Sunday, May 29, 2011

mutating religiosity

"Let them worship how where and what they may." - Joseph Smith

Indeed Joseph. Indeed. I'm not against Mormonism or Christianity or Islam (especially not Islam, peace upon you, don't kill me etc.) or any other flights of fancy. I'm all for them, until people start flying planes into buildings, that's a little extreme even for my tastes. I pick and choose what I like from humanity's vast history of faith traditions and moral thought and go from there. Take for instance prayer. It seems ridiculous at first, the way most people do it; where god's a genie, minus the lamp, with an offer of unlimited wishes that may or may not be granted depending on the creativity of the individual offering up the supplication. You're doing it wrong people. I am of the opinion that the universe is at best indifferent, but more likely hostile. The majority of it is inhospitable to life. But you've gotta be grateful for small favours. If the big bang didn't happen I wouldn't be here to lament our existence and wouldn't we all be the poorer for that. The sperm that formed half of me beat out about 50 million others on the way to fertilize the rest of me. The only time I've ever won anything, and a good thing too, otherwise I wouldn't be myself. They died that I might live, which was nice of them. Sometimes I get up and just say thank you universe. I'm alive for a little while longer. Let's make today awesome. I don't expect much help from the universe with the awesomeness part of my prayerish type request, so I'm never disappointed, but as for the rest, sometimes it just feels good to say thank you.

How about scripture study? I need daily reminders of what to do and why I'm doing it, because it's too easy to get distracted by present concerns that have little long term pay off. Studying these specially selected works helps me to do just that...

THIS WEEK'S TOP 5 CANONICAL WORKS
1. The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
2. Improv Wisdom by Patricia Ryan
3. Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk
4. Expanding Mind podcast, by Erik Davis
5. This is Water, by David Foster Wallace

as a bonus here's...
THIS WEEK'S TOP DEMI-GOD

















extra bonus bonus...

THIS WEEK'S TOP SACRED DANCE MOVE...




1. The (Melbourne) Shuffle.
Yes, it reached its zenith popularity wise about 2 years ago, but it looks like it's finally hit the main stream, and I only learned how to do it this week, hence its inclusion here.

Thank you.

4 comments:

Patricia Ryan Madson said...

Thanks for mentioning IMPROV WISDOM I hope you can find something useful in it. I enjoyed your commentary.
Thank you

Loren said...

No worries. Cheers

Diane Tingen said...

"Let them worship where, what and how they may." Ah yes, the good ol' 11th Article of Faith. "We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege..." Would be nice if the Mormons really believed and/or followed that philosophy. Now that I'm an ExMo, I find the whole AofF to be almost laughable (and definitely contradictory).

And your inclusion of Adam Corolla was a "Demi-God" is interesting. I like him and think he has a unique spin on things, but "Demi God"???

Loren said...

Yeah I can't say that they're too fussed about extending the type of tolerance that the article of faith espouses. When you're absolutely certain that you're right sometimes it's hard to see things from a different perspective (I fall into this trap too). The Adam Corolla thing may possibly be slightly overstated, lol.