Here.
Here's the thing. I'm going to post something about this because my journal is ALL the way upstairs, and there are a number of reasons I'm not going to get it, reasons of which include (but are in no means limited to) the fact that frankly I'm too lazy to go get it, I can type faster than I write, and the fact that I haven't posted written in my real journal since FEBRUARY of this year. All right. I'm a Christian. I can't really say WHY I am, it's just what I believe in. All right, why do I believe in it? I was raised to think that an omnipresent being rules over the universe. That sounds good to me. This guy/gal/being-beyond-our-feeble-minds’-imagining made the Earth in “seven days." Hmm. Now, we know that the Earth wasn’t made in seven days, for some sort of Stephen Hawking reason. However, I really find it silly to believe that whoever this being is subscribes to our definition of a day, so honestly I can accept that. If God came to a dude a bazillion years ago and described the making of the Universe, I’d Baby Einstein break it down a bit for him, too. If a day in our time equals four trillion years our time in THEIR time, then sure, I can see playtime with cosmic dust-bits as a perfectly good explanation for our Earth's creation. That’s the “Big Bang,” right? Something like that. POOF! Universe at your service, made in “seven days.” Especially since this Universe of ours is supposedly limitless. Does that make sense to ANYONE? Seriously. I've laid outdoors and looked at the sky and thought about the stars that I'm really looking into the past to see and have thought to myself, I'm looking into a limitless thingamajig. But what is limitless? Never-ending. And yet...the Universe is supposed to be expanding? Expanding into limitlessness. I'm no physics master and I've just re-taken Algebra II for the four hundredth time (hyperbole) but from my understanding, limitlessness...is never-ending. Like the Story. And the Song. It goes on for forever. However, unlike the Never-ending Story and Song that Never Ends I cannot Google its origins. (Well, maybe Wikipedia has something. Gotta love that site. Or not. It’s your preference.) I suppose that's where the entire debate of time/space comes in. If physical matter can be interpreted into both physical mass as well as linear-ish time interpretations and the crossovers between the two, then perhaps there is a physical boundary to the Universe. But it doesn't matter (Hah! Matter.) considering that it goes on for forever with time and---here's where it will have gotten cold out and I will go back indoors. My head would be swimming and I will spend the remainder of my evening thinking about non-Universal things. Like Cheez Wiz. Fascinating product, no? And you know when you’ve reached the end of that can.
Back on the farm, this all-knowing-all-seeing-all-awesome being had a messenger who They sent to Earth who eventually in the prime of His life willingly let us royally fuck Him over so He could save all of our asses from going to hell. Pardon my language. (I was good with the capitalization though of the "He"s and "Him"s though, right?) The whole sacrificial thing, although incredibly sucky for him, is pretty good deal for the rest of us. I don’t know why He had to die, though. That still doesn’t make sense. Not even in (Spoiler alert!) Matrix: Revolutions. Now, this is of course in the Bible’s New Testament. The Old Testament’s a pretty cool compilation, too, some argue even better, though admittedly I’ve never gotten past reading the whole beginning bit where Joe had five horses and 16 sons and 14 daughters and lived for 2,500 years...like I said, math wears me out. One day I’ll make it all the way to the apocalypse, though, how fascinating is that? Reading about the end of the world. Talk about ultimately fruitless effort expended!
So I pray to this Guy sometimes, when I remember, if someone’s sick, and haven’t fallen asleep first. Of course, admittedly, when I’m in a tight spot. “Dear Lord, if you make this computer run faster, I promise I won’t be such a disappointment to the world.” Jesus! High-speed connection. I always find the clasping of the hands thing a strange way to dial-in to God. In a strange way, it does make me feel a bit more focused, but perhaps that’s with practice.
