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April 1,
2006:
Semi-obscure author
Bradley Denton announced today that he has experienced an epiphany
and now accepts all religious and spiritual doctrines, from all
cultures and all times, as absolute truth.
"I've wasted years relying
on the Three Rational Stooges of observation, evidence, and
repeatable results," he said. "And I always blindly accepted it
whenever one of the Stooges poked God in the faith. But lately I've
heard protests -- with a sound like Shemp protesting one of Moe's
nose tweaks -- that all people's religious beliefs must be
respected. This came as a shock to me, because I'd always postulated
that all people's RIGHTS to their religious beliefs must be
respected . . . while the beliefs themselves could be
acknowledged to be of less value than my dog's
rawhide chewies. I mean, those things always make him happy."
Denton's attitude changed, he
said, when he went into his back yard one morning last week and sat
under one of Central Texas's rare Bodhi trees. There, while Denton
was meditating or perhaps napping, the angel Moroni appeared,
wrestled Denton into submission (winning two falls out of three),
took him to the top of Mount Sinai, made him pet a mummified cat,
chased him around the Kaaba, fed him a piece of raw buffalo liver,
smacked him upside the head with a chunk of the True Cross, and
hooked him up to an E-meter.
"Then there was some stuff with trees, goats,
jaguars, bells, rocks, pentagrams, snakes, oracles, altars, crystals,
mah-jongg tiles, pyramids, burning bushes, and virgins," Denton
said. "In fact, there was a lot of stuff with virgins. But it was at
the Shaolin temple, where everybody was kung fu fighting -- man, those
cats were fast as lightning -- that I finally gave in. I signed
my name in blood at the bottom of a stone tablet written in Reformed Egyptian,
accepted Jesus as Lord, proclaimed that Mohammed is Allah's messenger, repeated the
word 'om' over and over again, paid the auditor
five thousand bucks, and Bob's your posthumously-saved uncle, I was converted and
ordained. Then we had lunch at a nice little kosher deli
and went home."
Since then, Denton's days
have been filled with evangelism, prayer, jihad, mitzvahs, meditation, sacrifice
(both animal and human), worshipful silence, choir practice,
celibacy, ritual sex, persecuting the wicked, ministering to
the wretched, chanting (Gregorian, Byzantine, and "other"), shunning those
who wear clothing with buttons, sitting shiva, more
jihad, self-flagellation, and bake sales.
It's been a radical change from
his former life of writing, music, family, and friends.
"There's no time for any of
that now," he explained. "I've realized that there is no God but God, and
He so loved the world that He gave His only eye for an eye, on
account of thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins,
one of whom must be sacrificed on the high altar unless the oil
lasts for eight days, in which case do what thou wilt shall be the
whole of the law, for the Earth is our Mother, blessed be. Got it?
Good."
Soon after the above comment,
Denton burned himself at the stake for heresy, but was immediately
reincarnated as a middle-aged white guy with dreadful eyesight who
makes a bad first impression.
"I almost forgot," he added. "Ra
gives life, Shiva destroys, and Hera's a bitch. Hail Mary and Haile
Selassie."
Denton then fired up a spliff
the size of a saxophone, slammed back a fistful of peyote, and
stoned himself for heresy. He was immediately reincarnated as a
middle-aged white guy with dreadful eyesight who makes a bad first
impression.
"Aw, nuts," he said.
Contact: braddenton@aol.com
Updated April 1, 2006
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Making it up as I go since
1958
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