bring the noyz

The smile of God is the goal of your life
- Rick Warren

I know my dear reader, I know. Right now you are sitting there thinking, "The smile of huh ? Rick Whodafuck? Now wait just one damn minute! Isn't he the guy that wrote that book? Is the Good Doctor Noyz quoting that book?"

Yes, yes my dear reader, I must confess: he is, I am.

I know, I know, right now you are most likely gettin' all "no you di'unt" and asking yourself such troublesome questions as, "Is the Good Doctor Noyz going all annoyingly Dr. Phil? Is he turning Oprah on our ass?"

Please allow me to reassure you my dear reader. That is definitely not the case.

I happened to read that quote a couple weeks back while skimming and scanning the book.

"Why?" you then might logically ask.

Well let me tell you.

A couple weeks back I was helping a friend pack up a U-Haul to move. He was given the book as a farewell gift by an appreciative and grateful landlord who was perhaps slightly saddened to see someone he referred to as "his best tenant" leave.

Wow, the times sure have changed even if the President's name hasn't all that much. I recall a time when landlords were appreciative that myself or my friends were leaving and grateful if the deposit was enough to cover the cleaning and repair the damage. But as is typical, I digress. . .

While taking a well earned break from arranging and packing the boxes that collapsed and condensed a friend's entire life into the close confines of a rental truck. . .

(I always knew the skills I gained from the hours and hours and hours spent sitting on the couch playing Tetris really stoned would prove to be valuable. Life is a journey in which you can learn something new each day. . . but again I digress. . . )

So I was taking a break to enjoy a Lone Star and I picked up the book. I started flipping through it and began reading the first few paragraphs of the chapters and other more or less random selections that caught my eye and looked interesting or entertaining.

It pretty much lived up to my expectations.

Which if you know me at all, and I'm quite certain by now my dear reader that you do, you know that my expectations were not exactly high.

Which is to say something like: I thought the book to be loads of inspirational feel good crap by and for people who when handed a menu begin to eat it. Let me restate that last bit: by and for people who mistake the menu for the meal, by people who look at a globe and think they see the world.

Which is to say yet another way, by and for people who interpret the metaphors of their mythologies far to literally, or dare I say, fundamentally.

Which in this case refers to the repeated imagery of God as the benign (yet still vengeful, or perhaps more accurately as "He" says in one of the "Commandments", "jealous") Old Man in the Clouds paternal figure.

Um, yeah. . .

Please do not misundertand my meaning. Despite what you might be lead to believe by my recent rantings on the subject, I am not against Christianity in totality as a faith. Only parts of it.

Like dubya, I respect a vibrant faith. Millions of my fellow citizens are Christians. Hell, my mom is one. Say anything bad about her and I'll have to kick your damn ass.

I honor its traditions. Many do not. I oppose those who do not follow the great traditions and have hijacked a great religion.

But again I am going off on a slightly different track than I intended.

The smile of God is the goal of life

It seems oddly incongruous with the rest of the book. Like a bit of ancient Buddhist or Taoist wisdom awkwardly translated from the original Chinese.

Like sumkinda Zen fortune cookie.

I try to imagine the true believers and the faithful, going about their day imagining an Old Man in The Clouds smiling down upon them as they do their best to fulfill their special purpose.

What's it like to think that dad is always watching? At what phase of your emotional and psychological development are you stuck? Anyone? Anyone?

(Their special purpose? Their special porpoise? Wow, I just struck a chord from an acid flashback. Really. He'd remember, maybe.)

Actually the whole damn "purpose thing" struck me as being somewhat sneakily similar to some of the concepts associated with dharma. But then again, I've always had this sneaking suspicion that most of Jesus' teachings were basically concepts of the Eastern philosophies as seen through a Jewish filter to meet the needs and fit the cosmology of his audience.

Now, my dear reader, bear with me and follow that train of thought and expand your concept and consciousness of God. . .

Let us depersonify and assume that God is much more than The Old Man in The Clouds.

Let us not assume that as John Lennon once asserted, "God is a concept by which we measure our pain."

God is Love and Love is Blind and Ray Charles is Blind Therefore Ray Charles Is God.

Okay no, that can't be right. Not that I'm disputing the divinity of Ray Charles. I mean, c'mon dude, he's like totally dead. It's generally rude to dis' the dead.

Unless they were Nazis. I mean like really Nazis. In that case, fuck 'em.

But let's go with the thought that God is more like George Harrison sang:

When you've seen beyond yourself-then you may find, peace of mind,
Is waiting there-
And the time will come when you see we're all one, and life flows on within you and without you.

Ponder that for a moment or two.

Then again ponder this:

The smile of God is the goal of life

Yes.


















The Boy

Goal?

Score.
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