When they burn books, they will, in the end, burn human beings
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good.
Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.
April 03, 2007 - 11:04 a.m.
Chag Pesach Sameach!
That's "Happy Passover;" for those of you Hebrew deficient.
So yesterday is the one day a year I partake in Jewish religious ritual. I made the pilgrimage to Norwalk Connecticut for the seder. Norwalk is the home of Louis and Sylvia, two of my sister Alison's oldest friends. She's known Louis since high school and Sylvia was her college roommate. They started invited my family years ago. Now that my parents are gone and Sue is in Texas it is just Alison and myself. It is still the best seder there is. Most Seders are either too rigorous or have too little content. At this one we go through all the rituals but with a sense of humor. They cut and paste their own Haggadah, the book that guides the seder, from several sources. They even interpolated a Shabbat prayer for peace. We each have our own Haggadah with our name on the front page and everybody is expected to participate. Louis leads the service but we all have a part to read. We do fun things like beat each other with scallions when we sing Dayenu. They represent the flails of the Egyptian slave drivers. Everybody sings all the songs (each in our own key). Chad Gad Yaw ends up being a race to see who can sing each verse the fastest. Once again Elijah did not show up to drink from his cup. Miriam didn't drink from her cup either but I'm not sure she is supposed to.
I actually arrived at the house early. A Pesach miracle occurred and I didn't hit much traffic on the Connecticut Turnpike during rush hour. I apologized for being early but Sylvia told me I was being silly and I joined the socializing. I wasn't the first one there. I also didn't travel anywhere near the furthest. Sylvia's second cousin once removed and her husband came down from the Toronto suburbs. I forgot the town but it is right next to Thornhill. The husband, Tony, is an engineer so I got to talk geeky math stuff. I was surprised that I didn’t' beat Alison there by much. I'm always early and she's always late but I arrived only 5 minutes before she did.
What is amazing is that I spent the evening doing a religious ritual for the most part with people that I see once a year and still had a great time. I actually look forward to it.
So it just hit me today that I'll be passing the half-century mark the first day of FRFF. If I don't break down and buy it before then you can get me this. 
Against The Gods Intelligence Itself Contends in Vain. - July 02, 2008
Lies My Ego Told Me - June 30, 2008
Don't Believe Everything You Read; Not Even Here - June 28, 2008
Red Molly and Sinatra;, Together Again - June 27, 2008
Adventures in Adventures - June 25, 2008
Email me: GordonLew at gmail
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Horvendile April 03, 2007
