humanity. Everyone struggling to deal with life in one way or another. Under it all was the battle between the Old Wiring and the Graces.

Dichotomy! Yes! There was smart and stupid comments from the same person. One guy was out of control with alcohol but dependable and responsible at work. The racist couple were the most generous and helpful people that you would ever meet. There was the sexist womanizer who, out of love, had given his wife and children everything that they could ever want. There was the woman tattooed with devil symbols who quoted bible verses. There was the well educated man who believed that we faked the moon landing. There was the high school dropout who used matrix math for his pool game strategy.

"There it is!" Philbert exclaimed to himself.

He bade everyone a good afternoon and went home.

---

"OK Passant, I think that I’ve got the gist of it. Humans have what might be called a spiritual genome. Our free will gives us the opportunity to choose between the Old Wiring and The Graces. Most of us see the value in it. But when we struggle or suffer the Old Wiring comes back to haunt us.

When we are honest, we are rewarded with trust. When we give to those in need, we receive when we are in need. When we live modestly, we take less from others. We thrive when we live by the Graces. As you said, once heard The Graces cannot be forgotten," Philbert said.

"But you humans are weak, myopic and are tempted by wealth and power. Humility gives way to superiority. It is all too easy for you to fall from grace when you suffer.

The religions that survived the ages are the ones that did not allow the kings to obscure The Graces in dogma. Wise and clever scribes managed to keep the meaning of The Graces in the documents and storied traditions of the religions despite the demands of the kings and wealthy.

By extension, the cultures that thrived were those that best observed the underlying meaning of the stories. The cultures that died allowed The Graces to be forgotten.

Bring up any religion and you will hear what the kings want you to hear.

Think about the first thing that comes to mind when Buddhism is mentioned. It will likely be the word reincarnation, but the Buddha’s enlightenment was about understanding the causes of suffering and its effects.

Mention Islam and the word jihad will come up. But Muhammad’s life was dedicated to peace through honesty, mutual respect and the establishment of a diverse society.

What do you hear when Christianity is brought up? The words of the kings will come first: Abundance theology, the Promised Land, giving to the church and blather about the devil and hard work. The Graces, spoken of by Jesus and the wise men, will seldom be mentioned," Passant ended the sermon with a sigh.

"That is all fine, but good people suffer, babies die, people are swept away by floods and oppressed by ugly rulers. Where is your God for them?" Philbert challenged.

"Have faith my boy, we will get to that. But isn’t that enough reality for one day? Bye bye," Passant said with the sound of whoopee cushion out-gassing.