Dubious Divinity

Level Up!

2009-05-06T02:26:43Z

Today I am a level 7 cleric.

That means today is the sixth anniversary of the day I got my ordination online.

I still think of myself as a minister, and am generally succeeding at what I intended when I intended to be a minister, which as I pointed out last year pretty much means be good family. My place is a house of worship (of some kind or another) for many dear friends, and my friendships have become more peaceable and life-affirming. Plus, hey, STAR WARS! Though it might seem like mere fanfiction on the surface, I assure you, it is rather my long lost final thesis in Catholic Studies. It counts.

Anyway, I have no time to give further details, because I have to go do more work for the paying vocation.

But, y'know, duly noted for the livejournal.

*ding*

REVEREND JACK IS NOW A LEVEL SEVEN CLERIC.

Star Wars: According to Jack

2009-03-16T09:29:39Z

Howdy folks! Wondered about the lack of sermons over the past year? It's cuz I've been writing a book! It's finally finished and ready to be shared...

http://revjack.com/starwars/

I know rewriting an already popular story isn't the height of originality, but hopefully you'll find that I've taken the story in a new and interesting direction. I won't be posting notices for each of the individual chapters here, but if you'd like to be on the mailing list and have scenes sent directly to you as they're released, just drop me a line (address at link) and let me know. And tell your friends!

Level Up!

2008-05-06T00:22:08Z

Well, I guess I'm a sixth level cleric now. In honor of my fifth anniversary, I went a bit longer with this year's year-in-review, and gave it a permanent home on my website. So if you're interested, please check out A Sermon To Myself On The Occassion Of The Fifth Anniversary Of My Ordination.

Make your own nin remix album!

2007-12-03T19:38:40Z

So I wanted to share this Cool Thing that Nine Inch Nails is doing.

Trent's released the individual tracks from "Year Zero" as wav files on a bonus disc with the new Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D album, for fans to remix. (I think they're also available on his website, but it's crashing my browser on Ubuntu at the moment.) Anyway, I gave it a try, and it's way fun:

http://revjack.com/music/

I've always been drawn to NIN more for their light-and-floaty than their loud-and-thrashy, so I took my favorite songs off the album and pulled out the noise, leaving only the beauty. It's NIN I can sleep to. :-)

Anyone who likes NIN and is interested in learning audio editing should check this out. I used Audacity on Ubuntu; Trent includes software for Mac and PC on the disc. And if you give a listen to my "diminished" mixes, lemme know what you think. :-)

Rock and Roll Momma

2007-10-01T03:46:38Z

Happy Birthday Mom!

Mom's birthday isn't for another week, but she had an early celebration last week with her favorite band in the world, American English. Apparently they surprised her with a big party and, of course, plenty of dedications.

In the clip, my Mom's the black-haired woman that the camera keeps swinging towards. The tall guy with the sideburns & buddy holly glasses behind her is my lil' brother.

Just wanted to share this with my friends, so y'all can see how crazy/awesome my Mom really is. :-)

Pirates of the Unitarians!

2007-08-31T19:50:32Z

I've got a blog now, for recording my adventures in the local Unitarian Universalist community:

PIRATES OF THE UNITARIANS!

As a Discordian, I found myself frequently at odds with some of the local UU leadership over their belief in rules. I don't believe in rules the way some people around here don't believe in God; I think they're figments of our imagination that we invent so that we can pretend that there's some amount of order to the universe. It's not that I was going out of my way to be a rulebreaker, it's just that I didn't really care what they said one way or the other.

So, rather than continue to deal with a bunch of greyfaces freaked out that one of their leaders didn't care about the rules, I resigned all position of official leadership in the community and declared myself a pirate. Hoisting the Chalice & Crossbones, I'm out on a mission to help remind my dearly beloved UU friends that you can't legislate morality or spirituality. Idunno if it will lead to religious revolution or just get me kicked out of the local congregation, but whatever happens, I'm gonna blog about it.

