#non-secular

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Well it's been a week. Not a bad week. Not an exhausting week. But certainly a full week as we live each day through our personal lives, our professional lives, this Norman Rockwell Christmastime, and this Advent season that's moving step by step to a celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ.

It's not quite a juggling act. For sure it's a supreme act of will to integrate each facet of the season into a singular experience. Certainly there's no way to describe the week without risking reducing it to the one piece of the puzzle I'm describing just then.

For example, we started in on "Home Alone" last Sunday night, continued it Monday night, finished it Tuesday night.

For sure there's some of the funniest laughs ever in there along with some of the sweetest moments. But that music, though. You know what I mean? "Somewhere In My Memory"??? It drives straight to the heart of the season and draws it out all around us like a warm blanket.

Monday was also part one of Kimmer's oral exams for her doctoral program, part one taking up five hours, and part two on Tuesday taking another five hours.

Monday was also post office day for me to make sure my thoughts about the postage I was about to deploy across forty-some Christmas cards was gonna be right. By the way, each time I go to a post office at this time of year I'm reminded of going to the Magnolia post office with my mom when I was a child and the central lesson you learn from that experience is don't go to the post office in December. The lines are crazy with people and the packages of every size they want to send out into the world.

Maybe the lines seemed atrocious at the time because I was small. Maybe my expectations have changed. Maybe I'm just more chill than my childhood self. I don't mind lines anymore. As an adult I never had that childhood outrage at those people and all their packages. 😉

On Tuesday I mailed out the International Christmas cards, about ten of them. On Wednesday around noon I mailed out the domestic ones, about thirty-two of them. I actually assembled the thirty-two the night before.

Assembled?

Yeah. A card with handwritten message. A Christmas letter folded in thirds then in half inserted into the card then the card slipped into the envelope. Then an address label affixed. Then the return address label. Then the stamp. Then moisten the back flap and close it. Then affix a Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas seal in the center where the flap attaches to the body of the envelope.

So yeah. Assembled.

I actually began the process Wednesday night and finished it kind of in the dark Wednesday morning after we lost power at 4AM. I finished the work under a single USB powered light balanced above the dining room table.

On Wednesday, too, I visited the grave site of an old Bible school teacher I had as a child and with whom I maintained a connection as an adult. So much so that even though she passed away in 1994, I still visit the grave site each year with a card and a poinsettia.

Wednesday night we start in on Elf. Wednesday night we also read the Christmas cards we received so far whilst we sit up in bed.

Thursday night we attend the Christmas concert at Linzy's old high school, Archbishop Murphy High School. The experience is a lovely and lively combination of secular and non-secular music that provides the opportunity to catch up with Linzy's former band director and his wife along with Linzy's former choir director. ☺️

Later that night we enthusiastically indulge the Veronica Mars season one Christmas episode titled "An Echolls Family Christmas". Definitely not your typical nor traditional Christmas story. 🤔🤯😁

Friday night we finish Elf. Saturday night we start Christmas with the Kranks. Friday and Saturday I also take down the fall decorations adorning our tree along with our living room and dining room, making the space ready for the official Christmas decorating Kimmer has in mind as she slips out of doctoral mode and charting mode during these last weeks, these last days of 2025. Speaking of which, Friday and Saturday we also back 'n forth with friends about when we're gonna hang out this season: their place on New Year's Eve. ☺️

Saturday, we're strategizing some hand-made gifts for those deareset to us. I'm also catching up on the Advent readings running through Psalm, Matthew, Isaiah, Matthew, Isaiah, and John. It's narrative in a nut shell that bounces between prophecy, death, and birth, never allowing context to be lost in the celebration toward which we approach.

And so on.

Of course I can only write about these experiences sequentially when, in fact, they are bundled threads moving through each moment of each hour of each day simultaneously.

Everything.

Everywhere.

All at once.

That's very much on point for the season we're experiencing.

And the week upon which we embark.

.

Non-secular monk?Should I consider the lifestyle of a non-secular gnostic monk? . I already eat mostly beans, brown rice and lentils - unless I'm cooking for others. I already don't eat much meat, so going full vegetarian might be fairly easy. I already spend a lot of time alone. I already barely touch alcohol. I already read a lot and do a lot of meditative calisthenic-style exercises. I already have a deep interest in helping both the community and the world. I already see anger and rage as bad things and care passionately about promoting world peace and universal acceptance. I already have a growing hatred of money and wealth and how it owns both me and how it corrupts this world, and all it touches. I already have a disdain for ego and boastful pride in both myself and others. And I already have a strong sense of right and wrong (compared to most adults who seem to have lost that same sense of righteousness that they had at under 18. - Life seems to have beaten it out of them.) . I am already well beyond halfway towards a non-secular gnostic monk lifestyle anyway.

