Groundhog Day religions

I told you. I wake up every day, right here, right in Punx­sutawney, and it’s always Feb­ru­ary 2nd, and there’s noth­ing I can do about it.”
–Phil Con­nors, from the movie ‘Ground­hog Day’

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Imag­ine this: One morn­ing you wake up, brush your teeth, have break­fast, go out, walk across the street and con­tinue with your excit­ing new day plan. How­ever, every­one around addresses you as you were a per­son 30 years ago — a per­son from another time. You begin to notice that in con­ver­sa­tions, as peo­ple seem to dis­re­gard all the accom­plish­ments, all life’s expe­ri­ences, new knowl­edge, won­der­ful new thoughts and all new per­sonal qual­i­ties you have achieved in three decades. Despite all good attrib­utes you know you posses, peo­ple turn a deaf ear and approach you as you were a prob­lem, spoiled child who sees every­thing black & white. After few months, how would you feel?

Now imag­ine this: How a sense of a divine cre­ative prin­ci­ple, or Demi­urge peo­ple call God since time immemo­r­ial, must feel when peo­ple approach him-her in the same man­ner as peo­ple 2,000 or 5,000 years ago, think­ing and believ­ing he-she is the same scary and pet­ri­fy­ing one as peo­ple believed then, unre­servedly neglect­ing his-her life since, his-her new ideas, newly dis­cov­ered pos­si­bil­i­ties of exis­tence, imag­i­na­tive advanced ways of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with him-her and remark­able expe­ri­ences he-she had to share dur­ing the last sev­eral mil­len­nia? And imag­ine him-her liv­ing that ‘Ground­hog Day’ movie with human­ity on the planet of Punx­sutawney (some­times referred as the planet Earth) every day, every month, every year, for thou­sands of years …

This is just one of many answers to the ques­tion “Why Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism?”

– Zvon­imir Tosic


One Response to “Groundhog Day religions”

  1. Excel­lent anal­ogy. That’s why process the­ol­ogy is such an impor­tant part of Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism. In his _Jesus Through the Cen­turies His Place in the His­tory of Culture_, Jaroslav Pelikan reveals how the image of Jesus cre­ated by each suc­ces­sive epoch—from rabbi in the first cen­tury to lib­er­a­tor in the nine­teenth and twen­ti­eth centuries—is a key to under­stand­ing the tem­per and val­ues of that age. Or look­ing at it another way, how each age shapped the image of Jesus. We see Jesus much dif­fer­ently today than a first cen­tury Jew would have.

    While there are many Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tives who strongly resist change, there are also many strong voices call­ing for change. I come from a reformed tra­di­tion that believes in on-going reform, although some would disagree.

    There are many Chris­t­ian groups I could work with quite har­mo­niously. How­ever, I find no Chai­tanya Vaish­nav groups that I would feel com­fort­able with. They are closed minded and liv­ing in the past. I prob­a­bly have more in com­mon with the Uni­tar­i­ans I’ll address Sun­day than I do with most Krishna devotees.

    As we used to say, a pro­gres­sive Protes­tant has more in com­mon with a pro­gres­sive Catholic than with a con­ser­v­a­tive Protes­tant. A Uni­ver­sal­ist Radha-Krishnaism prac­ti­tioner will prob­a­bly have more in com­mon with pro­gres­sive Chris­tians, Jews, Moslems, Bud­dhists, Pagans, or Taoists than with most Chai­tanya Vaish­navas. We walk a new way for a new day and do not care to repeat the past.

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