The Recitation of the Fox

By Strange Animal

Sometimes a fox walks out of the woods, and sometimes a fox appears in a vision and explains that RELIGION DOESN'T HAVE TO BE WEIRD AND COMPLICATED. Instead, it can be SUSTAINABLE!

In this series of recitations, a mysterious fox discourses on practical and spiritual questions based on reason and humankind's current situation. The fox argues clearly and humorously that depending on stories from the past can be problematic, and that looking at Things That Happen is the best way to interact with reality.

In these pages, you'll learn:

- Why sufficiency is better than efficiency.
- Why modern life is so unsatisfying.
- How to make a delicious soup.
- What kinds of prayers God can answer.
- How to start a very easy garden.
- Who your real family are.
- The nature of the Spooky Man and Spooky Lady.
- The names of the rulers of the world.
- And much, much more.

One part manual for practical living, one part philosophical treatise, "The Recitation of the Fox" is an inspiring collection of important ideas about how to relate to one another, how to relate to the world, and how to relate to God. Read it, copy it, give it to your friends.

Once you've heard the Recitation, you'll never think the same way again!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Strange Animal
• Release date: Jun 23, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301846450

Strange Animal

I saw a fox once, and he said some really interesting things.

Book preview

The Recitation

of the Fox

by A Fox

Copyright 2013 Strange Animal Publications

Smashwords Edition

Thanks for downloading this Ebook! This work is protected by a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

DEDICATION

Dedicated to Nicholas Cooper. The fox speaks to you, my wonderful son.

CONTENTS

1 – An Overview of the Fox’s Recitation

2 – Things Are Getting Different

3 – Sufficiency

4 – Family

5 – Soup

6 – Mystery

7 – Prophecy

8 – Consideration

9 – Nature

10 – Absolutes

11 – Critters and Kings

12 – Different

13 – God

14 – Aware

15 – Knowing

16 – Questions

17 – Pause

18 – Efficiency

19 – Thinking

20 – Trouble

21 – Church

22 – Fear

23 – Better

24 – Information

25 – Thoughts

26 – End

0

I had this vision that a red fox came out of the wound on Jesus’ side. This is what the fox told me.

1

You’ve had enough time and you’ve percolated long enough. It’s time to start figuring out that religion doesn’t have to be stupid. It’s supposed to make you happy, or at least satisfied, and if it’s not doing that, then what is it any good for? Let me lay a few things out for you, and you get the words out there, and you’ll see what happens. A lot of people might get into the idea that there’s a better way, or at least some smart ideas.

Before you start, I want you to forget about all that stuff you learned about God, and the Bible and Jesus and Mohammed and the Buddha and and and. A lot of it is nice, but so much of it is irrelevant, and makes people crazy. I mean, really, does it really work that well, when you think about it? I’m going to be talking about God, but for this to work, you really need to start from scratch, to rid yourself of your preconceptions and take a new look at some things.

Okay then. Onward.

What you need to know is that it’s possible to live a life with purpose and satisfaction based on some ideas that are pretty reasonable. This isn’t some kind of mystical nonsense or trite garbage like the kind that gets peddled by people with their pictures all over the place, who constantly talk about I this and my that and me this and over here, look at this. This is just a few points that make sense, especially given how messed up the world is at the moment.

To begin with, it’s helpful to consider that things are messed up. The world is imperfect, if not downright rude, and saying that everything happens for a reason or you create your own reality is infantile and pointless for 90% of the Earth’s population. Look, I don’t need a laundry list of proofs to illustrate this point. It should be pretty obvious by now.

It’s not all bad, of course; there’s a whole lot of goodness out there. There are amazing feelings, incredible experiences to be had, enlightening things to read, delicious things to eat, and the people in your life who make you happy.

A reasonable way to live life is to try to maximize the goodness, and mitigate the crap. Some nice, easy principles can help with this– it’s a worldview issue. Does your worldview maximize the goodness in your life, or does it at least help shovel through some of the nonsense? If not, it’s no good; you need a new one.

Let’s start with God. (Yeah, I’m going to use the word God. Don’t forget what I already told you– forget your preconceptions about what you’ve already learned about God.) The thing is, God is All Good, but God isn’t all-powerful. Obviously, if there was an all-powerful God, then little kids wouldn’t have to dig through garbage dumps to get enough to eat while rich jerks in limousines feast on endangered species. If there’s a God– and there is a God– the only reasonable explanation for the horror of the world is that God isn’t able to do much about it.

Yeah, yeah, don’t trust anybody who tells you they know why evil happens when God is All Good. I call bullshit on that old canard– instead, don’t trust anybody who won’t give you a good explanation. I’m not going to go into mythology and the creation and who created whom and how many angels are around. You can believe whatever you want as far as that goes; those damnable stories are fantastic if you can use them properly, but they’ve also caused a ton of problems, so let’s just not go there for now.

Suffice to say, God isn’t all powerful. However, God does want good things to happen, so God pops in as much as possible. It’s not always through miracles, though those do happen; it’s mostly through everyday experiences that go right, and make peoples’ lives better. I’m talking about genuine happiness, here.

"Oh, you’ll say, but what about people who are happy killing people? Or people who are happy exploiting other people and making money from them?" Shut up, you’re just being difficult. You know what I mean, you’re just trying to be a wise guy, you. You all know what’s good and what’s bad; some of you just choose to ignore it.

Anyhow, if you proceed from the fact that an All Good God exists who isn’t always able to help but does everything possible to make things better for people, things start making a lot more sense.

"But what about Creation? Didn’t God create all of this? If so, doesn’t that mean that God created the nastiness of the world?" Wait, hold up– this is one of those places to forget what you’ve been told. God didn’t create this world you live in. YOU did. You humans, as a whole, are to blame for your own ills, especially when you’re working in the name of God but going against God’s desire to see all of you as happy as possible. The god who created the world and currently has most of the power in it, that’s a false god based on your inability to just leave other people alone.

God wants you to be happy, and has given you some tools you can use to try to live a happy life. For instance, one of the most powerful tools you have is your family. In fact, the only true church is family. What do I mean by that? I don’t mean your mom and dad and baby, necessarily; I mean the people you choose to include as your family. It’s a moveable category, not based on genetics, although it certainly can include your genetic relatives. One good way to look at it is that your family is made up of all of the people who you’d want to say goodbye to if you died.

Oh, and the marriage thing: marriage is definitely good, because everyone has the intrinsic right to choose one other unrelated person to be legally recognized as family. It doesn’t matter if that person is the same sex or not; all that matters is that you should be able to say to the government, this person is, to me, the same as me. This isn’t to say that you have to do this, but you should be able to if you want.

You also do rituals with your family. These are the best, most religious rituals; they could be going out for dinner, or taking a class, or giving the baby a bath, or sitting around watching TV. Sure, you can find holiness by going to a Mass or meditating, but it’s easier and more valuable to spend time with your family. Going to a Mass or meditating become way holier when you do them with family members.

(Oh, and I should mention that if there’s one thing that makes God happy, it’s when you figure out the easiest way to do something.)

So this family, who you may not get along with