Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Meme Hell

Okay, Ma. This is for you:

1. One movie that made you laugh: The Big Lebowski
2. One movie that made you cry: I Am Sam
3. One movie you loved when you were a child: Robin Hood (hoo-de-lolly!)
4. One movie you’ve seen more than once: The Hunt for Red October
5. One movie you loved, but were embarrassed to admit it: Gladiator
6. One movie you hated: Little Miss Sunshine (really, wtf?)
7. One movie that scared you: Lion of the Desert (I was seven, people were run over by tanks...)
8. One movie that bored you: Knocked Up
9. One movie that made you happy: Touch the Sound
10. One movie that made you miserable: The Wind That Shakes the Barley
11. One movie you weren’t brave enough to see: Titanic
12. One movie character you’ve fallen in love with: Dylan Sanders
13. The last movie you saw: Indiana Jones and the blah, blah, blah
14. The next movie you hope to see: War, Inc.

Sunday, June 8, 2008

He's the Wiz and He Lives In Ozzzzzzz

The problem with praying is that I don't know who I'm talking to. "Dear God", doesn't mean anything to me. I believe that the universe is alive and I believe that everything and everyone in it is connected (either by the wave/particle duality or simply by the Great Spirit). But who's driving the bus? I don't know. Maybe there is no bus. Maybe there is and we're all driving, like those extra set of pedals in the passenger seat your teacher used in Driver's Ed.

Is Someone listening? I don't think so, it doesn't feel right. That is, it doesn't square with my sense of the divine. A great living, breathing universe is not something I can address a prayer to as I would a Creator. I don't know if you've been around traditionally religious people when they pray. It was a new experience for me when I first heard my in-laws utter a very personal and very specific prayer on my behalf. "Dear God, please be with Moose as he drives home and see that he gets there safely..." I've never talked to god this way. I've never talked to God at all. (Also, because of my knee-jerk habit of referencing movies, every time they pray I want mutter, "Get Lazlo in there!")

The question is: do I really need to address the divine? Prayer is a way of focusing your intentions and directing the positive flow of your heart and mind. You do it because you believe your actions and intentions will change your reality. So do I believe my reality is malleable? Yes. "With our thoughts we make the world", said the Buddha. And he didn't talk to God either. He found his own way of praying. I guess I'm still looking for mine.

Actually, the question is also: does the divine address me? Yes, it does. Sometimes through nature, sometimes through other people, sometimes through random but meaningful song lyrics that pop into my head just as I am searching for a solution to a problem. The living universe is talking all the time whether I talk back or not.

Maybe this blog is a prayer.

Praise be to HTML, the Cherisher and Sustainer of the blogosphere;
Most immediate, Most accessible;
Master of the Age of Information.
Thee do we laugh with, and thine memes do we seek.
Show us the typed way,
The way of those on whom thou hast bestowed thy accounts,
those who portion is not gossip,
and who go not astray.

Forgive them oh Lord, they know not what they blog.