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Thank you for the counsel. But it's not really about my grandmother, of course. She was a good person, lost a son in WW2 and later moved to Africa in her old age. "Count your blessings" is a common English saying.

Granny was Scottish. She’d watch birds in her cottage garden and every now and then there’s be a bully bird, an alpha male, taking over and chasing away the others, and when I was around 12 or perhaps a little older, she’d phone up for me and I’d have to come down with a 4.10 shotgun and shoot...

Perhaps my feelings of emptiness and boredom are because I’m in solitary confinement in prison for a crime I didn’t do? Perhaps I have lost my legs and live in a place where I can't get a wheelchair?

I think Grandma was encouraging me to be grateful for all the good things God has granted me, in spite of all the wrong things that I've done? All my dharma failures. But I think I get what you're saying :)

My grandma told me: Count your blessings

"In Italy, Constantine donated to Sylvester several provinces and cities around Rome to provide for the financial and defense needs of Rome and the popes. The “Donation of Constantine” then, is this grant in perpetuity to Sylvester and all future popes of Rome and other regions in central Italy...

About the picture in post #95 When Sylvester I (reign 314-335) was pope at Rome, Constantine the Great (r. 306-337) conquered the city and began the Christianization of the great capital. Many of the greatest basilicas of Rome — Old St. Peter’s, Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, Saint Paul Outside...

@Longfellow I'm wrong that the Pope convened the council of Nicea. It was the Emperor who convened the council. But it was under the auspices of the Pope's authority, I think. Anyway. The point stands that it was never about Constantine forcing "Jesus is God" upon the Council of Nicea for...

I'm not sure about that. It was the Pope Sylvester who convened the Council of Nicea although he did not attend due to age but he did sent representatives. The exile sentences were at the request of the church, I think? Like the Nicene creed, the emperor rubber stamped the church decision? Pope...

They fight for the right to freedom Not to me. Unbridled license to interfere with and offend the values of others would be another topic? Where do minority freedoms give them the right to force their fringe values and language and customs upon the majority? Enforced personal pronouns, and so on?

Tony: perhaps the serial killer was also left handed like Jimi Hendrix, or perhaps they both had black hair or perhaps they both didn't like mayonnaise on their chips. It's not meaningful.

And? Jimi Hendrix was a hippy. He wasn't into killing anyone ...

End of the day it comes around to the fact that the Arian dispute is not evidence -- as some folks want it to be -- that the early church was divided about whether "Jesus is God" and that Constantine forced "Jesus is God" upon the church as a tool for conquest. This is the most common reason the...

The difference is between the words liberty and unbridled license but concede a subtlety of translation. Jimi Hendrix wasn't a nasty or bad person. He was saying that nobody had the right to tell him what to think or what was 'sinful' and to cut his hair and get a job, and how he should go...

"I'm the one that's gonna have to die when it's time for me to die. So let me live my life the way I want to." --Jimi Hendrix

It is decided by church councils, and the decisions are deemed to be the will of Christ for the church. Contrary doctrines are not accepted by the church from that point on. The Pope is the titular head of the church, in the seat of Peter, and once the Pope endorses a ruling, that's the...

Fair enough Fair though. I apologise if I appeared to persecute the innocent

@Tony Bristow-Stagg If you suggest that evil is to know what is good, and deliberately turn away from it, then you could be on a right track in an ancient debate about what evil is. But if you insist on turning the discussion into a platform for promoting Baha'i belief in Bahaullah as the new...

Except it was not. The early church (in Arius' day) was not a cynical exercise of propping up the aristocrats. It was because the early church was sorting out its ground, as it believed was entrusted by Christ. It was considered harmful to the early church to include beliefs that were not those...

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