Ludic Dreams

[MetaPausing is a soon-to-be-repeated blurb about the world around me, not exactly related to gaming, but rather, world issues and things like that. Not that my usual content is necessarily right on track.... but regardless.]

I can recall being a tenth-grade child, perhaps fifteen, going through the chore of confirmation classes. My mother was one of the teachers, and also the leader of the church choir. Being a fairly good catholic boy, I went to every one. Normally, despite my yearning for guilt on a Saturday night, they where all boring. This one was not all that different, but at least they changed the pace; they brought in one of the heavy hitters, one of the higher priests, whose official title ( and likely fancy hat) has been lost to me. He was not a loud man, being quite old, and refused to use the microphone. That pretty much was it for me…. once my imagination learned this, I began to imagine all the odd situations for why this man may not want to use it. My head drifted around, thinking about things ranging from Mic Failure to some sort of Holy Decree, shouting that the word of god shall not come from cheap speakers.

Then, I heard the old man-o-the-cloth speak the following:

“You could then say that we all have a responsibility to due our part to bring about the apocalypse.”

Needless to say, I no longer cared about the microphone. He continued:

“Christ died for your sins, and we know, as Catholics, that he will come again. And it is our job to help bring about this second coming,” the man smiled in a way that might put the Joker to shame, ” in any way we can.”

The speech continued, my brain no longer in a daze, but now a mind-numbing buzz.

After class let out, I was standing outside with the others, waiting for their ride. The boys I was associated with sure enough had taken this in a different way than I had; Imagined Tank rides through downtown, an entire network of shit-filled-flaming bags scouring this earth. My mind was still reluctantly dead.

When I was able to form a sentence, all I could think was how irresponsible something like that is to say, especially to a young mind. Still being fairly innocent, I would later learn words like Fundamentalism, Terrorist, and both left and right “Wings.” But that phrasing stuck with me, like a stray bullet the doc’s can’t safely remove. I had stopped doting on it after roughly two days, but it stayed in the back of my mind. I had grown, my belief in catholicism waned, I moved towards deism as opposed to outright atheism. But the memory was backlogged, cataloged, and other forms of “logged”, gone from my immediate conscious.

And then; I read this.

They are crafting, or trying to craft, public policy on religious rhetoric. I know this is nowhere close to being a new stratedgy- but this isn’t like gay marriage, or abortion. These people are discussing the end-times. The part of the bible that is written, more or less, by “Anonymous.” You can argue The rights of women, or homosexuals, or immigration. But how does one argue taking action against the end-of-times? Bush, or other conservatives, can attempt to block gay marriage via constitutional ban. But in five years, or two months, or a century- it can be overturned, overruled, logic winning against superstition. But one would think that someone who is attempting, quite literally, to “do his part to bring about armageddon”, would pull out all the stops. In fact, I would even posit that one who tries to end the world probably will, second coming or not. That is horrifying.

It reminds me, as many things do, of a comedians’ joke. The Comedian is referencing the phrase “live every day like it is your last”, to which he comments that they never tell you what to do the day after you lived like it was your last day. Imagine a future where people like this get their way, bombs fly and the world is charred. Then Imagine the next day, where there is no son-of-god walking the earth, no converted Jews; no Beasts, no new earth.

I’m not sure, at that point, that a “my bad” would suffice.

-F9

[yes... I am both trying out new sign-offs and new formats to discuss.]