LEGALIZATION OF MARIJUANA or GUNJA IS ORDAINED

Mendocino, California Ready To Demand Change In U.S. Drug Policy

by Aldous Baldus McGivney for CPW News Services 

     Unlike the Ethiopian Zion Coptic Church’s leader, Thomas Francis Reilly, whose Jamaica-based Florida church with what it calls "an Embassy" on Star Island in Biscayne Bay, Miami and whose ganja, the Jamaican name for it, also known as hemp or marijuana, was a sacramental element in their worship,  the Mendocino Christians don’t smoke dope.   This new "reformed" Christian fellowship is much different from Reilly's reefer rolling, pot-puffing, Hail Mary Jane reciting church-goers.

Ethiopian Zion Coptic Church's leader Thomas F. Reilly or
"Brother Louv"

     “Just as the Lord’s Supper required the grains of the good earth as both bread and wine to be celebrated, so we include gunja in our blessed communion,” said the leader of Mendocino County's  Reformed Mennonite Coptic Church, Walter “Brother Beaming” Barnett.  "You mean ganja," I said. "Reily and the Jamiacans call it ganja.  I call it gunja," said Barnett.

     “Thomas Francis Reilly’s group made billions of dollars from the smuggling of  marijuana and even contributed hundreds of millions to the government of Jamaica…..Jamaica….you know…..’Come to Jamaica. It’ll be alright,’” said Barnett.

     “Well, when Walter Potter, a Miami reporter took cameras to Reilly’s Coptic Church compound on Star Island it all backfired.  The children were sitting around smoking gunja.  That was when the church lost any public sympathy,” said Barnett whose Mendocino church imports and locally grows its own marijuana,  does not distribute it outside of its immediate religious usage, doesn't sell it, nor charge for its use, nor smoke it, nor allow children to partake of it. 

     “How stupid can you get?” asked Barnett whose church will only allow children who pass an age of accountability to have the Lord’s Supper.  “We know that some children are capable of understanding the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper about the time they are post-pubescent, but maturity and accountability is something that changes in the culture over time.  Like when girls married at 13 or 14, but no longer” he said.  “So we adjust our confirmation classes to the legal age for drinking which is 21 years old in California,” said Barnett.

     “Do girls in your church marry at 13 or 14?” I asked.

     “What are you a pedophile?” snapped Brother Beaming.

     Barnett, a former missionary to Africa came to his theological conclusions concerning marijuana while literally ministering in the field. 

     “Yes it’s true.  I was working on a translation in a native unwritten tongue of the Gospel of John.  My translators were helping me to translate the passage where Jesus said “I am the bread of life.”  They said to me ‘what is bread?’  I said, ‘you know.  Bread.  Made from wheat and baked in an oven or in a pot.’  They said, ‘we don’t know what that is.  Our common communal meal is a bowl of modovu.  That was the name of a tasty pâté that they shared in a communal bowl.  Later I ran across a tribe that raised marijuana, just at the Egyptians and Ethopians have done for thousands of years, but they put the hemp in their modovu on their high holy days.  I came to realize that when Jesus said  ‘I am the bread of life’ he meant ‘I am whatever God has given you to sustain you…..the pâté of life applied to modovu that was about 40% gunja.   Jesus meant that, too, and if that is a better communicator of his sustaining power than wheat bread and fermented wine, then good.   Just as he used bread from wheat or wine from fermented grapes with its ten or fifteen percent alcohol level, so he doesn’t mind a little gunja, which nowhere has the image of Caesar on it.  Now if methamphetamines were the staple of the Nazi soldier during World War II because IG Farben had synthesized it in the laboratory and the soldiers were energized by it for their killing blitz kreigs could I drop that into the pâté?  No, because it’s not a natural part of life…. a harmless part of God’s sustenance.  I mean even grape juice ferments naturally on its own, but not synthesized drugs.  Those must be used also in a religious context....as a tool of science and humanity and within an ethical framework of 'first do no harm'," said Brother Beaming.

