Ongoing Process

Vermont has some serious winter. When I got up yesterday morning, the temperature was -7 with a wind chill of -20. Have you ever stepped outside and felt the snot on your nose hairs freeze? I have. Today, the weather service has issued a blizzard warning and we’re supposed to get 16-26 inches of snow in a 24-hour period. Looking outside, it seems like we’re well underway.

Speaking of snot, I’ve got plenty to go around. It would seem that I’ve gotten myself a sinus infection. The doc says it’s viral, and that I’ll just have to sit it out (I’m glad he didn’t blindly throw antibiotics at me like they used to). So I’ve got some generic Claritin and a jumbo box of tissues and I’m just going to sit here and watch it snow.

And again, I say “boo”. Dumb gimmicks suck. Especially when they detract from a great story. The SciFi channel is starting to hold about two minutes out of the end of each episode of Battlestar Galactica, which you then have to go to their website to see. At the very least, it’s an unwanted interruption and the quality of the website video quite sucks relative to television. At worst, it means that people without Internet access don’t get to see it at all.

I you want people to go to your website, here’s a novel idea: put content there worth going to see. Essentially blackmailing your most loyal fans (i.e. the only ones who are going to bother) into going there is really bad form.

Boo.

Damn, Heroes is an awesome show!

In my humble opinion, Heroes is the best show to come along since Galactica (which is, all things considered, perhaps the finest television program ever made). The plotting is great, the characters are interesting, it’s very well produced, and the story flow is damn near perfect (pay attention, Lost!).

My only gripe is that sometimes the writing gets a little sloppy. I’ll try to avoid spoilers, but you know that organization that had that guy locked up for a while? And how sometimes the organization could run him like a puppy? And then other times the guy could walk all over the organization without breaking a sweat? And how there was never a moment of explanation for these inexplicable reversals of power? Yeah, stuff like that. That really bugs the hell out of me.

But, for the most part, this is a top-notch show. And, by some small miracle, it seems to be getting pretty decent ratings. Yay, general public! Maybe there’s hope for the masses yet.

I give thanks to the Powers That Be for bringing a bit of joy into my life.

Recently, I’ve been wrestling with worship. I think the heart of worship is the yearning to love. Whether one chooses a god or goddess, nature, a human being (enlightened or otherwise), or an impersonal compassion for all things, this insistent call to love seems to be a fundamental part of being human.

So far, so good. But the problem for me comes in with the subject of forms. In this incarnated world, we mere mortals require forms to hold meaning. (It is said that one may skip both form and meaning and go straight to direct experience, but that’s another topic). Of course, when it comes to the creation of forms, humans are endlessly creative. This is especially true with worship. The religions of humanity are stuffed to bursting with every sort of deity, icon, and ritual ever imagined. But the nature of form is tricky.

Form is forever only a symbol, a placeholder. It is the proverbial finger pointing to the moon. If one focuses only on the form, then the meaning that it is meant to be represented by it is lost. Then one crosses over into literalism and fundamentalism is born. However, if one focuses only on the meaning, then the form stops holding it and becomes lifeless. With no finger to point the way, one enters into relativism, which ultimately leads to nihilism.

My trouble is that I have an extremely neurotic relationship with form. Form offers me meaning, which I find quite appealing. So I stare expectantly at the form and wait for the promised meaning to show up. The form looks nervous, shuffles its feet, and points a little harder. When the form fails to produce meaning, I get disgusted and decide that forms lie and cannot be trusted. Then I promptly get depressed because I can’t find any meaning. So, through a feat of great skill, I somehow manage to exhibit the worst qualities of both literalism and relativism and get all the downsides of both fundamentalism and nihilism without any of the perks (they have perks?).

So, how is the related to worship and love? Well, unless one is quite enlightened, one needs form to worship. We need, quite literally, an object of our affection. Being only peripherally enlightened, I feel this need quite strongly. But given my dynamic with form, it becomes quite problematic. I examine this god or that belief, see that it is “flawed” in some way or another (i.e. demand that it be meaning itself, which it fails to do), get frustrated that I can’t find anything to love, and go watch TV.

So, in an effort to do something different, I’m about to go to a Christian church. I’m not a Christian, but then I’m not a member of any religious tradition, so I suppose one is as good as another. And my friend who is taking me (who is also not a Christian) says that they’re quite liberal (i.e. not literalist/fundamentalist) and very focused on the love (i.e. not relativist/nihilist). Which is, in my humble opinion, the whole point of this undertaking. So if they’re better at this than I am, which seems likely, then perhaps I can learn something from them.

Wish me luck.