The Craziness Marches On

Well, it’s a day when religion seems to intrude itself.

Maybe it started yesterday, when I read the lovely and teaching story of Marriott's undergarments. Yes, there is a Marriott; yes, he’s chairman of the board of you-know-what; yes, he’s a Mormon.

And listen to what he said!

“I related to him how I’d been involved in a very serious boat accident, here  in New Hampshire,” Marriott said. “I caught fire; my polyester pants had burned off all the way to my waist. But my undergarments from my waist down to my knees had not even been singed. There wasn’t a mark on them. And I said, these holy  undergarments saved my life.”

¿Bíjte?! (as we’d say down here—“see”?!)

Of course, it could also have been yesterday, when I walked past the capitol with Raf. There’s a huge group of people, today, who are clamoring to God. And they’ve stuck up a huge “Christian” poster, completely obscuring half of the capitol’s northern face. Got the Jesus, got the sheep, got the cross! And they’ve got the quote from—I think—Ezekiel about the clamoring….

This, of course, used to set my Madison sensibilities howling. These crazy evangelicals who are anti EVERYTHING except personal-read-financial enrichment are being given the use of the preeminent public building on the island—I’ve paid for a block or two of the marble several times over, thanks!—and nobody whispers a word of disagreement?

Can we—gays and lesbians and women and just about everybody who isn’t insane—hold an alternative festival next week?

You know the answer.

Well, well. Mental hygiene. Breathe, Marc.

And then, it turned out the Reverend—wait, why did I type that!—Sun Myung Moon died at age 92 yesterday. Well—certainly had to check in on that!

And it is quite instructive, the life of our reverend. Born in 1920, he encountered—literally, he says—Jesus at age sixteen. (That’s Moon, age 16—sorry, writing about religion so often induces bad grammar, or maybe just thinking….)

Well, Jesus had a message, as he so often does. Moon was to go forth and complete the work that Jesus had left unfinished 2000 years ago. Sets up the Unification Church, and grows it by preaching family values.

The family often being the result of two strangers of different cultures being “blessed” in a mass ceremony.

Remember Madison Square Garden in 1982?

Well, Moon did what any sharp guy would do. Got rich, acquired money and power! The New Yorker Hotel, a ski resort—all manner of bangles on the guy’s bracelet.

Oh, and curious friendships—with Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, and George H. W. Bush. As well, of course, as the dictator of North Korea.

I could tell you as well about the Church of Scientology (capitals by convention only) interviewing girlfriends for Tom Cruise.

But the brain tires.

Here’s the thing. 20 % of the followers of this blog—there are five—go to church faithfully (was about to say religiously, but thought not).

Her name is Susan.

And I respect Susan’s beliefs as she respects mine. I would also argue that she is the best sort of Christian, and that she, and her church, do good in the community. I cheerfully grant her and her church the right to be tax-free, and I shoulder a bit more of the burden April 15 for that dispensation.

But these crazies?

Needing a breath of fresh air, mentally, I turned to Mark Twain. And here he is, on the Book of Mormon:

All men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few except the "elect" have seen it, or, at least, taken the trouble to read it.  I brought away a copy from Salt Lake.  The book is a curiosity to me, it is such a pretentious affair, and yet so "slow," so sleepy; such an insipid mess of inspiration.  It is chloroform in print.  If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle--keeping awake while he did it was, at any rate.  If he, according to tradition, merely translated it from certain ancient and mysteriously-engraved plates of copper, which he declares he found under a stone, in an out-of-the-way locality, the work of translating was equally a miracle, for the same reason.

The book seems to be merely a prosy detail of imaginary history, with the Old Testament for a model; followed by a tedious plagiarism of the New Testament.  The author labored to give his words and phrases the quaint, old-fashioned sound and structure of our King James's translation of the Scriptures; and the result is a mongrel--half modern glibness, and half ancient simplicity and gravity.  The latter is awkward and constrained; the former natural, but grotesque by the contrast.  Whenever he found his speech growing too modern--which was about every sentence or two--he ladled in a few such Scriptural phrases as "exceeding sore," "and it came to pass," etc., and made things satisfactory again.  "And it came to pass" was his pet.  If he had left that out, his Bible would have been only a pamphlet.