#estamo

There is a Quaker saying: If God has ever spoken, then God has never stopped speaking.

There has never been a world where human subjectivity does not fundamentally shape spirituality. If any spirituality has ever had any meaning or power or use, then it has never been reliant on spirituality being “pure” of human influence. So much of religion has sought to overcome the divide between the lover (the worshipper) and the beloved (the Divine); so why are we shocked that religion itself emerges from that unity?

What would it look like to be conscious and self-possessed in our spirituality? To be invigorated by the active role we all could take in our spiritual choices? To sing the glory of that choice itself, to engage with doubt and stories, to be honest about what we need from our cultures and our communities and ourselves? What if the human body and mind is a spiritually valid source of faith?

Read Part Two of How to have a hot gay love affair with God on substack.

We can say that there are two generalized origins commonly ascribed to religions. Either they are divinely inspired, and its existential power, authority, and meaning comes from its objective, extra-human origins; or, they are entirely arbitrary human inventions and so lack existential power, authority, or meaning.

For Estamovojo, the Divine reaches down at the same time humans reach up, and religion emerges in the space where our fingers brush. We are co-creators. There are parts that come more from the Divine encounters, and others that come more from human invention. But all of it is sacred.

So religion, and gods, are always attentive to the unique needs of both the individual and their culture/s. This is not an accident. It is not due to some corruption or failing on the part of either humans or the Divine to properly communicate the “true religion.” Religion uses symbols and metaphors that are familiar to us so that we understand how intimate the Divine is with every individual part of the world.

If we could ask the cosmos what the meaning of life is, It wouldn’t understand the question. It’s like asking someone what the point of breathing is— as if it needs justification! Existence is the point of existence. Every grain of sand, every breeze, every cough, every atom, every pointless forgotten little void of the universe exists in the exact same moment as the Big Bang and final heat death. Life is neither meaningless or meaningful; it is both. “Meaning” is meaningless and significance is insignificant. All the cosmos knows is that It is many, It is one, and It enjoys this. To suggest that the meaning of life requires an explanation, is to suggest that existence needs to be justified. That it is anything other than priceless. So the cosmos itself is our benevolent force. It moves us from frustrated desire to existential resolution and relief, and It does this through being so absolute and equal that our desire for meaning is rendered absurd. Our desire was sated the minute we started to be; it has always been sated; we have already been saved, and we need only remember.

Estado deve 4 milhões de euros por utilizar prisão de Lisboa

A 30 de Junho deste ano, o Estado devia 4,1 milhões de euros à Estamo – Participações Imobiliárias. Esta dívida refere-se ao não pagamento de uma compensação de 202 mil euros por mês que é devida ao Estabelecimento Prisional de Lisboa (EPL), porque o Estado o continua a utilizar, mesmo depois de ter alienado o imóvel em 2006 por 62,3 milhões de euros.

Para além disso, no contrato-promessa…