There are only a few more boxes to tick!

Not having sex is pretty much enforced upon me by circumstance anyway. So embracing celibacy rather than having celibacy thrust upon me would be super simple.- I just have to choose to "just go with it", rather than oppose it. The hard part would be quitting masturbation, as I have a decent sex drive for my age. But I am very stubborn, So, I could probably do it if I chose to. . Although I know god exists, . (It is not really "faith",

it is more of a "familiarity invites contempt" situation,

god is like the postman or an annoying traffic warden 'fact of life' to me

- that's why I use a small 'g',

I have enough familiarity with god to feel nothing but contempt for god,)

New Post has been published on http://www.therakyatpost.com/news/2014/06/22/mca-gerakan-must-demand-retraction-non-secular-remarks/

'MCA, Gerakan must demand retraction of non-secular remarks'

KUALA LUMPUR, June 22:

DAP adviser and veteran lawmaker Lim Kit Siang today urged MCA and Gerakan to be more aggressive. He wanted them to demand a retraction of the statement made by a minister recently that Malaysia was not a secular state.

Lim said that they should not be satisfied that Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Jamil Khir Baharom’s remarks were his personal views.

Instead, MCA and Gerakan, together with other Barisan Nasional component parties, must demand for a BN Supreme Council emergency meeting to clear the air over the matter once and for all.

“The excuse that a minister is giving his ‘personal opinion’ might be used if the minister is speaking outside Parliament, but it is completely unacceptable when a minister makes a speech or a statement in Parliament.

“There is no such thing as ‘personal views’ when a minister speaks in Parliament, whether in speeches or in replies to parliamentary questions.

“Whatever the minister speaks in Parliament is in his official capacity on behalf of the Barisan Nasional Cabinet, which binds all ministers under the doctrine of collective ministerial responsibility,” Lim posted on his blog today.

He trained his guns on MCA president Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai and Gerakan president Datuk Mah Siew Keong, citing the duo’s recent response to Jamil Khir as mere “political evasion”.

“It is just not good enough for the MCA president to dismiss Jamil Khir’s parliamentary statement that Malaysia is not a secular state as ‘merely his personal view’, arguing that Malaysia’s position as a secular state was clearly defined in the Federal Constitution ‘drafted to safeguard the rights of not only one race and religion, but of all’.

“Gerakan’s suggestion of a ‘special bipartisan committee’ to resolve the ‘varying views on the secular or Islamic state issue’ is another classic case of political evasion, which also puts the cart before the horse.

“The first thing that must be done is to get back to the basics, to restore the original status of Malaysia as a secular state, as stipulated by the original constitutional provisions and the founding fathers of the nation.”

He was commenting on the “meek response” by Liow and Mah over Jamil Khir’s parliamentary reply last week that Malaysia was not a secular country as the official religion of the state is Islam.

Jamil Khir added that this was also based on historical facts which showed that the formation of Malaysia adhered to the Islamic Malay Sultanate, with the Malay rulers being placed as the head of Islam in their respective states.

“This is strengthened by Article 3 of the Federal Constitution, which clearly states that Islam is the official religion in the federal region, while other religions can be freely practised.

“Therefore, our position is different from that of secular countries which do not fix an official religion for their county, but their people are allowed to practise their respective faiths.

“Their religion is a separate matter and is their personal practice,” he said in a written reply to Sibu Member of Parliament Oscar Ling Chai Yew.

Ling had asked Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak to state whether hudud laws were in breach of the Federal Constitution, whether the federal government planned to implement hudud and whether Malaysia was a secular or Islamic country.

He also asked Najib to define what he meant by secular if it was.

DAP later sought to refer Jamil Khir to the Parliamentary Rights and Privileges Committee, over his remarks, saying that he had misled the august house.

However, the motion against Jamil Khir was rejected by Dewan Rakyat Speaker Tan Sri Pandikar Amin Mulia.

“The minister did not mislead the House and it was his own views, and that’s why I am rejecting your motion,” Pandikar added.

“When I referred to the Oxford dictionary on the meaning of secular, this is what I found… that secular means ‘not connected with religious or spiritual matters’, ” Pandikar further elaborated.