That’s the nicest brush off I’ve ever received!
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Really??? I don’t discriminate between smoked/preserved fish products.
I agree. I had 2lbs when I went to NYC for Thanksgiving- expensive though (along with everything else) 
The person did give me nearly 5oz of of very poorly scraped skin for free, so I defintiely got at least 2solid oz of free lox from that- total consumer surplus 
One of the best presents I’ve ever gotten came from my boyfriend at the time when I was turning 18. I lived in Richmond, VA, and it was not at that time particularly ethnically diverse. He was a southern Catholic school boy. (Editing to say that he was not a Catholic schoolboy, lol, but rather that he’d gone to Catholic school as a boy. He was a college student at the time.)
On my birthday I came home from school to find a box wrapped in golden foil paper with a big bow sitting on my bed, which contained lox and a dozen bagels from a Jewish deli he’d found downtown. I was overjoyed.
Still, it was hard sharing it with him. Probably for both of us!
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I literally started eating the fish as soon as I walked out the store. I probably looked like a complete idiot shoving handfuls of lox into my mouth while walking down the street 
I found a Ukrainian market with AMAZING smoked/ pickled fish and pickles for very reasonable prices only 2.5 miles from school I went last week and ended up eating an entire smoked mackerel on the way back my budget and kidneys are in serious danger…
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My wife’s family is Ukrainian. I have pickles, pirogies, cabbage rolls, borscht, and cookies coming out my ears.
I’ll happily take any surplus pickles
If I can wrestle them away from my wife, I’ll gladly give you some.
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That’s not just A Ukrainian market. That is The Ukrainian market.
My sister used to get all kinds of neat little specialty items from there. I’m sure I’ve had that smoked fish a few times.
I simply can’t. The driving over in that area is maddeningly kinetic and confusing for me.
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You’re talking about Nataliya’s right?
I’m pretty sure. There aren’t many Ukrainian markets around.
Although, after mapping it a little, it looks like it’s just across the river from my buddy’s shop in Homestead.
Murray avenue?
Yep. That’s the one! 
I had never had Ukranian food until I met a friend in Minneapolis a few weeks ago, and we went to Kramzuks Deli. OMG, it was so good.
For all of you that have spoken earnestly and honestly in this thread, thanks. For the rest of you, may you all spend the rest of your negative karma ridden lives stuck in the Wichita Falls Athletic Club low bar squatting while Lucitoe makes you stare at the floor six feet in front of you.
Think I may have mentioned at one point that I was going through Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training. Well, I got about eighty percent done with it before I figured out it was a cult.
I’m a little slow.
But, I did learn a lot of shit about chakras, and got turned on to that cat Paramahansa Yogananda that I mentioned a few posts up the thread. He wrote Autobiography of a Yogi, and it’s great reading. He also wrote The Yoga of Jesus:Understanding the Hidden Teachings of the Gospels.
Those two books, and this documentary,
kind of changed my thought process about Judeo-Christian religions.
I always had a problem with Christianity because it seemed like Jesus was a god and that didn’t gibe with one of those pesky commandments. I also felt like I had a relationship with god, so who needed Jesus?
Then, of course, my brother passed and I realized there was no god.
Well, here we are nineteen years later and I have read a bunch of shit and learned a bunch of shit, and lo and behold, I do believe in god. There’s just no way this universe came about without some divine design. Plants, flowers, gravity, space, come on man, there is definitely a divine design.
Then, that Yogananda cat went and fucked all my shit up. He says the only way to heaven is through Christ.
WTF?
Well, turns out, he believes the Bible is a guide for initiates - Christ’s disciples - and it’s all metaphor. I’m paraphrasing here, so don’t hold me to this.
So the seven churches of Revelations are the seven chakras - yeah, I know. And the only way to heaven is through Christ, the crown chakra, the seventh chakra, and it’s Christ consciousness.
If you get to that, then you realize we are all connected, that heaven is within, and you get to live in heaven on earth.
Okay, I’m going to go back to reading my Tarot cards now.
Peace.
