Revelations, a Sunday Service

A long time ago, when the earth was still flat and gravity hadn't been invented. A small band of ape-like creatures planted some wheat near a river, an arduous task without gravity. The wheat was washed away by a flood. Said one ape-man to another "see, told you it was too close to the sodding river, see", the other retorted "well how the buggering blazes did that happen? The water is supposed to stay in the river!" After much furrowing of pronounced brows, they decided to call it a Flood and that it must have been caused by some huge creature emptying his waters into the river. Must be a very big and dangerous creature.

By and by the ape-men collected a bunch of stories about storms, hail, earthquakes, shooting stars and such like, all caused by a creature much bigger than themselves. Eventually they gave the creature a name, he was called "Gordon the Bennet who begat David, King of the Ape-Men and Made Ape-Men in his Own Image, even Peter Beardsley". So whenever a new calamity hit the gathering they would all chant "Gordon Bennet!" Unfortunately, these ape-men were all wiped out by a rival bunch when they got into a fight over who's superior being was bigger. (note: there was a surviving splinter group who avoided the massacre by leaving the main group earlier. The surviving group claims there are two "t"'s in Bennet(t), hence they had to leave and start their own thing. Thus the immortal teachings live on).

And that's pretty much how it is today, tribal warfare fanned by a few ignorant zealots (not the biblical Zealots, just the ordinary ones). The surviving ape-men admit that floods are caused by rain but now they claim the moon landing was a hoax and God makes fossils look really old to fool us. That's laughingly called "Intelligent Design", see FSM , this type of thought all falls under Dualism. Here, everything comes in two flavours. If you're not good you must be evil and if you're wearing the wrong coloured dress/robe you'll burn in hell forever.

Monotheists take a different view, "desire is the cause of all suffering" etc. You can't change the world but you can change yourself, everyone be nice to each other then we can all get along. There's no heaven or hell so no one ever gets smote, or indeed, smitten. According to dualist philosophers, the monotheists "are a bunch of whinging, boring, tree-hugging, flatulent, vegetarian numpties". According to the monotheists "we love our brothers and sisters very much, the barbarian apes."

Apart from those two mainstream methods of spreading intolerance and misery, there are the occasional crack-pots given to all sorts of scurrilous fancies and bizarre gibberish. For example, the French Renaissance crack-pot known as Nasaldoormouse. So called because of his nasal whining voice (aka French Accent) and because he was scared of everything (doomsayers usually are). This idiot still has legions of fans who wait for some calamity to hit their gathering and then proclaim "ooohh, so that's what he meant by 'the fabled three and their drummer will be stoned while the Moistened Ones look on and wail and gnash their teeth' ".

So the main thing of it is, don't worry about stuff, there's plenty of people out there who wish you well and will be there when you need someone. But while you're at it, have a look around and see if there's anyone who could do with some support from you, then offer it. Not all the time, sometimes, the rest of time you can play outside, it's ok.

All rise and sing from the hymn-books of the mercyful; "Temple of Love".

:)

JJ