     "I decided then and there that wherever I pastored, the Lord’s Supper would be made up of whatever sustained the people in their daily life if it was harmless….and that I would not personally profit from it and the church would not profit from it like the Coptics of Star Island, Florida.  The love of money is the root of all evil, but not the roots of the wheat plant or grape vine or gunja plant.   I decided that our worship would remind people that by partaking  of communion together  God sustains us.  On the other hand, I would feel awful if a parishioner dropped dead after taking a Nazified communion wafer laced with a heart stopping dose of methamphetamines.  We leave that to the Hell’s Angels and other snaggle-toothed demon dogs.   To me that’s sheer evil.  I can’t grow meth in the church courtyard like I can gunja or like the early monks noticing the power of coffee beans to energize their goat herds,” said Barnett who said that he wished his church could grow coffee beans, too.  "Whatever sustains us.  That eliminates Hemlock wine right off the bat.  We are not a Jim Jones Peoples’ Temple or Heaven’s Gate cult,” said Barnett.

     Contributions to the church are used for the cultivation of healthy, organic, all natural food products including gunja through micro-loans to families in theThird-World's underdeveloped nations.  Half of the benevolence budget goes to these life sustaining loans and half to healthcare which is available to all families practicing birth-control.    “We love kids, but believe people have to act responsibly.  We're not rabbits.  If another Walter Potter came with a camera crew, the only thing he would see is peace loving and caring people breaking bread together each Sunday in shared meditation on a day that the Lord has set aside for spiritual renewal and peaceful reflection,” said Barnett, aka “Brother Beaming”, who celebrates the fact that the church's eight Sunday services are all standing room only.  Though smoking is not prohibited, no one is ever seen smoking cigarettes nor gunja on the church grounds.  "Given my strong teaching about the risks of inhailing any kind of smoke, people just avoid its as a quaint, but rediculous, habit," said Brother Beaming who said that he had a long-standing relationship with many powerful people who distributed Lucky Strike cigarettes to the U.S. military only to deny them healthcare for smoking related diseases as veterans.

     “Contributions are strong and even contributions from the non-member community is substantial.  If the government wants to shut us down, we will go to court and fight them by standing as the nit-wit Star Islanders had done on the U.S. Constitution, but with real substance and conviction, not a charade to hide drug smuggling.  We call them the Star Islanders  because they starred in their own dim-witted demise, but we will use, as the Star Island Coptics did, the First Amendment and its razor sharp teeth  combined with evidence of the U.S. power elites' hypocritical drug policies and practices.  Key members of the Cushing, Taft, Cabot, Lodge, Roosevelt, Kennedy and other families will come out of the closet to help us win our case by confirming the hypocracy and to slam-dunk a Supreme Court decision.  We're counting on Justice Roberts to give another example of enlightened leadership to a reversal of the insanity and embarassment of the nation's inept drug policies that infringe on religious and scientific sensibilities.   We already give away 95% of our annual budget to pro-bono health programs of legitimate non-profit hospitals across California and we grow our communion bread-loaf grains, grinding them into flour and meal on real grindstones, right here in Mendocino County.  John D. Rockefellar's food initiatives pale in comparison.  Our fields are inconspicuous among the medical marijuana crops.  We also import our own gunja quietly through our young missionaries who like the Mormons spend two years in foreign mission fields on bicycles evangelizing, educating and administering the micro-loan program, returning every two years with a year's worth of gunja for the church's communion needs.  Between import and local production the Lord provides  as he did in the Biblical story of  the loaves and fishes,” said Barnett who maintains an 80 hour work week and makes $39,500 a year as the church’s pastor, but also cuts the church's grass and cleans the restrooms in his spare time.  “Our budget of $48,851,341. 08 per year is audited by the world's most respected accounting firm, not by  corrupt dingbats like Arthur Anderson who watched over Ken Lay's ENRON debacle as he was being seriously considered as George W. Bush's Energy Secretary," said Brother Beaming noting that fossil fuels are doomed as a sustainable energy source.
       "Our charitable giving goes essentially for healthcare for the needy, for food....gunja and butter, not guns and butter,” said parishioner Susan Longoria O’Donnell Nitti.  “That helps a ton of people and everyone looks forward to the celebration of communion Sunday after Sunday.  Our only problem is finding physicians who will provide the same example that Brother Beaming does operating on a 5% margin,” said the pleasant church member and mother of four who joined the church after her children were born, but who counsels them to "reproduce only yourself."
      "We think that wisdom dictates having only two children per couple....gay, lesbian or straight," said Nitti who favors the church's Sacrament of Faith Unioning which replaced marriage or civil unions.  "The question of abortions rarely ever comes up," she admitted. 

     Dr. June Smithers and Dr. Frank Freppingham provide healthcare at half the going-rate for people needing non-elective surgery,” said Brother Beaming.