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Slight correction here: the concept is that Jesus is God, not just a god. God, Christ and The Holy Spirit are all separate entities of one divine being, this the concept of The Trinity of Three-In-One. The gist of Christianity is that Jesus is the aspect of God making himself human, experiencing what we experience, fulfilling the Old Testament prophecies of The Messiah, and that through a relationship with Christ we gain a deeper relationship with God, because as stated, they’re different entities of the same being.
Just wanted to clear that up. Love the discussions in here!
Nice post brother. I was speaking about my younger self. I went to a Lutheran High School and had to take Old Testament and New Testament, year long classes on the Lutheran interpretation of the abomination known as the King James Version of The Bible.
I also took a Comparative Religion class at Oregon State University taught be a dude that I thought was really cool, Dr. Marcus Borg. Turns out he wasn’t a slouch,
But I never knew that. He was just a very bright man in my eyes, one of my favorite classes in college.
Here’s his obit from the LA Times.
I find it interesting that he challenged the literal view of Jesus.
So, here we go for discussion sake,
According to whom?
As my boy Yogananda would say, the bible is literal for the proletariat, but a guide for initiates. I’m not saying he is right, but it makes sense to me.
To me, the one divine being you speak of is me, and you, and him, and her. We all have the seed of divinity within us (God, we are made in his image), and through the word (spirit) we learn to live well and achieve Christ consciousness, then we live every day in heaven.
Through my yoga teacher training, I became somewhat familiar with Sikhism, and they believe all roads lead to the same god, that no road is better than any other.
And, don’t get me started on Neil deGrasse Tyson and entanglement theory, or the Buddhists belief that you should treat everyone as if they were your mother because in a past life they were, or in a future life they will be.
Going to go play with my Ouija board now.
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Comment without any intent to flatter: I appreciate your ability to engage in discussion without intense debate. I feel like I could easily chat with you.
My boy CS Lewis says it best for me:
“Now that is the first thing to get clear. What God begets is God; just as what man begets is man. What God creates is not God; just as what man makes is not man. That is why men are not Son’s of God in the sense that Christ is. They may be like God in certain ways, but they are not things of the same kind. They are more like statues or pictures of God.”
Commenting on biblical translation: I will be the first to admit that the words of the bible need to very, very carefully considered, because it was written in a different language in a different time under a different context. Language is intrinsically tied to culture, so the absolute intent of a passage can get “lost in translation”. The first time I realized this was when I read the book called “The Lost World of Genesis One” by John H. Walton. Fascinating book, and I highly recommend it!
I’m sure there’s other things I missed commenting on in your response, and may not have even addressed it properly, but I’m a simple man with little intellectual intelligence, who thinks with his heart and not his head. Just like you, I’m on a journey of discovery, and I really appreciate hearing your stance on things and making me think, despite the fact our views may differ.
Technically I have had quite a bit, but the technicalities are that it was regular food made by my co-worker/buddy who is Ukrainian so it could have been mac&cheeze but it still qualifies. (I know, it’s a stretch.)
But I also consider breaking bread and meals together a spiritual experience, so there’s some relevance to the thread!
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I think this may be a case like Michelle Obama and George Bush - we agree on intent but differ on policy.
Okay, it doesn’t really fit.
Entanglement theory - we all came from the cosmic dust of the big boom, once connected, always connected. You raise me up, you raise yourself up. My brother is an avowed atheist, but lives by the Golden Rule.
Liar.
Christopher Hitchens said, again, I paraphrase, when we focus on our differences, we have problems. When we recognize that we are all in this together, we harmonize.
We both believe in God. So, we really aren’t that different.
My Kundalini Yoga Instructor Mahan Rishi made everything a mediation. So we didn’t have lunch, we had eating mediation (and the psychopath made us all eat vegan in silence).
So, I have sleep meditation, then a shower meditation, a coffee meditation…blah blah blah.
I want to come to the Burgh and have a Primanti Brothers meditation - and, as you told me before, there are better places, so I also want to go meditate there.
We’re connecting, that’s relevant.
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As with most things Yinzer, there is a regional variation on the traditional “Ohmmmm” when having a Primanti’s meditation. It’s “Ohmanthatsgood!”.
I honestly can’t get behind Pirmanti’s. For me, Fried foods and mayo = destroyed toilet