September 14, 2003

• This week Brezsny gives me an assignment to find another of God's twenty-three kerjillion names. Or two or three. (I linked to Scorpio above, because I read both that one and Sagittarius, since I'm only two days away from the boundary. I find that the Scorpio one usually has more to do with what's going on with me, so there I am. But I digress.)
  
  God's already got a lot of names, and that's part of why he's confusing. Yes, God is confusing. We get all these people telling them that God told them to do something, God told them to kill abortion doctors, or God told them to invade Iraq (no.. really. Scroll down to the bottom of this). So God's out there doing a lot of telling and ordering around and stuff. Perhaps. God tells people his name, and they maybe misunderstand and they run around doing stupid stuff because some other guy says God has a different name.
  
  It's like 'The Importance Of Being Ernest,' in a way, come to think of it. But again, I digress.
  
  As Brezsny points out, the word 'God' has been overused and abused and stretched beyond recognition. Worn out. It needs replacing.
  
  I forget which sect of Judaism is not allowed to say 'God.' They write 'G-d' and never speak it. I think this is a g--d idea, but it makes it inconvenient to have a religion where you can't say the name of the deity you're trying to worship. "Dear ___. You are so great. We worship you, most holy ____." It's like a Monty Python skit or something.
  
  Or maybe they'd wrap it with still more language, as in: "Dear Unameable Deity. We worship you, most holy being of nonspecific nomenclature." But that just offloads the naming onto some other words, and turns God into a joke. OK, I turned God into a joke just then, but you get my meaning.
  
  I remember reading somewhere that someone said that if it didn't make you laugh, it wasn't true. So God isn't true if God's not a joke. I've also heard of 'the cosmic joke,' which might make one laugh, if it turns out to be funny. Maybe God's new name should just be laughter: "Dear [guffaw]. We worship you, most holy [giggle]."
  
  I'm thinking about a guy I met who also had a complex naming situation. Some called him Fred Jameison, and some called him Beaver Chief. He had couple more handfuls of names that he collected over his life, and he had one after Beaver Chief, before he passed, but I can't remember it. I can remember him, though, because he would laugh. Among other reasons.
  
  And just saying he would laugh is like saying the roof of the Sistine Chapel is a painting, or that Led Zeppelin was just some drunk guys in a band. BC's laugh was like a lightning bolt, as awe-inspiring as it was infectious. As full of love and warmth as was humanly possible, but also a little threatening in its spiritual implication.
  
  Really. No kidding. Some people laugh and it's kinda creepy. BC would laugh and you were kind of creepy, because you held on to any kind of hipster cyncism while BC's laughter channeled the whole of existence. Laughter as art. Threatening in its spiritual implication.
  
  God lived there. God played in BC's laughter like a kid on the monkey bars.
  
  Well, I'm not any closer to naming God. Maybe I'll try again later.

  • 7:21 am
  • 5 Comments