Gonna Lease a Church and Start Up Ritcheyanity

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I saw a sign off Hampden about leasing a church. Right there, on a crappy looking building, Lease A Church!

How great is America? You can rent your own church.

So, that got me thinking about starting my own religion. L. Ron Hubbard did. Joseph Smith did. Lady Gaga did. Oh, snap. Tom Cruisesists, Mormonists and Little Monsters, please forgive me.

Forgiveness. Let’s start there. We should forgive each other. Don’t want to be all hateful and resentful all the time.

Okay, so it’s a religion of forgiveness. Got that. Check that off the list.

What about an afterlife? Yeah, I don’t know about all that. Can we not have an opinion? I mean, Judaism is kind of iffy about the afterlife. And Buddhism is too. Let’s just focus on this life.

Okay, this life, this moment. We’ll focus on the here and now. And we’ll forgive each other.

What about sex?

Let’s be pro-sex. I mean, look around, most people are for sex. Though some aren’t. You have the sex haters. Sure. But my church? The Church of Leased Time? We’ll say sex is good.

Within reason. I mean, sex is a powerful thing. Simple, but powerful. I think that’s how it tricks people into taking too seriously, or not seriously enough. It’s simple, but powerful, and it’s not static. It changes, and changes things. A lot.

Sex is okay in Ritcheyism, as long as no one gets hurt. And we’ll use the laws of the land to govern the ethics of sex. An age of consent, no Shetland ponies, that kind of thing.

We dealt with the sticky issue of sex (don’t go middle school on me – no snickering), so now, we have three tenets : sex is okay, we’ll deal with this life only, forgiveness. We’ll forgive ourselves. We’ll forgive each other. We’ll forgive God. Because this world and this life can be oh so hard.

God. Is there a God? Well, any kind of God would be beyond our comprehension. We’ll say yes, there is a God, but we know nothing about Him\Her\It\They, only that it is a loving, sustaining Force that helps us make it through. So Jedi Knights can join my church. Which would be cool. Love me a good light saber battle.

What about Jesus? Oops, way too controversial for my little leased church. But we’ll risk it. We’ll say yes to the basic teachings of Jesus. Love, forgiveness, the kingdom of God, which is coming, but is right now as well. Which also means that God is in the moment. Which brings us back to where we started. Forgiveness and this life.

Now that I think about it, maybe I don’t need to lease a church. If you take out some of the more kooky theology, Christianity is about forgiveness, living in the moment, treating others with respect and love. The sex stuff, well, that and the afterlife-Heaven-Hell-Judgment stuff gets all murky in theology that probably won’t be around in another hundred years.

Yeah, I’ll stick with Christianity for now.

Until Joss Whedon starts his own religion. Then I am so there.

Mondays Are Hell – Nicotine Demons and Too Many Brownies

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Demons are sure a nice idea.

No, really. That fact that here I am, a person, struggling to do good, and all the while, in this invisible world, there are demons gnawing on my soul, tempting me, offering me up delights that look good, but in the end harm me.

Is mental illness any more comforting than the idea of demons? I don’t know. Yes, there are medications people can use to treat mental illness, but from my experience, that only allows them a fighting chance against the demons gnawing on them. I treat my mental illness so I can fight the demons.

Lots of demons out there. Chocolate demons. They whisper, “Just have one brownie. Just one.” You say no, the brownie is full of trans fats, refined sugar, high fructose corn syrup–demons all!  But the demon continues to whisper. Until you eat one. Five more later, you hate the demon. Dang demon, making me eat brownies.

Or the bed demons. “Don’t get up. It’s so early. Come back to bed. It’s so cozy. Your work can wait. Come back, come back, come back, to Mordor we will take you.” I go back to bed, then spend the rest of the day regretting it.

Better to blame demons than to blame my poor, human self, though in the end, most likely, it’s just my own poor self to blame. But I can use the idea of demons to manage the more wild aspects of my nature. When tempted, I can say, “Get thee behind me, Satan.”

