Church In The Vineyards?

(A study of the politics of Groupthink)

   

Hopefully you are gaining a sense that churches in the Vineyards are rooted deeply in the American experience and psyche reaching back many hundreds of years, and what matters in their impact is the combination of elements one of which includes the beauty, quality, and uniqueness of the physical structure.

There is a great amount of evidence that tourism is enhanced by churches in the Vineyards, France being the most obvious example.

Aside from the transparent and superficial issues of one or two people acting on behalf locally, and positing a false position of an entire wine industry, i.e. that churches cannot coexist in old Livermore, CA wine country with successful long term interests of the wine industry, there is a way for you to discover for yourself the deeper messages of truth on the matter.  It takes a while to work through the stages of understanding. It requires patience, courage, an open mind and a willingness to explore the inner self. The range of experience will drift into the infinite unless you apply focus and over come fear. Take your time and pursue it: your own spirituality (Please see "Further Reading" item #23). You will discover so much more than you expect and your discoveries will energize you from the inside out. When you feel you are ready then come back to this issue however long it may take and re-evaluate the question: Can rural churches coexist in our wine country successfully with the long term interests of our wine industry? Why is it logical to presume they can not coexist? As you follow the steps, simply ask yourself to see and understand the truth of the matter and it will be revealed to you from within. What you will probably discover is that long term water sources at affordable rates are determinant to Livermore's wine country success, tourism is enhanced through beauty and quality, and churches offering serene presence honoring  and rejoicing in the transcendent will bring interest and tourism to the Livermore wine country region. You will see the same world through new eyes. Hang on tight and buckle up! 

Please donate photos and videos and suggested website links of rural-country churches for publication on this website through our email. 

Perhaps the singular greatest irony regarding the question, can rural churches coexist in Livermore's wine country successfully with the long term interests of our wine industry, rests in the spiritual synchronicity and obvious connection among our most established wineries, science, and the forces of nature and religion: Tesla Road.

Tesla Road was named after Nikola Tesla, a Serbian immigrant and genius, inventor of electro-mechanical  concepts that we are just now developing in science, inventor of the Alternating Current (AC) electrical power systems to power the world. Nikola Tesla represented a man in touch with the powers of his subconscious and the transcendent who's greatest ideas were dream-state inventions brought to the conscious working level. He was born July 10, 1856 and died January 7, 1943. In some of his most profound insights, he said he was not certain if he was lucid dreaming or awake. The local trinity of interconnectiveness represented most ironically through Tesla: (i) Lawrence Lab (LLNL) - science coming full circle back to the metaphysical implications of quantum physics, (ii) Spirituality/Churches (rural & City) inhabited by scientists seeking spiritual comfort, (iii) Wine industry, ranching and farming, living the connection of nature's deep power and all headquartered upon the road dedicated to a spiritualist who happen to be one of our greatest inventors: Nikola Tesla, .....this is our real heritage.  

As a youth I hunted these hills, swam the local streams, explored the caves and secrete places, found remnants of ancient civilizations thousands of years old, and learned the connection of our ranchers, farmers, and growers to the soul of the Earth and the energies from within. New energies and relationships begin to reveal themselves through all these experiences and memories. I raised a beautiful family among these ancient surroundings of the Livermore Valley and as you, I want to see the surroundings healthy and resonate with our true inner soul. Maybe we are not so different after all, you and I.

There is a great contest of forces underway everywhere we look. Will humankind choose to celebrate the sovereignty and sanctity of Nature and through the process learn sustainability, resonance, and harmony, or is that concept already too late? Are we destined instead for a different future? What value do the churches bring to the heart of our wine country through their presence? Perhaps the most important value of all: a place for the consecration to the awareness of Nature's sovereignty and sanctity and a peaceful cultural shift in attitudes brought through the spiritual connection and openness of contact with the rural location itself. Is this not the history of the New World? Is this not our real heritage? 

Now let's really walk deep into the maze. Hold on to this safety line and follow with me. 

In Livermore’s case, the wine-country argument is pretentiously partnered by NIMBY’s to the unchallengeable psycho-mystic-political Green Movement by incorrectly imposing the term “fragile” in an intentionally misleading and unsupportable context to place fear into your heart....... Oh my! They must know what they are talking about; they only have "Green-truth" as their true humanitarian motivation! 

Elected officials can then be traumatized into inaction through your ignorance of the facts, as they fear you will perceive any just or reasonable action on their part as elected officials to approve churches in the rural area as placing  the "fragile" at risk.

I think you will discover that what really counts in this material world of the modern wine industry of our 125+ year old Livermore Wine Country is the maintenance of (a) broad themed beauty in the grooming of our fields and the structures we build there-on including our rural roads, and (b) affordable long term sources of irrigation water for our grapes ... the latter being more important than the former.

