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An Easter Message to Everyone

Christianity is a great.

If you don’t like being a Christian you can simply stop, nobody hunts you down and separates your head from your shoulders. If you want you can stand outside a church and curse it this very day and that would be acceptable. The incredible part is you can go in that same church tomorrow and be welcomed by the pastor.

The execution and rebirth of Jesus represents the hope we all have for ourselves.

At its heart Christianity is a religion that asks us nothing more than to do to others as we would have done to ourselves.

That’s why I like it.

Have a Great Easter.

Oriana Fallaci

Oriana Fallaci (29 June 1929 – 15 September 2006) was an Italian journalist, author, and political interviewer. A former partisan during World War II, she had a long and successful journalistic career.

She has interviewed many internationally known leaders and celebrities such as the Dalai Lama, Henry Kissinger, the Shah of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, Willy Brandt, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Walter Cronkite, Muammar al-Gaddafi, Federico Fellini, Sammy Davis Jr, Nguyen Cao Ky, Yasir Arafat, Indira Gandhi, Alexandros Panagoulis, Archbishop Makarios III, Golda Meir, Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, Haile Selassie, Sean Connery and Lech Walesa.

After retirement, she returned to the spotlight after writing a series of articles and books critical of Islam and Arabs that aroused both support as well as controversies and accusations of racism and Islamophobia.

Geert Wilders

Geert Wilders is a member of the Dutch Parliament and head of the Freedom Party. In 2008 he released “Fitna,” a controversial film about the Koran and jihadist violence. Wilders was condemned as an anti-Muslim agitator but also hailed as a defender of Western values and free speech. In January, a Dutch court ordered Wilders prosecuted for allegedly inciting hatred against Islam. Last month he was invited to screen “Fitna” at Westminster, but the British government barred him from entering the country.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born in Somalia and raised a devout Muslim. In 1992, Ayaan was married off by her father in a ceremony which she refused to attend. In order to escape this marriage, she fled to the Netherlands where she won asylum, and eventually citizenship. After earning a degree in political science at the University of Leiden, she served as an elected member of the Dutch parliament for three years.

She has since become an active critic of fundamentalist Islam, an advocate for women’s rights and a leader in the campaign to reform Islam. Her willingness to speak out and her abandonment of the Muslim faith as currently defined have made her a target for violence and threats of death by Islamic extremists.

The Hard Hunt for Insight

Perspective. Insight. These are rare and difficult things. There is nothing so rare as the original idea, the fresh perspective. These things require effort.

Frankly, I have to admit days go by where I don’t give a problem enough consideration. For the most part the issues I confront on a daily basis are reproductions of the same problems I’ve faced in the past and the solutions are automatically acted out in robotic fashion.

Instinctual responses are an easy habit to fall into, we all only have so much time. Methods and approaches which have served us well in the past can become our master. Over time we no longer consider a problem, we react and move on.

It is a intellectually lazy trap, one I have turned my consciousness to and given some consideration. This isn’t the first time.

Approaching an old problem actively is labor, and more often than not the old solution still remains reasonable. So am I wasting time? Occasionally things do change and a new solution to an old problem exists, so in those cases the answer is certainly no.

In the end you have to look inside yourself, for me it is a frightening prospect to realize I spend so much time not engaged in original thought. The sad reality is that for much of our lives we find out a way to do something that works and never look back.

Let me conclude by saying this. Original thought is hard work, I have to make a conscious effort to engage in it and seldom am I rewarded with anything that even remotely resembles a new idea.

My advice is this. Take a problem and study it, make time to study it. New problems or old pick it up and turn it over, study it from all angles. Put it down and pick it up again, be patient. Don’t expect instant gratification or an orgasmic epiphany, it’s a problem and if the solution were easy they would have given it a different name.

Avoid the prejudice you may have, the desire to react instinctively.

Insight and original thought are far and few between, they are nothing like lunch and dinner that come once a day. Just remain aware that you do need to take the time.

Good luck hunting.