And Speaking of Celebrating Death...

Happy Good Friday!

As a Catholic (even a Fallen one) I am abstaining from meat today (though I am drinking a beer as I type this)...a couple more days and Easter will be upon us and children all over the country will be celebrating something they think has to do with rabbits and eggs and candy.

As a kid I always considered Easter my favorite religious holiday...though I enjoyed Halloween and Christmas, of course, as a young follower of Christ I always figured that Easter was what it was all about...you know, the whole Resurrection/Sin Saving thing. Never a big egg eater (it was all I could do to choke down a single hard-boiled egg back in the day...as an adult I mostly abstain) or much of a "sweet tooth" I actually enjoyed the whole churchy part of the weekend.

Nowadays, I believe in God (or at least the Divine & Conscious Eternal Nature of the Universe) more than ever before, but I am much MUCH less about religious dogma in any particular form...in fact, folks that cling to a particular religion as The Right Way seem to me to be as deluding of themselves as those who believe we somehow evolved from plankton to monkey to humans to folks who invent giant rubber wheels to fit on busses that will allow for the mass commuting of people to and from places as a method of convenience and a possible reduction in greenhouse gasses...I mean the universe has a certain degree of randomness I suppose, but you gotta' admit it's pretty long odds that there ain't SOME sort of Divine Plan at work.

Take RPGs for instance (the games, not the weapons of warfare)...if the world/universe was a purely randomly evolved one, survival-o-the-fittest and all that, what the hell place would there be for RPGs? Really...there are plenty of great world leaders and inventors and creators of "neat things" out there without the need for escapist fantasy...they serve little practical purpose and thus should have disappeared long ago like enlarged canines and tails and whatnot.

Of course, I don't think Jesus-Died-For-You-So-That-You-Could-Play-RPGs, either...but of course, I did say I'm a lot less into the usual accepted organized religions than I once was.

[O just by the way...organized religion, while at times appearing to serve as an "opiate of the masses" (at least prior to the invention of television) does indeed do some good in the world...by and large, the basic tenets of all major world religions teach people to be good to each other, and as there is strength in numbers, an organized group following those basic tenets can have profound positive effects on the world]

I'm just saying there IS a Divine Plan of some sort and I'm sure that role-playing games serve their proper place in that divine plan. I'd like to think they act as a method of bringing people closer together, allowing us to explore tough concepts in a safe environment...as well as help us build tighter-knit, intimate friendships, use our minds and imagination, and channel our aggressive tendencies in a constructive (or at least entertaining fashion) rather than projecting them outward into the actual physical world.

But that is just my take. You folks can believe what you want.

: )

Anyhoo, I will be doing Easter Mass & Brunch with my Mom this weekend (as usual) and expect to be contemplating profound mysteries (and possibly a new game design concept) in a serene and peaceful House of Worship...that is, while I'm not wondering why the Catholic church has decided to spend money on TV advertising instead of addressing some of the harder issues of their ultra-conservative stance in the 21st century (as well as the fucking pedophile issues...Jesus H!). Hope everyone else has a happy one, no matter what your particular beliefs...eat an egg for me!

; )