I won’t say I’ve ever been a particularly religious person. I’m spiritual, though. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, and heck, I find it works just fine. When I’m alone in a room I know I’m not alone. And I don’t mean that in a Big Brother kind of way. Just...I know I’m not alone in the universe. When I’m alone I’m not lonely. Really, the only time I feel lonely is when I’ve alienated myself FROM myself in one of those woe-is-me, please-somebody-open-up-a-hole-in-the-floor kinds of ways. You know, it makes me think about what God thinks about suicide. In a weird way it makes me smile. Maybe the reason God’s supposed to get pissed when you kill yourself is that to Them, we’re all little sandcastles. Hear me out. If you made a bazillion sandcastles and did a great job on most of them and maybe had a plan for each of them, wouldn’t you be pissed if a whole bunch of them went and knocked themselves down without your permission? Like murderers. A big, mean, nasty sandcastle that just knocks all the other ones down. I won’t bother with rapist sandcastle and adulterous sandcastle and plagiarism sandcastle analogies; I think you get the point. “Sandcastles” could also be replaced with “small action figures” but I seriously can’t see God caring about an Iron Man figurine and sand is in keeping with all those religious analogies already out there.
Anyway....I’m not really going anywhere with this. Some people think none of us are going anywhere at all, anyway. I think that’s sad, though.
Thing is, when I’m doing the praying thing, I feel like I’m talking to something. Then again, when a telephone call drops out and I find that I’ve been talking at nobody for who knows how long, I thought that I was talking to someone then, too. Though, in that situation I was talking to someone sure-fire for at least a certain amount of time. Maybe that’s what faith is...picking up a phone and hoping someone’s on the other end. Kind of like a party line phone. I know, gag me with the analogies. But really, the Bible’s full of them. Analogies and parables. That’s really all Jesus talked in. It’s as if he set his Facebook filter to “Parable.” Wow, an analogy about parables. Well, oh well.
My laptop’s getting hot. Maybe it’s outside looking at the stars while I’m typing.
Also, I believe in the sciences. I believe what we know can’t be disproven as of yet. Again with the whole year-thing...no, I know the Earth isn’t 50,000 years old. I don’t believe dinosaurs are a giant hoax. Excuse the pun, that’s just a retarded way of thinking. “Retard” I’m using in the musical sense of course, as in ‘slow.’ Decrescendo! Crescendo! Repeat!
Wanna know a secret? Sometimes I start my prayers with a variation of, “Hi God, it’s me. No, it’s not Margaret. It’s Erin, again.” Sometimes late at night I find myself funny and moreover I think God, if They’re out there, must get really, really sick of the same old theme song. “Our Father who art in Heaven...” I know Their name is hallowed and all that, but I’d like a change-up once in a while, I’d appreciate it. God’s got to have a sense of humor, if They’re out there. I love that Ellen DeGeneres joke where she talks about God being a middle-aged black woman. LOVE it. Just shows how silly everyone is by even pretending to be able to understand anything, at all. Oh, the world is flat, is it? Oh, outspoken women must be witches, huh? Oh, it’s okay to kill of an entire race of people to take over and inhabit their country? Take that, Americans! No, really, I love it here. It’s just that Native Americans didn’t know they were signing up for that job when they fed us dinner, did they? No good deed goes unpunished...I’ll tell ya.
By the way, English native speaking people of the world: They’re, there, their. Here, hear. You’re, your. Know, no. Choose, chose. It’s, its.
They’re generally uncaring and therefore their usage of English here is just as bad as you hear. Really, you’re silly if your knowledge the English language stops just after Sesame Street. Nobody, however, can be forced to choose a different path in life than one which they’ve already chosen. It’s just the way it is, and each person is allowed to choose their way in life, in the same way that a lion chooses its mate.
LIONS. RAHR.
Clearly, I’m no scholar. I’m not even that great of a student. At one point in my life I displayed amazing potential and that’s probably down the tubes. We’ll see, I suppose. Anyway, the point is, there isn’t a point. There is never going to be an answer. And as much as I love to talk about the Apocalypse, it even says in the Bible wherever that we’ll never see it coming. Haven’t people been predicting the end-of-times for FOREVER? Who knows, though. Maybe the New Testament will be the first sequel released which is better than the original. Though I hear a lot of people liked The DaVinci Code better than Angels and Demons.
