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Suppositions regarding faith and the stability of life - and other thoughts....

We live in a time when the concept of faith has lost its luster. Faith by today’s rules is consigned often to the unsophisticated.  As a result, when someone declares a belief or activity as “a matter of faith” it is immediately suspect. 

This presents a major problem. If faith is suspect, than most of our assumptions must also be suspect since so much of what we believe is based on faith-like assumptions. 

A major assumption we make everyday is the world, as we know it, will continue to exist. This is an assumption based on faith. 

The odds may be with us, but nonetheless, we don’t know what’s going to happen in the next minute and must assume we will still be here. 

This obvious assumption should give us pause.  Our arrogant supposition regarding the stability of life keeps us from changing many things that need changing. 

The notion there will be a tomorrow may give us hope, but how many important things never get done because this assumed hope is part of our belief system.  This implicit hope is the “mother” of all procrastination. 

Be careful – the next time you find faith suspect - make sure you are not living most of your life based on assumptions rooted in faith.

 

Brother Franco

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Related articles

 

Faith healing - the answer to national health insurance.

 

Several years ago Pizzaonia resolved its national health care crises.  Here is an excerpt from the announcement that resolved all their financial issues. (2010)

The council praised Brother Giovanni for his inspired leadership on several issues. The most important of these was the negotiations with Pizza digogo DiVinci that lead to the merger of all Pizzaonian Monasteries with the pizza giant.

The most contentious issue was the adoption of the Pizzaonian health plan for all Pizzaonians. The health plan calls for all medical expenses up to 2000 Pizzaonian dollars to be treated by the regular medical staff. Once the 2000 dollar amount is exceeded, the patient is transferred to the faith healing clinic/s for further treatment.

After some argument on the merger of “faith and pizza” as a concept, all parties finally agreed on the acceptance of the plan.  As a result of the merger and the new health plan, all Pizzaonian physicians now undergo three more years of training to earn the coveted “faith healer” (FH) designation.

Council members declared their faith-based health plan as a model for all nations, especially the United States. As we all know their national health plans require the financial backing of their government as well as the Republican party and what requires more faith than that?

 

 

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At the heart of all success is not your belief in its inevitability

 

"At the heart of all success is not your belief in its inevitability -- at the heart of all success is your ability to overcome the fear that permeates and surrounds your belief."   Pizzaonian proverb

 

Image courtesy of the Pizzaonian Art Institute, Abe Straction, curator (C)2012

 

"From this life to the next, your courage to simply be will prevail."

 

Words posted at the entrance of the chapel for novice Pizzaonians

 

 

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EXPLAINING THE WAY THINGS ARE AS WE PASS THE DAY by PIZZAONIUS

 

A PIZZAONIAN CONCEPTION OF REALITY IF THERE IS SUCH A THING. 

    

 LUNCH WITH PICASSO

 

   

WAITING FOR CIVILISATION

 

STILL WAITING FOR CIVILISATION

 

THIS IS WHAT WE WERE WAITING FOR?

ALL IMAGES COURTESY OF THE PIZZAONIAN ART INSTITUTE.  PAINTINGS (PHOTOS?) BY PIZZAONIUS, cira 345 PET (pizzaonian evolutionary time)

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We are now experiencing what happens when a nation is between value systems!

 Commentary by Brother Giovanni - Image courtesy of the Pizzaonian Art Institute, Abe Straction, curator (C)2012

 

A nation is most vulnerable when it is evolving between value systems.  When the old values and symbols that define us as a country begin to fade away, and the new values that will redefine us have yet to arrive, a nation is in a very dangerous time. It is during these transitory times that demagogues usually appear.

 

These periods of major shifts in values can not only change a nation, they can rip its people apart and make them weaker and less able to survive. Look at Washington, DC if you need an example. These periods in a our countries history may be more dangerous than war as a threat to our nation’s survival.

 

We have always believed the core values that bind us together as a nation will allow us to survive. Fundamental to this belief is that when the new symbols and values arrive, they will encompass these same core values. This may not be the contradiction this appears to be.

 

In the United States these core values can be summed up in the phrase “evolving to a more perfect Union” because that’s what we have been doing these last 241 years … and it’s no secret we aren’t there yet.

 

The question now is: What are we trying to evolve to?

 

That’s up to you and me.  Pay attention, it’s all happening before your very eyes!

We also recommend: "The Pizzaonian."

 

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Are there times when everyone seems a little nuts to you

 
 

Are there times

When everyone seems

A little nuts to you

Hopefully it’s not

You but your not sure

Maybe it’s the nature

Of the world today

 

Even though it is

Curious that up is

Down and down is

Up you vote for

One politician because

You don’t like the other

Guy and your guy

Becomes the other guy

 

Never could figure

Out why that happens

But campaigns are

Different and promise

Change and then

There’s the other guy

Again except this

Time he’s your guy

 

As I said everything

Seems a little nuts today

 

Excerpts from “Conjectures of a Recovering Dilettante”

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Doubt, a virtue that does not get enough credit

Image - Courtesy of the Pizzaonian Art Institute, Abe Straction, curator

 

The subject of faith is one that seems infinite.  The term itself seems to invoke very different feelings in each of us.  To believe something, absolutely, without definitive proof, is asking a great deal of most of us. 

I am always troubled by people who have no doubt about their belief systems.  This does not mean that I don’t also accept many things on faith, including some of my most important and treasured values.

But it does mean I also have doubt.  It sneaks in during the middle of the night like any thief and makes me question the unquestionable.  However, as the years go by, I am no longer sure that doubt is a thief - or that the middle of the night has any significance. As a matter of fact, I have come to see doubt as virtue.

