You would be welcome to accompany me
I have heard that one extremely confident tramp had enormous nerve. He had just completed a very large meal in a swanky restaurant when he announced to the manager, "My good man, I have really enjoyed your food, but unfortunately I cannot afford to pay for any of it at all. I have not a penny to my name. Now don't get angry. I am by profession a beggar, as you may see. I happen to be an extremely talented beggar too. I can go out and within one hour get the money I owe you for this meal. Naturally though, you cannot trust me to come back, and this I fully understand. You would be most welcome to accompany me, but can a man like you, a well-known restaurant owner, afford to be seen with a man of my calibre? No. So I have, sir, the perfect solution to our little problem. I will wait here and you go out and beg until you have the cost of this meal."
If you keep company with a beggar, you will become a beggar. He will suggest in a thousand and one ways to you to become like him.
At the risk of making a lot of people angry, and making a lot of preachers look foolish, I feel prompted to clear up a basic misunderstanding concerning the use of male/female and man/woman in the Bible. A close study with an open heart will show clearly that male/man is symbolic of the spirit and female/woman is used to mean the mind or the flesh. (The mind is flesh.) When the Apostle Paul said that it was not allowed for a "woman" to speak in church he was referring to the fact that matters of the Spirit do not originate in the mind. In the Book of Job, the passage about Job's "wife" telling him to "curse God and die" is nothing more than a momentary pity party. Job was feeling sorry for himself and the thought of suicide crossed his mind. The story of Lot's "wife" turning to look back at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was a longing in Lot's mind to return to the familiar rather than trust the guiding Spirit. The "woman" in the Book of the Revealing of God's Spirit in his children (called Revelation, which is an invented word) represents the mess which we are in because of "thinking" instead of listening. And now to the source of all of our sexist misery: Adam said, "The woman you gave me caused me to sin." Simple enough. Adam had been given a choice. Oops!
People are people.....and are kindred spirits not only with each other.....but with animals and plants.... all things exist together in a wonderful harmony.... We may all practice different "religions"....but down deep it is the same higher spirit within all of us....
"Those who know others are wise, those who know themselves are enlightened." ~Tao Te Ching~
China is one of the ancientmost countries, maybe the most ancient: has the ancientmost scriptures, the longest tradition: of religion -- Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism -- has created great enlightened people, has always lived in a religious way. And what happened? Suddenly all the Bibles, Korans, Dhammapadas, Vedas, Tao Te Ching, Analects of Confucius -- all disappeared. And people started carrying a small red book written by Mao Zedong; that became their Bible. Suddenly God no more exists, the soul is just nonsense, meditation a wastage of time; prayer, foolishness. Temples toppled down, monasteries evaporated: within a few years, all was gone.