Dear Jeff,

One other thought-Rasta get so vex re: the fundamentalist christian invasion because it is inherently intolerant and disrespectful, and you yourself posted that it's a struggle not to be INTOLERANT of INTOLERANCE if you are a lover of the ONE who plants in us this love of justice.
The agenda of ones who seek to convince others of their interp: InI pray for them and have compassion for them, for InI have known what it is to live in fear and separation. What Rastafari has done for I is to give I a far-eye view and a way and a means to livicate my life to unity. Any doctrine that teaches hatred or condemnation of any kind is mistaken doctrine. Period. There's enough of this in Rasta community too, I know.

I've been at Rasta since I was 19, and I'm 45 now. A lot of the most intense Christians here came to Jesus just like I did, through Bob Marley and Haile Selassie. Maybe I feel personally confused why anyone ever felt like they had to rebuke the Divinity of Haile Selassie-I. To myself and so many millions worldwide, it was Rastafari that led us to scripture, to Moses and Elijah and David and Isaiah and Jesus.
We who was born and grew up in the 'Christian world' had been fed so much propoganda that when we woke up, we BURNED FIRE on Christian wickedness. Who reconciled repatriated us brought us back home to our ancestral tradition? It was Selassie-I.
Some burn Mutabaruka for pointing out that Selassie-I is bigger than Jesus ever was but facts is facts. Havasupai people in the bottom of the GRAND CANYON listen to Bob nonstop and dreads sweepin the canyon floor!

I remember you coming on the boards to point out the arrival of the 'Nicene Council' who was sweeping in to preach the TRUE WORD and burn the heretics. Well you were right then and you are right now. I spent some time reading through Christian theology and I think I agree with the Muslims (and the gnostics) that debating the nature of the Unknowable God is pointless, much less institutionalizing your point of view in 'the sacraments of the Church.' And the Buddhists just plain stopped talking about HIM altogether, but rather focus solely on the Way to HIM. I have disagreement about this, but I think JAH is presupposed in the thought of the Buddha-certainly he grew up thinking about Atman, the Self. The boddhisattva/messiah/Christ idea seems identical. And there's always the Lakota Wakan Tanka, the Great Mystery. O dear. I might get accused of bein some dirty hippie or swirly whirly new-ager. Must stop now!
O what a MIGHTY DREAD!
rootsie