E-C-K

Those are my initials: E.C.K. And that is the "divine spirit" according to the ECKists, who praise the sound and the light of God. I wanted to drop this fact during our service, but I thought that it would be embarrassing for all of us if the six other adults (aside from Lauren and myself) plus 3 children got down on their knees right there and started worshiping me. So I kept it to myself. Waiting, waiting for my day when I shall reveal myself as ECK.

Lauren and I arrived at the little downtown building where the Starbucks and the Noah's Bagels reign, and proceeded to walk around in circles on the ground floor, then walk around in circles in the basement, searching for the elusive ECKists. Finally, after determining that the ECKists were upstairs, we searched for the stairs that went UP, finally giving in and asking the incredibly unhelpful young ladies at Noah's Bagels how to get upstairs, to which they replied, "there's an upstairs?" Turns out, for all the throngs who are trying to worship me, you have to go outside to find the stairs ... this is a temporary situation until they can find a cathedral large and spectacular enough to house my followers.

So it was a very small gathering, and pretty awkward. You see, this is a new age religion, and new agers don't like "structure" so much, and so we all sat around and listened to three people (all of whom professed some link to the counseling profession) tell us stories about "gifts." One of the women, a striking 40-something, started her story with: "I am clairvoyant" and I looked around, expecting smirks or laughter or something, but saw only nods. So I looked back at her, turned my face into a mask of seriousness, and nodded gravely. Ah yes, I thought, you're clairvoyant. And I am a vampire. But I said nothing. To my eternal credit and worshipfulness.

At any rate, I guess that the ECKists are into dream interpretation, which is cool. They're also into reincarnation. I was looking through one of their books, though, and there was a story about God telling a woman about her reincarnated cat, and how to recognize him in his new form. Um. Okay, followers: this is nonsense. I think that this is a fundamental problem with new age stuff: it kind of cheapens the whole belief system when things can be simplified and distilled down to this level of obviousness. Like when everyone says that their spirit animal is a wolf, or that they were Cleopatra in a past life. I mean, very few people say, "I was a cheap whore in Babylon in a past life!" Nope. Everyone was Cleopatra. And God gives a damn about your stupid cat.

That having been said, I could turn this criticism against myself, of course. I have only a simplified and distilled view of new age beliefs in general, and Eckankar in particular. I am sure that there is nuance in there. But in my role as amateur critic-of-everything, I have a hard time getting past the convenience of new age. I mean, take the nicest parts of Buddhism, give it a splash of Hinduism and a dash of mysticism and wrap it in some pagan niceties, and you've got a religion? Hmph.

Not my religion, by George. In my religion, all is mist and mystery, and you have to sacrifice virgins at the altar of ECK or your children will be eaten by ghost wolves.

In other news, I was visited on Saturday by my Jehovah's Witnesses, one of whom has now visited a few times (I'll call her "Ann"). Ann and I finished our discussion of suffering and Satan's rule over the world. See, there are 144,000 people who are going to go to heaven. The rest will return to Earth after God has reclaimed it. Satan was allowed to rule the world because mankind fell by eating something in the Garden of Eden. In my mind, it was a really good sandwich. Incredibly hard to resist. At any rate, after eating the sandwich, Adam and Eve were banished, along with all their progeny, from Eden, and destined to live short and brutish lives. Seems fair. Like I said, a delicious sandwich. But God (/Jesus) will return to restore God's rule over the Earth, put us all back together (even the dead ones) and restore peace and harmony to the world. It's all been an experiment! To show us that we need guidance, and that Satan provides the wrong guidance! The Holocaust! The million Holocausts that have occurred - just a big lesson for us! So I want to know: why do good people get the lessons again and again, and terrible people (here's looking at you, Dick) get to be Vice President and really rich? I guess that little girl running from Napalm in Vietnam was a really slow learner! Anyway, Ann is really nice and incredibly adept with her bible, and a lot of what she says makes sense. But overall, it makes about as much sense as reincarnating a cat.