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Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Fiddler's Green

Don't know much about Limbo or Purgatory. Like you said, Methodists don't have them in their doctrine. If I had a choice in the matter, I would rather go to someplace like Fiddler's Green. It's not in the Bible, it's just one of those anecdotal things that pop up in popular mythology from time to time. Since it's called "Fiddler's Green", I assume that it was originally about musicians but, at some point, it was extended to include soldiers, sailors, or any other group of guys who were closely bonded in a common cause in their lifetimes. Fiddler's Green is a campground just outside the gates of Heaven, or maybe Hell, depending on who's telling the story. You hang out there waiting for all your comrades to catch up with you. When everybody from your group is reunited on Fiddler's Green, they have one last drink and march through the gates together. Meanwhile, you get to hang out with your friends, telling stories and singing songs around the campfire. If I liked it, I might even volunteer to stay there permanently and greet the newcomers as they arrive, but I don't know if they recruit their help from the ranks or not.

I looked up the Holy Spirit on Wiki over the weekend, but they didn't tell me any more than I already knew, which is not much. They did have quite a spread about the Unitarians, though. Apparently there is more than one kind of Unitarian. They all don't believe in the Trinity, but each congregation holds a variety of  beliefs about other matters. There are several national and international umbrella groups with which a congregation can affiliate, but there is no central authority that tells everybody what to believe.

Then there's the Unitarian-Universalists, which were founded in 1961 by a merger of some Unitarians with some Universalists. These guys believe in like everything. They hold that all belief systems have some truth in them, including Atheism. It seems that these guys would be fun to hang out with because you would never know what was going to come up in a conversation.

Then there's the Unity people, which Wiki says are not to be confused with the Unitarians, although I don't think they believe in the Trinity either. These guys believe that God doesn't live in Heaven, but dwells within each and every one of us. They say that Jesus was somebody who figured out how to fully develop his god-like potential, and that we should do likewise.

So you see, "There are more things in Heaven and Earth, dear Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophies". I think Shakespeare said that.
"What I like about being old is that, every time you think you've seen it all, you find out you ain't seen nothing yet." I said that.

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