As I write this, millions of people around the world have a charcoal cross scratched across their foreheads, and everybody who doesn’t have one on will walk past these people and act as if everything is normal.
Religion, you are weird.
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Oprah Quitting TV Show In 2011
Being from OK, I’d never seen this before. Now I go to school in St. Louis and was seriously confused until the guy I sit next to looked up Ash Wednesday on Wikipedia. I got used to it, but walking by the neighborhood Catholic school on my way home when school had just ended and seeing a group of kids and their parents with ash smeared on their heads was still weird.
“Hey buddy, you got a little schmootz right there.”
Weirder than Bunnypants saying that God told him to invade Iraq?
Or, if you live around a large Indian community, you can see the Hindu analogue almost every week.
Saw one on pundit TV today. Very freaking weird. I got it. You’re devout. Show-offs.
Certainly it’s no weirder than this:
http://www.nypost.com/photos/galleries/sports/pp_20090201_super_bowl_fans/photo04.jpg
Yes we are! Participated in an Ash Wednesday service myself last night.
For we are dust, and to dust we shall return.
I’m not all that religious, but secular cosmology’s pretty weird too. Supposedly, according to closed-universe geometry, if you go far enough in one direction, you’ll end up back where you started. You tell me there’s nothing religious about believing we live in a pacman universe.
alas, being human definitely has it’s downside.
Rituals create community. It’s a form of comfort.
Rituals create community. It’s a form of comfort.
Yeah, I guess. So is hot chocolate and chicken soup.
A shout-out to the ugly side of things:
SCENE: Late Middle Ages
Two men are talking in front of a stake prepared for execution.
FIRST MAN: What is going on? Who is being executed.
SECOND MAN: I myself saw to the condemnation of the witch! She heard supernatural voices and did what they told her to do.
FIRST MAN: So why are you burning her at the stake.
SECOND MAN: God told me to.
I think special clothing or garments are weirder. An invisible supernatural consciousness told me to wear goofy underwear (mormon), or wear a funny turban (sikh), or wear a headscarf (islam), or wear a wig if you are married (jewish).
[...] I get compared to the founder of CNN. The proud know-nothings at Newsbusters are up in arms over this post I made on Ash Wednesday. In the twisted mind of Ken Shepherd, the post was somehow mocking of the [...]
So glad putting a black cross on my forehead is not in my religion. Instead, I get to spend one week not eating any bread, cookies, or drinking any grain alcohol. Go figure.