There is considerable evidence world-wide, partly illustrated through this site, that beautiful churches in the rural areas actually enhance tourism and add interest and flavor to the culture. It appears that with the 1500 year sun spot cycle we are going to continue to get more and more sunshine.... again. This atmospheric warming event could actually be a good thing for our grapes in the Livermore region as long as water remains affordable.

Here is how the “fragile” connection works by tying it to the "Green-truth."  Here is also how the Green-truth which is a valid observation, runs amuck in deception employing political power to a spiritual experience depending on your ignorance and passivity, counting on your ignorance and passivity in fact.  Pick up and read almost any set of current environmental atmospheric studies that are peer reviewed, and you will soon be wise to the political deceptions be they played on you by the half-truth-science-speak of the religio-green-political-intolerant or the big monied hydrocarbon-sustained, corporate suits.

I have come to believe this: All known creation is a living organism including all space in our universe creating the embodiment of part of the greater Transcendent, of which you and I are a part. The universe is part of a larger consciousness   and the same energies flow through all material things. We are in the deepest sense, part of the transcendent. This is a rather profound statement which I can not prove other than to say it must be experienced to be understood. All the science I have read this on matter (see Further Reading) and studied coupled with every spiritual book I have exposed my mind to, leads me to that conclusion. Additionally I serve on a nonprofit called Peace and Conflict Resolution.Org (P&CR.org) where we seem to have stumbled on to a scientific methodology for entering such an entry level mystical experience for yourself, which we refer to as the "A-B-C Revelation and Confirmation" process. But I digress.

I believe in much underlying the Green movement, that all life is interconnected energy streams flowing from “form” to “form.” “Form” (you and I as well as all other materializations known to us) is energy perceived as function in an unbroken flow amongst all other forms. 

One caution dear reader if you are a mystic. When swooned by any loving emotion of the heart on interface with our world reality we call "the ecology movement", frequent reality checks are in order as the swooning heart is neither logical nor perfect and is predisposed to over look blemishes and errors and misdeeds we humans undertake, during such sweeping love affairs in their initial state entwined with the mystic transformational powers of God. Your backbone first turns to mush before it reorganizes as iron. What seems compelling nourishment in your state of mush soon becomes indigestible. Knowing the difference is relevant. Try sticking your finger ever so often for reality checks in the electric socket of skeptic assessments at the Science & Public Policy Institute for example. Perhaps start with this video by Christopher Mockton. Constant review, peer review, and data point verification are essential in matters of environmental politics as there will always be unintended consequences. We mystics have a wonderful fault of trusting emotions of the heart that they will lead to the correct path of understanding, which of course they do in the etheric realms. Our fault and weakness lies in the mystic's inability to perfectly and always and without error, discern absolute correct path when translating from the etheric-astral to the physical (real word). Even Thomas Merton errored in small but significant ways. We mystics owe much care, constantly filling our psychic-emotional-spiritual energy centers with available scientific observations, discoveries, and worldly preferences of powers of nature. In short, it is not a rejection of the mystic process to consider real world observations to improve your understanding of the etheric. We mystics are sometimes too prone to look at the "laws of physics" as only suggestions. It seems more beneficial to the human condition to task ourselves to discover what rule sets actually exist. A mystic's primary goal is to perfect the process to commune with God on the one hand while taking great care to do no harm when tasking ourselves to transmit our experiences back into the physical dimension on the other hand. Trying to run a society based on mystic observations requires collective consciousness exerted from the informed collective base up, and based on constant scientific observations of truth, and not run from the top down based on one leader's sole perception, which leads quickly to tyranny and oppression. 

The universe is a fabric, a matrix of energy flow passing from "form" to "form" existing within a much larger realm of consciousness (Campbell File -- 7 of 18); each of us is an extension of the Transcendent, but our awareness is culturally blocked (within much of the western world) from seeing the spiritual connections and energy flows unless found by the full personal spiritual mystical experience of the god-unity of enlightenment, there being several pathways to that experience (Elvidge pgs 83-120, #49 Further Reading). I believe this amazing statement is truth, so does a Green. 

But a danger exists. Beware. For the Political-Greens, Mother Earth has been raped by Mankind's constant attempt at taming Nature and industrial processes run to extremes stemming from the Biblical imperative that mankind exists at the top of the pyramid of life.  The NIMBY's count on your faith and allegiance to this valid doctrine and then misdirect. Unlike the NIMBY's misdirection, in order to function ideally as envisioned, The Green Movement on the other hand demands "informed integrity" of you personally ... a value, sadly, not always found in the Green "political" or "quasi-scientific" movement. 

