Well, I was going to write about fish pie, but the cartoon on the cover of Charlie Hebdo and the resulting clash of literary and religious swords after its publication made me think about how these differences between so many people could be resolved.
And I was thinking that when mama and papa have a dinner party, there are all kinds of people around the table, all kinds of belief systems and often there is lively discourse about religion, politics, and so on and so I thought, why don’t the various countries plan a dinner at which there is a Catholic, a Protestant, a Jew, a Palestinian, an Islamic cleric, a satirical cartoonist, a Lutheran, a Unitarian, a Zen master, and so on—you get what I’m saying, the guest list is varied, so to speak—and all are attending this magnificent dinner in formal dress. You would no more speak out against any of those religions at a dinner where guests are expected to be civil, to listen to their dinner partners, and to be open to all ideas that come up during this event.
It would certainly be interesting, to say the least. I’d be there for sure as the token kitty who walks around everyone’s ankles, putting everyone at ease, and I think we just might come up with some new solutions to these hateful problems that come from believing that one’s god is the only god or one’s faith is the only faith and should be followed by everyone else.
Mama is thinking long and hard about the new cartoon of Muhammed crying, with “All is forgiven” over his image. The cartoonist says that he wanted to reach out, to create an image that was not satirical at all but instead more human but this cartoon has incited even more hatred and offense among the Islamists.
Mama is feeling that certain lines should really not be crossed where religion is concerned, even though she is not religious in any formal way. To purposely offend with racist graffiti or offensive images is indeed questionable, and perhaps there is not an answer, but to kill because of having published satire is against all laws of humanity.
A young student was arrested and is being flogged 1000 times in Egypt because of his blog that opened discussion about religions. This is another kind of crime that is unsupportable to mama. And Assad, who criticized the killing of the cartoonists, has, himself, sanctioned the killing of 200,000 Syrians when the revolt against his family’s rule began in 2011.
Hypocrites are not mama’s favorite kind of people and she considers many religious beliefs to be hypocrisy.
And is my world, your world, our world headed toward so much cruelty and suppression that the lines between right and wrong, good and evil will become too fine to interpret and there will be punishment for any action not in keeping with supressive religious tenets?
This kitty really is pondering these things, but sometimes, I just want to go out in my garden and breathe deeply the clean air of objectivity. Not easy.
And at the dinner party, what would you feed all those different people anyway—they all have different requirements! Exhausting…
Yeah, and I can’t have gluten, haha….
Good question. What would you feed all those people? One would be allergic to wheat, another to chicken, one would be a vegetarian, one would not eat any vegetable …. Quite a variety of tastes, but still we figure no one would go home hungry. Unless he is allergic to food.
Well, no one goes hungry here, that’s for sure. And think of the religious eating habits: no pork for one, no alcohol for another and so on…
It seems like what should be the simplest of things are things we as a society have made incredibly difficult- sigh…
Noodle and crew
Yes, living in harmony should not take this much effort, but it is very hard to get into a mind that wishes to blow itself up along with others.