I am sitting near the site of an old army barracks where, as a teenager, I used to attend a yearly haunted house that served as a fundraiser for the disturbed adolescent house that operated on the by-then decomissioned army base. I loved that haunted house -- by today's standards, it wouldn't be all that scary: a few bloody mirrors, some hatchets, people dressed as ghosts. It certainly couldn't touch the downright bullshit of the new breed of "haunted houses" run by particularly conservative churches in the south designed to show kids what hell will be like if they have the misfortune of wearing the "wrong" clothes and being at the "wrong" place -- rape, shame, death, AIDS, abortion. The explicit message of these places is that everything bad happens to you because you have strayed and gone into a world full of secular evil. I went through one of these once for an article I was writing -- I killed my baby, I killed my baby, screamed a young girl, maybe 15, in a room full of blood and demonic abortion doctors with a disembodied speaker voice intoning, She'll never get another chance. She's infertile now. Sweet Jesus, it made me miss the old barracks haunted house with the "retards operating fake chainsaws" as one of my friends used to put it.
As I was Christmas shopping this year, I saw a teeny-tiny witch doll. The package said, Grow Your Own Witch! The witch becomes 600 times her size if you put her in water. I don't know because I haven't. I considered her as a present for someone who might need a witch; we all need someone to vilify every now and then, I think. And let's face it -- sometimes the other person is the witch and sometimes you are. In my most morally and spiritually exhausted moments, I wish I had the clear-cut enemy that the aforementioned haunted house provides -- that's what's good about simple rules; you don't have to think as much. That said, I'm keeping my witch this year. I won't have to put her in water and watch her grow, though. A small witch is enough for me. I can see the rest of her in myself.
Michelle's Spell of the Day
"It's hard to be free but when it works, it' s worth it!" Janis Joplin
Cocktail Hour
Drinking poetry suggestion: The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster Richard Brautigan
Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Thursday!
10 comments:
Compared to spirtual evil, secular evil is like being lost in the funhouse.
He's right.
When are you coming home? Sweet Jesus I miss our sometimes conversations over our realities.
In the only Catholic church in Fowlerville in the vestibule before you enter the actual sanctuary portion of the church there is a full size painting of a a weeping Jesus holding an aborted fetus. It disgusts me and i refused to enter the sanctuary during my nieces first communion and will refuse to enter the church portion again at their upcoming confirmations.
In the bible of the christian the shortest sentence is "Jesus wept."
It was when he heard the news of the murder of the baptist John. Nothing in that sentence or portion abour Jesus weeping over abortion.
Not ever having been a fan enough of haunted houses to pay the enterance fee i don't know but will take your word for this is now what goes on. Radical conservative Christians using what is basically a pagan inspired day to push their message of eternal damnation for them who don't think as they think.
Seems to me that these are the people that put GW in the White House and are the ones responsible for all that has happened since. Which puts them in greater danger of being the recipients of the evil that they condemn the rest of mankind to.
TWM allows in his mind them their right to be as they are and to think as they believe they need to think but those thoughts are what he villfies constantly because they are so anti-God's thoughts as written in their own sacred texts. And that is spiritual evil.
I also do believe that they will be at the front of the line when all men get to see God face to Face and there will be great laughter at what he has to say to them, not because God believes what they say now is funny but when they finally learn the truth and have to admit before all of the holy ones their evil, we will laugh because all we can do now is fight them or cry.
As for me i will fight them with peace and the truth as it is written in their own text because that for now is the most fun I am allowed.
Peace Michelle
may you sense the great peace i have for you and all those who love you in that peace.
TWM
I think, for the most part, people who work those conservative churches' haunted houses may have some really really serious issues of their own. Perhaps they're acting out of desperation. The teacher I had problems with, the one who recently retired, thought his main duty was to teach the inmates values. You could never get it through his thick skull that perhaps it was a little too late for that. Why not do what is intended: teach them the material for a GED, or in the case of a haunted house, scare them for the fun of it.
I don't think I could get through one of those haunted houses that you described in your story. I'll stick with the chainsaws and the goblins and such, Thankyou very much.
I love haunted stuff. It always gets me so scared and my blood rushing.
Cajun Queen haunted houses and decom Army bases give me the willies I stay away. Foxy Lady D you are a good witch to save our City and comfort the Needy
O Mighty Isis Shazammmmmmmmmmmmm
R2 C2!!!!!
Dear Michelle lovely view and post as always. I am delighted you are a Detroit girl now and not a decommisioned Army base life guard in dreary Texas any more. Good quotation and here is to freedom in all its forms. Champagne toasts and caviar dreams my dear, Bravo! If the Walker can spare you when with his wife, perhaps we can give Tom's Oyster Bar a green light. Email me if you would like a real dinner.
Thanks for your comments to my posts . . . I was actually casting my votes for the weblog awards when you visited! I wish you the best!
To me, there is nothing scarier than a fundamentalist . . . pointing fingers, judging. That does blur the line between what we know to be evil (the faces of evil), and what evil really is.
I agree with you about simple rules, but I guess we did it to ourselves when we ate the apple.
"Friend" and "enemy" are just labels we affix to people. People are just who they are. Sometimes the same person has the "friend" label on them, then we put the "enemy" label on them, then back to to the "friend" label.
We love labelling everything. But everything just is removed beyond our own filters.
Nice post. Haunted houses rock! And you rock Michelle!
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