Informed integrity means you retain an open mind, you push to the edge of your comfort zone, you seek the pathway of truth and enlightenment, you confront your fears, you step back and become the witness to yourself, you forgive and release yourself, you sense a greater connectiveness, you begin to grow in your sensitivity to others, you become less judgmental to change, you start not to fear your enemy. This void where fear used to exist, changes to love. Love allows you to see your enemy as the shadow reflection of yourself. You enter and live in an expanded state of grace. You forgive. You intuitively create new solutions in the knowing you are acting in the universal consciousness of truth. You become one with transcendent and there is peace within you.

The folly of our hypocrisy

For the NIMBYs, development of anything in our rural area (except their own properties, restaurants, golf courses, homes, travel lodges, commercial shopping centers, bocchi ball courts, roads, safer and faster highways, utilities, oil and gas wells, utility overhead power lines, fences, lots and lots of fences and gates, ponds and reservoirs, hotels, B & B's and "Churches-already-built-in-the-wine-country-and-rural-areas-that-we-will-pretend-do-not-already-exist" all within our defined "wine country") are hypocritically viewed as acceptable while "new" churches are wondrously labeled a disturbance of the force, a cancer of an alternative reality NIMBY s “know” must be rejected because after 125+ years, suddenly everything is spontaneously "too fragile." 

There is no objective peer reviewed science supporting the NIMBY's political statements.  You accept their fear mongering and political positions without peer review and sit smugly in the belief you hold truth in your hands.

You are being dazzled by NIMBY's that they are serving the Green's greater truth, the oneness of all things, (a truth I too believe in) as they confuse and misdirect the issue over to: Fragile! It's too Fragile! And when the weakness of those unsupported statements become obvious they will shift to a new mantra with or without scientific support. Change the topic, re-direct the discussion, keep the opponent off balance. Truth becomes irrelevant to political objective.

NIMBY's real purpose has nothing to do with truth and all to do with NIMBY-ism. It is simply parochial politics in play at the expense of the cheapening the integrity of the Green's greater truth (the oneness of all things). You are allowed to assume the motivation "to protect the fragile" is based on truth and objective assessment. It is not.

No one requires proof of any sort for any reason of such a broad and sweeping statement that our wine country is "fragile." The evidence of its 125+ year history is quite the contrary.  Livermore is the oldest  established wine region in all of California! We were even decades ahead of Napa. When any place in California could have been picked as the area to start, the pioneer assessment of the best combination of natural resources to sustain a wine industry was Livermore. That's why the original old German immigrant vintners started  a wine industry in the Livermore Valley. From your ignorance and passive trust which NIMBYs count on, is born the little lie of the NIMBY that is allowed to manifest unmolested into a great lie. Movements built on unchecked lies usually have unintended and unsustainable consequences. 

It is easier to do nothing and reject reasonable ideas than for a politician to try and educate a biased Luddite - voter. This is the strength of the NIMBY's cocktail and napkins talk and it shamefully works. You along with the others are uneducated to the truth, and you trust the collective because the collective speaks truth only on your behalf - always. Right? As sophisticated as you know your under-appreciated self to be with all your technical degrees, money and power, 125 years of our established wine industry accumulated evidence indicates you probably believe in a false reality by accepting "fragile" as truth. Too bad.  If you defer a decision to others to act upon your interest to harmonize with your beliefs and those motivations of others are false, or based on an assumption of science which research has not been conducted or proven, certainly not peer reviewed,  you are cheated through your own smug bias and ignorance. Welcome to Green politics. Welcome to local NIMBY politics.

Greens have problems too. They often do not base policy on science fact but on mystic faith and desired ends they choose. Green's "enlightenment" stems from a core body of truth emerging from the 21st century reconnection with the "pre-Christian perceived truth of existence: God and nature are not separate; the universe around us is suffused with the divine; it is an animistic world that we live in." (Thomas Riedlinger on The "Wondrous Mushroom" Legacy of R. Gordon Wasson, from Ralph Metzner - see further reading #27).  

And while the good in each of us wants to trust, we are being deceived nonetheless by the NIMBY's and currently also by the politicized Green movement  which unfortunately has become a top-down dogmatic religious movement placing itself above questioning by any outsider.

In regards to the mission to “heal Mother Earth” there is no room for the concept of “probability of error.” Greens perception of truth and the needs of Mother Earth healing process is driven by mystic awareness acquired through divine insight and is therefore above question by mankind’s deluded science whenever the science conflicts with the Greens' political goals.

Implementing mystic “reality” or mystic “experience” into the political reality of our existence leads to a "probability of error" in translating “mystic knowing” back to political power. Humans frequently overlay personal cultural conditions and preferences on such mystical perceptions. There is often a reasonable amount of error in their process. Greens currently ignore such concerns of "error." Greens focus on ideals and cite science only if it supports their mystic vision, political cause and desired ends.  They fail to realize, distinguish or accept that the free market industrialist serves human needs with positive outcome in this robust material world in which we seem to exist. All of these propensities have probabilities of significant negative, unintended consequences.