I think that’s where the idea of evil and demons came from. Part of our natures are self-destructive. Why?  I don’t know. I love cigars. Smoking is stupid. Expensive. Self-destructive.

Nicotine demons.

No matter what kind of language you use, whether you call it being possessed by the Devil, addiction, mental illness, sloth, a genetic predisposition to smoke cigars, it all boils down to the same thing. Part of life is managing your demons, whipping them into shape, and striving to be better than your animal self. Because the animal self wants to eat, party, and sleep. And poop. We as human creatures, well, we have other needs. A sense of meaning, friendships, security from the cold wind blowin’, preparing for the future.

Demons are like the honey badger though, they don’t give a care.

And for the most part, it’s a one day at a time proposition. How can I fight my demons today? Just for today.

Good luck out there. And be careful.  Demons are everywhere!

 

Holy Action! Angels and Demons on Film

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Chris Devlin, you say?  Really.  Do you know Chris Devlin?  She is an angel.  On Monday, I blogged about angels, real angels, and I talked about Linda Rohrbough.  Who I am currently interviewing.  I could do a week of posts on Chris Devlin.  I would not be the writer I am today without her.  I wouldn’t be half the man I am today.  Not a quarter.  She is the literal wind beneath my wings. Yeah, I’m tearing up right now.  A little about Devlin.  She never sleeps.  She is kind to a fault.  She has lots of friends.  And she helps me.  Lord, does she help me.  Like today.  She is kicking off my Heavenly Friday blog post by blogging on angels.  One more thing about the Devil in Devlin.  She is kind of a media-T.V.-movie-Buffy-the-Vampire-Slayer-Battlestar-Galactica-all-things-Joss-Whedon junky.  And when I say junky, I mean hardcore.  And away we go.  Take it Devlin!

Devlin here. Aw, the things Aaron says. I’m getting all verklempt. Like, Buffy Season 3, prom episode verklempt. Quick, let’s talk about pop culture.

My friend Aaron has written an awesome book about the age-old war in heaven between angels and demons, The Never Prayer. Here are some more badass messengers of heaven and action heroes of hell. (I do more blogging about pop culture at chrisdevlinwrites.com.)

 

Hammiest Lucifer
Tie: Robert De Niro as Louis Cypher (geddit?) in Angel Heart and Al Pacino as the most demony ‘adversary’ of them all in The Devil’s Advocate.

Best Angel Name
Clarence Oddbody; It’s a Wonderful Life

Most Beautifully Filmed Angels
Wim Wender’s Wings of Desire

Hottest Angels
Cary Grant as Dudley; The Bishop’s Wife
Misha Collins as Castiel; Supernatural
Paul Bettany as Michael; Legion
David Boreanaz as Angel: Angel (Okay, he wasn’t really an angel, per se, though he was a demon. And he was certainly hot.)

 

Scariest Demon Ever
The one in Paranormal Activity
Respectable Second Place Scariest Demon Ever
Pazuzu; The Exorcist

Best Gabriel
Tie: Christopher Walken in The Prophecy and Tilda Swinton in Constantine
Walken is, of course, Walken and he does his thing with a wink and a vicious smile as he saunters through the mortal world, looking for an evil human soul. He even blows a trumpet as a glibly homicidal Gabriel. But Tilda Swinton holds her own as another fallen Gabriel in Constantine as she plays in some serious heavenly traffic. Bonus points for the androgynous-fabulous suits.

Most Intentionally Funny Demons
Evil Dead II

Most Unintentionally Funny Demon
Azazel; Fallen

Best Sid Vicious Leather-Cool Demon
Pinhead; Hellraiser

Hottest Homo-erotic Subtext
Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt; Interview With The Vampire

 

 

 

 

 

Demon We’d Most Like to Play Kitten Poker With
Clem: Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Best Vision of Hell
The scorched-and-burned post-apocalyptic Mad Max movie on fire in Constantine.

Okay, who’d I miss? Who are your favorite demons, angels and those where you can’t tell the difference?