Thursday, 20 September 2012
If you want to make fun of a religion without upsetting anyone, it seems your best bet is to make a sarcastic remark about Scientology. As a non-religious person, this seems a bit like the pot calling the kettle a slightly different shade of black.
So, mindful of the cliche, I am hereby going to poke fun of Scientology, but only because it dropped right in front of my feet. Literally. I picked up the mail off our porch this evening, and this is what I saw:
Ignore the top half of this image, which I only included in the scan to show that this flyer is, indeed, brought to me from my neighbors at the Church of Scientology in downtown St. Paul. What caught my eye was the lower half of this flyer: LOVE? and HATE?.
I think that’s a good way to demonstrate love. Just two intertwined hands. My guess is these two hands belong to lovers, but it could be familial or friendship love. (I’m sure it’s not agape love, though, since that’s the lowest kind of love, but that’s another story).
Anyway, what’s with the hate [portion of the] mail? Why does lightning equal hate? There are so many good ways to show hate…they could have shown a masked crinimal assaulting some old lady, or a KKK cross-burning, or some random dude with his fists clenched or a bunch of people with headbands, goatees, and sticks. But lightning? I don’t get it. Do Scientologists believe that lightning is evil? In that case, I could never be a Scientologist, ‘casue I think lightning is really cool. I mean, what other non-living thing has a distinct name for its sound? Way cool.
Also this evening, Isla pulled a red basket off a shelf in the toy room, and began pulling out the puzzle pieces, one by one. She began with the black and white pieces (shown in the center, below), and then alternated each side of the “train” until she completed the whole line. Owen and I read an entire chapter out of a book while she was this. I was impressed with her dedication:
Here she is seen about to attach the final few pieces. Alas, my act of taking a picture disturbed her concentration and she didn’t bother to hook together the last three pieces. Oh well. Still pretty impressive.