   When asked if people came to get high on marijuana on Sundays or to worship God, he said "No".   "The small amount of alcohol in communion wine is a tactile reminder of the warmth of the Holy Spirit." Similarily, the gentle intoxication provided by the communion loaves of various Reformed Mennonite Coptic seeds including wheat, rye, flax and gunja provide... along with fine wines from Napa Valley... an earthy reminder that a full belly and a wet palate received by God’s grace and the earth’s abundance makes for a living reminder that  Jesus is the Lord of Life and the Prince of Peace.   Selective Napa Valley wineries provide wine at no cost  for all communion services from donated kegs and the givers receive as a benefit both a tax write-off and a place to showcase their newest products to California's most progressive Christian citizens.   “When people share what they have in a spirit of humility and peace, the world is a better place,” said Brother Beaming whose flock does not celebrate communion with little flat bread wafers but in whole boules of the Coptic Host breads.

       “So communion is only celebrated on Sunday?” I asked.

     “No,” said Brother Beaming.  “Every adult in the church is consecrated as a Eucharistic Minister and are encouraged to celebrate the Lord’s Supper often,” he said.

     It has been widely reported that Brother Beaming left a life of position and privilege after he witnessed first-hand the hypocrisy of the U.S. and  South Florida drug cultures while he lived at the  Ocean Reef Club on Key Largo.  The Ocean Reef Club is less than thirty nautical miles from Thomas Francis Reilly's #43 Star Island address in Miami.

     Brother Beaming insists that the nutritional value of gunja is as significant as soy and wheat. “Yes, 30–35% of the weight of hempseed is oil containing 80% of the unsaturated essential fatty acids (EFAs), linoleic acid (LA, 55%) and linolenic acid (ALA, 21–25%),” he said.

     “The body does not naturally manufacture these elements and they must be supplied by food. The proportions of linoleic acid and linolenic acid in hempseed oil are perfectly balanced.  They are balanced to meet human requirements for EFAs, including gamma-linoleic acid (GLA).  Gunja oil is different from flax oil and other seed oils, gunja or hempseed oil can be used continuously without developing a deficiency or other imbalance of EFAs.  Gunja contains 31% complete and highly-digestible protein.  It is 1/3 edestin protein and 2/3 albumin protein. This protein level is second only to raw uncooked soybeans (35% vs. 31%). The amino acid level is superior to soybean, human milk, and cow's milk, and is similar to egg whites which we all know is good for you with many of the nation’s cities now allowing chickens to be kept as family pets.  A half-dozen Rhode Island Reds that produce an egg every 24-30 hours can provide 30-40 eggs a week.  Similarly, gunja plants are fast growing.  A six foot plant grows in four months and is chocked with nutricious seeds,” said Brother Beaming.
     “The ALA contained in plant seed oils is alone sufficient for nutrition. Your body is capable of converting it into other fatty acids. This conversion process is less efficient than in the broader spectrum of omega-3 fatty acids obtained from oily fish which is easier for the body to immediately utilize, but gunja is more nutritional than, say, popcorn and nobody is protesting the sale of popcorn…..unless that was the hidden agenda of the that weird guy with the orange hair in Aurora, Colorado,” said Brother Beaming who admitted he would have "shot the damn bastard had I been there with a weapon.  I'm not a pacificst, though I do counsel young people to find creative ways to avoid military service until they are old enough to understand just why we are really in Iraq and Afghanistan and the sad shape of VA medicine and the 870,000 case backlog from those two unnecessary wars."

     Indeed, Brother Beaming was correct.  A widely circulated breakdown of gunja’s nutritional benchmarks revealed:

Calories/100 g 567
Protein (Nx5.46) 30.6%
Fat 47.2%
Saturated fat 5.2%
Monounsaturated fat 5.8%
Polyunsaturated fat 36.2%
Carbohydrate 10.9%
Oleic 18:1 (Omega-9) 5.8%
Linoleic 18:2 (Omega-6) 27.56%
Linolenic 18:3 (Omega-3) 8.68%
Cholesterol 0.0%
Total dietary fiber 6.0%
Vitamin A (B-Carotene) 4 IU/100 g
Thiamine (Vit B1) 1.38 mg/100 g
Riboflavin (Vit B2) 0.33 mg/100 g
Vitamin B6 0.12 mg/100 g
Vitamin C 1.0 mg/100 g
Vitamin D 2277.5 IU/100 g
Vitamin E (dl-A-Tocopherol) 8.96 IU/100 g
Sodium 9.0 mg/100 g
Calcium 74.0 mg/100 g
Iron 4.7 mg/100 g