Arizona Western College - El Matador Yearbook (Yuma, AZ)

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things. b El Matador: Because Leo is more of your aggressive person. He is supposed to be a dominate person while the Pisces is more of your dreamer, your thinker. And I had you as a Pisces. Ahearn: Can a Leo be practical? El Matador: Yes, very much so, to extremes. Ahearn: You see, I have recently started to raise my own cow, grow my own cucumbers and gather eggs from my own chickens. I hope to be self-contained, you know. El Matador: Are you very much into growing you own food or do you want to be self-sufficient? Ahearn: Not 100 per cent. I am going to do this. Not everything. I am too practical to spend all my time grow- ing corn when I can buy 10 ears for a dollar. I am going to grow fun things right now: watermelons, squash, pick- les, tomatoes, and later on I will get a few more things goingg but I have to work. I donit have that much time. I have to work making dollars to pay this thing Chousej off. But I like to do this. I drink fresh milk from the cow's tits. Not our own cow, but there is a lady down the road that has a cow where we can get our two or three gallons a day. Also, we eat our own fresh meat. El Matador: From your own cattle? Ahearn: I raise about 15 a year. So, I eat about three a year, and I sell about three to my brother, and one here and one there. It is not a money-making thing really, it is fung I come out even. I know there is no unnecessary hormones in the meat and the same with the chickens. They just eat regular chicken feed and they give you nice big eggs andI don't worry about cholestrol. But, this is a Mecca out here. El Matador: Thank you, Mr. Ahearn. Ahearn: Thank You.

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Ahearn: No, they have always been there. The New- man Club has been there. The students Desert Rat Club of the LDS Church has been there. There are two new ones, the Christian Science club, which began last year. I think one or two people are involved. The clubs are very small. The Mishpucha club is a very small group. There is another one, Matadors for Christ. -I probably should not say this. If they knew what matadors ment, they might not use it to describe their club. It trans- lates out killers for Christ. , El Matador: Matador means killer? Ahearn: Yes, if they only knew what it meant. It is a fundamentalists group. The groups are all small, though. I don't think any of them exceed ten. They might have 20 on the roster. I might be wrong. I think it is the efforts of one or two adults pushing these groups. This is not significant in my opnion. El Matador: What is your opinion about the swing toward unitarianism in recent years? Ahearn: The Unitarian Universalist is a combination of two groups. They are the most liberal semi-organized group in the country. They have more meetings than church services on Sundays. This is a tendency. The word free thinker was used in the last century but that has bad connotations. El Matador: So does Unitarian Universalist? It used to be the heathens, the pagans, the Quakers, and the Uni- tarians all equated together. Ahearn: Right. And also with a trend towards the Unitarian Universalist. They are growing. They are a tolerant group of people. I have met with them. I have talked with them a few times at their little meeting hall in the old LDS Church. They are most tolerant. You can take any stand you want and no one is going to beat you up for it. What you believe is what you believe. We are not here to make you believe what we believe be- cause everyone of us believes something different or maybe we have no beliefs. El Matador: That's right. They are still searching, arenit they? Ahearn: They are looking. Also they are searching and they are using reason. El Matador: Do they have a Bible as such? Ahearn: No. They do, however, recognize the Bible as being a good book, but they also see as good books the Bhogavad Gita, I Ching, Tao Te China, Rig Vedas, and.the Analects of Confucius. They are looking for truth. And damn it, what is the truth? We are all looking for the truth. Plato says, I don't know what the truth is, but I know what it is not.-'S He said also that after 50 years of teaching, I do not know what it is. I do not know what it is either. El Matador: Do you think students today feel that being outside of the church is knowing what the truth is? Ahearn: Yes, but they are honest. They say, I donit know. I am confused. I was brought up this way. I had to go to this church, this synagogue, or this temple. I want to think for myself. I don't think they did the job and I have to find out for myself. El Matador: What part in this change does the Com- parative Religions class have? Ahearn: We tend to give it a philosophical approach. I mean it is a philosophy course. The most we can do in there is study Hinduism, Buddhism, the religions of China, Judism, Christianity, and Islam. The most we can do is attempt to get a good sniff at the basic philosophies of these religions and behind any of these religions is a basic philosophy. What did the founder intend for those who were going to follow this religion? As with Buddha, just living in peace with each other. The kids today have nothing on Buddha. They are all saying the same thing as Buddha. Don't hurt anybody, donit wound anybody, their feelings, their bodies, just live in peace and love one another. Christ said the same thing. Zoroaster said the same thing. El Matador: There are so many different religions ,in the world. How can we pick the right one? Ahearn: Do you have to pick? El Matador: For salvation-sake, according to the Christian Church, yes. Salvation, preaches the Christ- ian Church, is not going to hell and not being damned. Ahearn: Do you know that the Christian Church is the only church that teaches a hell? The Jews do not have a hell. The Moslems do not have a hell, the Bud- dhas have no hell, the Chinese have no hell, and the Indians, have no hell. Only the Christians teach a hell. They do so because of Plato and Augustine. El Matador: Well, how did the Christians get a hell and the rest none? After all, they all did come from the central religion? Ahearn: Well, there were several concepts that came out of Hinduism. The concept of trinity, the m.other, God, and concept of salvation, but no concept of eternal damnation. There was a temporary delay in getting into nirvana, but not of perpetual, you know, you can't get in. It began with the Manicheans back in the second cent- UTY A.D. 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