"The Pooka MacPhellimey, a member of the devil class, sat in his hut in the middle of a firwood meditating on the nature of the numerals and segregating in his mind the odd ones from the even. He was seated at his diptych or ancient two-leaved hinged writing-table with inner sides waxed."
~ Flann O'Brien
~ Flann O'Brien
Pictures!
de Selby
Rorschach
Better Stuff
"I think that may be the saddest comment on Democratic Party failure yet, even including the advancement of the Cheney torture regime. Not because it's worse morally, but because the opportunity to educate people and obtain their support for progressive economics was practically laid at their feet and they whiffed."Digby's Hullabaloo
"...one can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, burning the crockery, setting the kitchen on fire, firebombing the restaurant and summarily executing the survivors."
~Fafblog!
My new favorite!
~Hyperbole and a Half!
Any Random Blog
Agonist
Axis of Evel Knievel
BlackBoxVoting
Black Commentator
Bouphonia
By Neddie Jingo!
Chase me ladies,
Creek Running North
I Blame the Patriarchy
If Charlie Parker...
Mahablog
Opinions You Should Have
Sisyphus Shrugged
(alas...)
Memory Hole
nonist, the
Pops' Bucket
More of the same
Older Stuff
Search Diptych
Subscribe
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Jesus Christ on a delayed flight
As I sometimes do when traveling alone, I was listening to a Good Christianist Bible-Whacking radio station today. As such stations sometimes do, they played a brief "inspirational" segment - in this case, a personal testimonial from one of the Saved.
She recounted an experience in an airport. In short, she was stuck there, and grumpy about it. She was ignoring a woman who was mopping the floor, then the woman spoke to her! She asked the Lamb of God if she was lost, or otherwise in need of assistance within her power to provide. "No", she said, dismissing the woman, but realizing within herself that God had sent that cleaning lady to lift her spirit, and lead her back to The Way.
What a self-obsessed, arrogant, patronizing, sociopathic bitch!
GOD didn't put that woman there to turn her frown upside-down. She was there on her own, probably because she needed the money, and she had been there long before the religion-lady got there, and she was there long after she left. The woman with the mop was being nice because SHE is nice, not because God takes an interest in the moods of an introspective soccer mom in an airport.
The Saved Lady was very pleased with herself for finding yet another way to glorify God in her own mind, but to her, the cleaning lady was literally a cipher - a Message From God, put there for her personal benefit. She made it abundantly clear that cleaning ladies have no significance (or even self-determination) whatsoever, except as vessels of God's personal concern for her.
This is how the cynical bastards who are running the mega-churches and media-based cults that have come to dominate America's diseased understanding of "religion" operate. They make the rubes think it's all about them. Pregnant teens, illegal immigrants, queers, intellectuals, drug addicts, bums, Darwinists, and cleaning ladies are all props in the drama of their Personal Salvation.
Christian teachings have always played a huge role in our national character, and the cleaning lady may very well have been putting a deeply inculcated Sunday School Morality into action when she offered help to a stranger. If so, the Church Lady took a big shit on that tradition, missing her chance to take communion in the One True Church - that of the children of God, coming together in the Spirit.
On the other hand, maybe the Cleaning Lady was just being nice, and the Church Lady was just being an asshole.
- posted by de Selby @ 10:22 PM