I do not believe my occasional bouts with doubt compromises my faith in anyway.  But doubt does allow me to rethink what I believe, and in my case it makes me the stronger for its existence.

This begs the question, why? Answering this is tricky, since the answer runs the risk of making me seem insincere in my beliefs. First and perhaps the most important, doubt keeps me from trying to impose by belief systems on someone else. 

This is very healthy because it forces me to do the most important thing of all, live what I believe as an example, and let my actions speak for themselves. If my faith is to have any meaning at all, it should be in how I live, not what I talk about or try to impose on others.

Think of how this concept could change the world. At the very least, if nothing good seems to happen by living our faith by our example, it would at least get rid of the barbarism that is foisted on so many by those amongst us who never seem to doubt anything.

As the saving goes – “God help us from those who are trying to save us!”

Brother Giovanni, commenting for Giovanni and Franco, a division of the Pizzaonian Newsertainment Network, Diverti Mento, editor

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On the nature of politeness - politeness often masks the truth by diluting it.

 

Conjectures of a recovering dilettante while traveling the road to Utopia.

What to say and how to say it has always been the problem.  To seek the polite way of communication, that is to speak with an acceptable voice that resonates with politeness and deference, is often the way of more timid. 

This may seem harsh to most, but I am amazed how many times we hide behind politeness.  Since politeness is considered a virtue, it becomes an insidious and convenient mask for the faint-hearted.

The obvious problem is that politeness often masks the truth by diluting it and making it palatable, and in so doing it makes the truth less attainable.  Once this habit of politeness takes root it helps to establish a belief system that seems very comfortable with its delusion of heroic qualities. 

The problem is the truth can only be masked so long, and if you are very lucky, it will finally appear in all of its glorious beauty.  For many, this is the beginning of their personal salvation.

 
Brother Giovanni

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Maturity is the long-awaited condition that we hope age and experience will create - unfortunately, not always so.

(C)copyright    Pizzaonian Art Institute, Abe Staction,curator
Image:  Maturity waiting to happen, by Pizzaonious

 

It may be a long way to Tipari, but it is a longer road still to maturity.  Maturity is the long-awaited condition that we hope age and experience will create - unfortunately, not always so. 

In the American experience, maturity is perpetually delayed by entertainment – a process that keeps you from confronting yourself.  The business of having to grow an economy cannot have its potential customers sitting around contemplating life.  Economies require infusions of cash for new products that somehow always seem to resemble the old products they replace- without this infusion they die. 

There is some good in this process.  It brings some innovation and increases the so-called standard of living.  And, if it does none of these things, it always creates the illusion that growing is good and necessary for our well-being. 

The distinction between need and want is the problem that marketers face everyday.  If you are lucky, or smart enough, to have a product that people need, you do not have to work as hard as the rest of us. 

Most of us have to create the illusion that what people want is also what they need.  That is the little kept secret:  Making something no one needs, and making that something that everyone wants is the gateway to success.  We call this successful marketing.  Without it, we would all be in big trouble. 

As time goes by actual products run their course. The natural progression of continually making the same look like the new runs out – there are only so many products.  Thus was born the service industry.  Now we have always had necessary services, but as an industry, we matured.  There are only so many necessary services. The rest we call entertainment.  In the United States we also call it politics.

 

The service industry creates distraction: works of art that only exist for the moment. This makes the artist, Christo, a prophet.  He said, “Do you know that I don’t have any artworks that exist?  They all go away when they’re finished.”  Does anything better define the service industry? 

Now even contemplation is a product.  Create a culture where every waking moment is necessary to survive, and top it off with products that require constant reinventing.  Nice work if you can get it. 

And we wonder why maturity is a delayed process.

 

Brother Giovanni, reporting for Pizzaonian Newsertainment Network, Diverti Mento, director

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The journals of Brother Giovanni and Brother Franco. Each side wraps themselves in some great truth and then proposes ridiculous solutions.

 

ALL IMAGES COURTESY OF THE PIZZAONIAN ART INSTITUTE.  PAINTINGS (PHOTOS?) BY PIZZAONIUS, cira 345 PET (pizzaonian evolutionary time) Abe Straction, curator

It always seemed strange to our friends that Franco and I portalized to Pizzaonia.  It was a simple and easy decision to make.  It became clear to us while we love our country and choose to remain its permanent citizens, our sanity required we find a beta-world country that would have us. 

The rest is history.  For those who have followed our adventures in Pizzaonia what we have accomplished these past few years is well known. Now that we have retired from our Pizzaonian responsibilities and have returned home, we will occupy ourselves by writing our journal. 

It should be clear to all by now that the world is dysfunctional.  This seems to be particularly true for the United States.  What we are left with are power blocs who use this dysfunction to increase the value of their vested interest.  No one even pretends that they intend to fix the country.  If they did, why are we subjected to such absurd proposals from those vying for political power? 

Each side wraps themselves in some great truth and then proposes ridiculous solutions that no one can accept.  This leaves everyone on the high ground – advocates for undoable grand proposals with no chance of seeing the light of day. 

However, at the heart of this irrationality sits the one truth that no politician can unravel regardless how hard he or she may try to do so. No matter how bad things get the dream of “evolving toward a more perfect union” persists.  This journey still has a rendezvous with destiny that no one can derail. 

This is where Brother Franco and I will start.  We still have some duties remaining and we will continue to portalize between here and Pizzaonia. However, our full time job will be here in the United States representing Pizzaonian Pizza conglomerate, Pizza digogo DiVinci, and conversing with you. 

Until then, remember, “Pop culture is to culture what rocket lettuce is to arugula.” Pizzaonius, founder of Pizzaonia

For me and Brother Franco. Brother Giovanni

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