Religion and Private Life

I went to church this morning, wearing my Sunday best: pink cotton, knit floral pajamas and green sheepskin-lined slippers. Knowing my propensity to get bored, I brought my newly-purchased finger cymbals and walked into the church. I skipped out on yoga, so I figured learning zills would make up for missing out on doing Triangle pose all morning.

I walked into the church surrounded by rainbow colored stain glass windows. I settled into a pew and started clanging my zills, Left-Right-Left, Left-Right-Left. My poor rhythm and unkempt look didn’t turn heads in the ALM CyberChurch.

See, this isn’t a real church; it’s a Second Life church. I’m probably not the best one to explain this, but as best I can understand, Second Life is a virtual reality world, where people do everything from buy property to build houses and set up stores. I was really skeptical, but for the sake of education, I signed up. The News21 reporting initiative is looking for us, “young journalists” to find new innovative ways to report and present to the news, so I put my misgivings of Second Life aside and created my avatar, Ludmila Lubitsch. She’s still wearing a Cybergoth getup that was free when I signed up. I’m not crazy about the outfit, so, if someone wants to give me a SL makeover, I’m all yours.

In real life, I grew up in Utah as a non-Mormon and went to a Catholic high school as a non-Catholic. I’ve always been surrounded by religion, but never have completely embraced it as a culture or a practice. So, it almost makes sense that I have gotten sucked into trolling for religion stories in a virtual world.

I did my first interviews on SL life with avatar, classmate and fellow journalist Inmy Tristan. We sat on zafus in the Peace Gardens next to the Hare Krisna Temple with devotee, Premadas Shepherd, an avatar with a shaved head and an orange robe draped over his body. He was a fascinating subject who had found the SL temple and a few weeks later started going to the Hare Krishna Temple in RL. The idea of finding spiritually through a virtual reality was absolutely fascinating.

The church service this morning was equally intriguing. People stood in the pews swaying with their virtual arms extended to the sky as ALM Pastor Benjamin Psaltery walked to the pulpit. About 20 avatars filled the red pews and typed messages to each other over an audio stream of a church service probably recorded at a RL (real life) church earlier in the day. It started with started with a list of prayers and then moved on to singing a song with a chorus of, “Wash all my sins away.”

The sermon’s title today was the Blood, Easter being just two days a way and all. The sermon droned on and I got a little bored and started a load of laundry in RL, made my bed and drank some coffee. My whole intent of attending the service was to meet people afterwards. By the time the service had wrapped up, a good hour later, my computer crashed. When I got back on everyone was gone except for a few stragglers, who weren’t really involved with the service.

I’m off to an SL Buddhist meditation group now. If you attend any kind of religious service on Second Life, look me up or email me at ludmilalubitsch@gmail.com. If I’m not online, see if Inmy Tristan is.

P.S. Moving around SL and typing chats with zills wrapped around your fingers is not recommended or endorsed by the author. My rhythm still sucks.

Most mornings I listen to Alan Watts’ podcast as a daily part of my buddhist practice which has become as diverse as going to temple on Saturdays or Sundays at Green Gulch, alternating with my fiance’s Unitarian Church in Oakland, and even looking for buddhists in SecondLife. Sometimes I even alternate between praying in the tradition of my Catholic upbringing and meditating or taking long walks with my walking stick listening to readings from the Kabbalah (which I can on occasion spell).

Religion is poetry to me.

I’ve been hooked since Sister Mary Catherine taught me English by way of memorizing the catechism when I first arrived mojada from my native Guatemala at the age of six to Lancaster, Pa.

Pero eso es otro show, like Cristina from Univision says. This morning in packing for my trip out East (part work and part pleasure) I Watts posed this question:

“Imagine for a moment that you have the privilege of having a brief interview with G/god, during the course of which you are allowed to ask one question.”

What question would I ask?

[In the audience I imagine all the reporters scrambling, putting semicolons between three-part questions.]

It is in fact a golden opportunity and like many journalists, I would probably ask the silly question of asking God: “But what does it all mean?”

To which I can only imagine an immense rolling of the eyes.

“Why do I even need to question?” G/god would say. In the classic Buddhist response g/God would say: “It just is.”

So I would take back my question and ask myself “what is the best question to ask?” But that too would count towards the question (because g/God of course has telepathy) and I would beg for that not to be considered. Maybe I would just ask:

“Where is religion going in the next 10 years?”

But that too wouldn’t hit the mark and I would ask (Please, God, don’t let that one count!) to reschedule the interview for next week once I’d actually done some research.

Search with me. Find me under Inmy Tristan in SL, or go to MySpace or just check out some of the stories I’ve done.

Hi. I’m Jason. I’m not a Christian. Oh, I once was, but like most kids in the 80s I hit high school and went from faith to Faith No More.

My half-brother? Well, that’s a different story.

His name is Joseph. Can you get more Christian than that? Joey, as we like to call him, went the opposite route as me. As a kid I was a goodie two-shoes, he was a troublemaker. Or so I hear. See, we have different moms. So I grew up with my mom, he grew up with our dad.

Our dad really, really liked Jesus. On my weekend visits I thought it was a little creepy. He’s passed away, so I’m comfortable saying that. But when he was alive the whole Jesus thing kind of scared me. I grew up in California. I didn’t get it.

Joey grew up in Georgia. But at 17, he ran away to Florida and got a job as a short order cook at Denny’s. I don’t think he even graduated high school. I know he never went to college. I do rememebr that he partied a lot, followed the band Phish, ski bummed in Colorado, crashed some cars, and then got into selling them. Our dad had been in sales, and Joey inherited the talent. Within a few years, he was selling dental equipment and making six figures.

And he fell in love. Monica, now his wife, is also a Christian. She had also bounced around, had a son in her teens, but found her way into a career. And into Jesus. Seriously into Jesus. Joey did, too. But we don’t really talk about it. Why would we? My brother, Monica, and the kids are probabably headed to Heaven. And I’ll soon be headed off with the other non-believers–to rot in Hell. Or is it burn in Hell? Something like that. However you slice it, not a pretty fate to imagine for your brother. Best not to think about it.

Besides, there is golf to be played. That’s what brothers do. Isn’t it?

To be continued…

themes.wordpress.net is currently broken, no it’s not just us.

finding themes was difficult the only way i managed to do it was to click test run and take note of the id so you know which on you clicked. then send me the url like http://themes.wordpress.net/download.php?theme=1711 or http://themes.wordpress.net/testrun/?wptheme=1711 and I’ll install it.

some themes show up as thumbnails, very strange, hopefully will get fixed soon.