What is "normal"?

There exists a great danger to the exercise of free will, liberty, and truth: All industrialization must be relegated to Green's definition of healing Mother Earth. In the top-down dogmatic Political-Green world, human life is relegated into a new balance and human suffering (your economic struggle to survive) may have to be part of the new balance before balance can be reached and sustained and Mother Earth thus "healed."  Beware: Political-Green's ends always justify their means. Political-Green's assume more than Green truth conveys. Your existence in this dimension is therefore expendable -- go off some place and die if you do not join them, so they do not have to watch your suffering or know your pain -- is their implied top-down dogmatic political message, often unsupported by anything beyond mantra, good feelings, and an assumption of unchallenged trust in the movement even in the face of scientific facts which speak to alternative realities. Your right to collectively choose life and prosperity, especially in third world countries, must be relegated to their higher cause of healing Mother Earth as the Greens' dictate.  No one really ever questions politically what are "normal" aberrations in the cycles of nature.  Instead everything is reported to be running out of balance on the edge of catastrophe and its all mankind's fault. Fear is a wondrously great way to control people. 1500 year sun spot cycles which return like clock work to reheat the earth for the past eons, proven out through scientific explorations, are simply ignored. 

One does not appease the Green by saying, “but I am an environmentalist too."  Perhaps you believe in conservation, especially clean water and clean air, a chemical free environment, sustainability of agriculture, diversity of life, protections for the rain forests, a balanced healthy food supply, and that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant but essential for life as we know it, or that carbon dioxide has self-regulated before and can do it again with offsetting plant-life growth which feeds on the carbon dioxide, a fact of scientific reality in this dimension. This statement would constitute Green dogma heresy even though supported by scientific fact. You would run afoul of Green's trendy mantra in its current iteration (Oct 2008).You would be rejected as outside the high-most inner loop of enlightenment. “If somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that green house gas that’s being emitted," President, Barack Hussein Obama II. Greens are not coming after "you" of course, so why  worry?

The roots of the environmental movement or Green movement evolved from many voices that have grown more strident over time from writers such as theologian, mystic, Trappist Monk Thomas Merton.

A notable problem with any mystical experience is the "probability of error” in translating mystic observations back into real world applications. While no high priests, clerics, pastors or rabbis of any mainstream western religion (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) yet opens itself to debate from outside its own divine charter and rule set, within its charter various degrees of debate are allowed since its main charter is not placed at risk.  The Disciples of Christ wrote differing experiences with Christ, where even the Gnostic pushes his nose under the tent to say good morning to their mainstream. The Jews place much weight on the Talmudic process of debating all outcomes and leaning on the weight of their Sages and now offer a window to outsiders as a hope for mutual reason, "God is far too great to be understood by any one particular religious movement or direction. No ideology in the Jewish world is big enough to understand or contain the vastness that is God." (Rabbi Adin Steinsalts 1937 -  ). While pre-reform Islam struggles within its still unreformed divine charter, scholars (respected "broadly educated" worldly persons) within their ranks work to bring understanding and change to their own kind.

These old western religions as intolerant as they may be, compared to the Green's greater intolerance seem to respect others learned voices within their ranks and provide some outlets for opposing views as they evolve. Under the Green's current divine political charter, Greens seem to have not passed the "Inquisitional group-think posturing" stage of religious evolution as yet. The Greens seem stuck between two worlds, one composed of scientific enlightenment (conjecture, observation, and proof) and the other world, divine mystic knowing without also recognizing, collectively debating and researching the possibility of error. Green's failure to tolerate the notion that error may exist, empirically places them in a very dangerous tyrannical mind-set with dangerous ramifications for our Western personal liberties, free speech,  freedoms, and common wealth, especially third world countries on the brink of survival.

Once "error" is introduced to the process it flows at ever-accelerating rates creating a supercharged group-think mentality of suppression of individual liberty and individual expression of will and a form of political correctness that takes on more and more of the undesirable characteristics of intolerance at an accelerating rate. This is always the risk and problem associated with a movement becoming a religion, becoming a political party.

An important recent "2009 Irving Kristol Lecture" speech related to the theme of the above video on the American Form of Government, delivered March 11th authored by Charles Murray on the topic of American Exceptionalism, on family, community, vocation, and faith of a people in control of their own destiny: The Happiness of the People.

Thank you for granting me your kind attention. The fact that you have invested your time to read to this depth in this site optimistically suggests to me we are all going to somehow make life on this planet work after all. Peace be with you.