However, there is significance in our insignificance as a race. As a planet. If we’re such an anomaly in the Universe, why are we destroying our planet? It kind of makes me laugh. And on the subject of aliens, sure, I don’t see why there wouldn’t be them. Other things living on one of the bazillions of planets or moons out there in the bazillions of galaxies out there in the limitless Universe. I think it would be kind of funny if Earth was God’s test run and then They went and made a better planet, somewhere else. Without taxes and lots more taco nights. Maybe there, the color blue is red and the color red is yellow. Makes ya wonder what the color yellow is, doesn’t it? Take that, primary colors! Then again, maybe there’s no opportunity in that other world for light refraction. Maybe it’s a huge underwater planet (without Kevin Costner) where creatures not all unlike our deep-sea-dwelling friends reside. HA! That also kills me. That we’ve blasted off to the moon so many times and have sent rovers to Mars (Never mind the scrapping of the NASA programs in light of recent economy crap) but we don’t even know all the animals we have here on Earth! Let’s send people down to the depths of the Ocean! Let’s find Jimmy Hoffa’s body! Let’s feed the starving people in the world and find a way to keep AIDS from spreading! Let’s find out while all of this is happening why can’t I get good service on my cell at work!
Really, I’ve written too much. And that’s fine. For me, I mean. If you’re still reading this, kudos to you, I haven’t the faintest idea why you would be. But thanks.
There are other religions out there. Judaism, for example. Which is quite similar to Christianity, really, just minus the past 2,009 years. And Islam. And Buddhism. And Satanism. And Wicca. Among the million other religions we can’t forget the Pagans who so kindly leant us the tree for our use at Christmastime. Thanks!
And then there are all of the different denominations in the Christian religion. Frankly, this gets me miffed. I think we should really all have a somewhat common, basic interpretation of that book. I was Christened Episcopalian. This means I can get divorced if I decide to get married and my future husband is an ass in one way or another. Also, this means that by being Christened, I don’t have to get baptized. Sweet!
Honestly, it’s a mystery. All this stuff is a mystery. Supposedly, God came to a bunch of guys and had them write a book which we call the Bible. Sort of...Holy Ghost-writers. And I guess why God didn’t write it Himself was that it was cooler to have us all doing it. Or maybe God’s left-handed and we would have pshawed him because a long time ago being left handed was all voodooevilohno! And most of the stories in the Bible, well, I think they’re probably just that: stories. Just because Dr. Seuss wrote fictional stories didn’t mean that they didn’t make an impact. With our little pea-brains, who knows why we only use 10 percent of them, we can only understand so much. We can only look upon the mortal form of Zeus.
Praying’s kind of funny, too. We never know what’s best for us, do we? We don't know what’s good for us but we know what we want. Remember Bruce Almighty, where he answers all of the prayer-mails he got in his inbox? Yeah, that didn’t work out so well. Except for that woman who went on the Krispy Kreme diet. That was awesome.
I don’t know the answers; I can’t even pretend to think about knowing what’s happened to the Universe or what’s going to occur, but I’m just fine being a Christian. Happy, even. It doesn’t hurt me to be one, I don’t think. It feels right to me, most times. Though sometimes I think about the Bible and just scoff at its seeming impossibilities (doubting Thomas!) when I remember that it’s written in parables for our baby brains and with stories for our little minds to process and I remember. I remember that there’s good in the world. I remember that there’s also bad. And I think about how funny it’d be if we all died and it turns out we were ALL wrong about EVERYTHING. Just like M. Night. Shyamalan would have written it. A la Sixth Sense, not The Happening. Bring on the pearly gates. Just not to soon, please. Unless it’s “my time...” whatever that means. Maybe it's God needing help making sandcastles or something. Doubtful, but plausible. Get on it, Mythbusters. That’s right; I know you’re running out of material.
So I haven’t read the Bible and the only verse I can think of is a made-up one from a pro-wrestler, but I get what the book is for. I don’t read manuals a lot of the time, anyway. Sometimes I like to figure it out while I go along. And if I’m wrong? If God doesn’t exist and blah blah blah? Then oh well. We’ll know after we die and you can laugh at me when we’re dead and our souls go nowhere and life utterly ends. Oh wait, you can’t. Because you’ll be dead. Then again, if we can chat in line while we’re at the pearly gates, that sounds good. I’m up for that. I'd like to think that I get to see all the cool people who've left this world again, in the next life. Whatever and wherever that is. IF it is.
So...hi God, it’s me. Erin. Margaret’s out again, but I’ll stick around for a while, if you’ll listen.