with apologies to Jiddu Krishnamurti…

That great genius heretic Joseph Campbell summed it up best when he said, "The wicked thing about both the little and the great 'collective faiths', prehistoric and historic, is that they all, without exception, pretend to hold encompassed in their ritualized mythologies all of the truth ever to be known.

"They are therefore cursed, and they curse all who accept them, with what I shall call the 'error of the found truth,' or, in mythological language, the sin against the Holy Ghost.

"They set up against the revelations of the spirit the barriers of their own petrified belief, and, therefore, within the ban of their control, mythology, as they shape it, serves the end only of binding potential individuals to whatever system of sentiments may have seemed to the shapers of the past (now sanctified as saints, sages, ancestors or even gods) to be appropriate to their concept of a great society."

…Of course, it must be noted that there are millions who believe in a gentle form of organized religion, a tolerant, forgiving Christian God, persons who are warm and open minded and who do not ever attempt to shove their beliefs down anyone's throat. They are kind and selfless and practice their beliefs quietly, tenderly, in their own nontoxic way. This is glorious and good. This is not the slightest problem. This is, in fact, to be encouraged.

But, sadly, these people are strongly overshadowed, publicly overpowered, by the far more outspoken and well-organized religious fire breathers who attempt to set the spiritual agenda for America and delineate what actions we can take and what kind of sex we can have and whom we can and cannot love. It is these karmically scrunched people whom we are now working to save. And it is the call of any true patriotic, open-minded American to come to the aid of the misinformed and the lost. You know who you are.