So add it to your bookmarks! Tell your friends! It is awesome!

Level Up!

2007-05-05T19:47:27Z

Well, as of today, I'm a fifth level chaotic-good cleric. I hear this is where I start to get some of the really cool spells. We'll find out. But first, a retrospective...

The fourth year of my ministry might be appropriately characterized as

THE YEAR OF BUREAUCRACY

and summarized with "served as President of the Board of Governors at the Channing-Murray Foundation."

I kicked the year off with the Midwest Discordian Ministry Assembly and The Attack of the Discordian Universalists, in which I stood before a rather staid congregation of Unitarian Universalists and presented them with harmless creative religious chaos. In doing so, for the first time in my ministry, I brought "controversy" to the Unitarian Universalists. Some people in the crowd relaxed into it and really enjoyed themselves, confronting the chaos with love. But--much moreso than I expected--I watched many people there shrink into themselves in discomfort, become upset and even angry at what they saw before them. There were complaints afterward. I stepped down from the Worship Committee, and it was the last time I preached at the pulpit of that church. Not that I was driven out, just that I now had a presidency to contend with...

I was quite surprised to be asked to be President of the C-M. I had been tossing the idea around in my head, but my attitude towards it was somewhat "if no one else steps up, I guess," and that was the mindset I had when I said yes. Unfortunately, I was also on the verge of burnout, without even realizing it. Even in just the first few summer months, all the time I had to devote to religious work was being devoted to administrative tasks--fundraising letters, board meetings, staff issues and generally whatever the Director threw in my direction. This left little time for me to do the religious tasks I enjoy, the things that spring naturally from my Slack and provide everyone involved with even more Slack (things like participating in the ordination of my dear friend Father Chris aka logodaedaly and the buzz it generated, or the baby naming ceremony for the son of deaconobvious and dsjones--congratulations on these happy events!)

I was doing so much at the behest of others that I was not satisfying myself spiritually, and it was a self-compounding problem, making me less capable of serving others. I am not so Christlike that I sacrifice great portions of my own happiness for just anyone...I need to have abundance for myself so that I might share that abundance with others. So, I showed up in my bathrobe for the first C-M worship service of the fall semester and preached on the necessity of Slack ("or kill me"), and I started telling the Director "no" when I needed to. Alas, the lack of Slack only spread; what should have been abundance began to feel like obligation, for myself and for others, and it seemed to be eating away quietly at the soul of the place. Concurrently, I began to see the same shrinking discomfort in response to my message of Slack & Discord at C-M that I saw at the church. We began losing board members, and by midwinter, I was about ready to go myself.

Then, I got an Idea. Not a huge idea, and not entirely mine--it was the result of lots of trial and error with my peers to construct a worship service we would all enjoy attending. It was Open Mic Worship that saved me, reminding me why I'm in this business in the first place. I began to organize one a month (a very easy thing to do, involving little more than telling lots of people "be here at this datetime") and I hope to continue doing so indefinitely. It's not a service for me, it's a sacrament; it's an outward sign of my inner faith, something I would do even if it were just myself and one other person, and thus it bears nothing but abundance. It's getting excellent attendance. It is a Fountain of Slack.

I also returned to the UU church--not for the worship services, but for the discussion that occurs between them. For the first several weeks of 2007, I arrived wearing a sign around my neck, with gold glitter-and-glue letters that read, "Let's talk about Forgiveness." And wouldn't you know, Forgiveness turns out to be one of the most Discordian concepts of them all; the notion that the Folks In Charge would Take A Hit for the benefit of People Who Done Wrong is apparently quite discomforting for a great many people in my community, undermining their basic assumption that rules should be obeyed. Having found my sacrament, I had also discovered the heart of my gospel. After a long downward spiral of a slump, I feel like I'm finally getting back on message.

Since then, all hell's both broken loose and been rustled back into its pen; I'll spare this record the gory details, but the year ended with what might be considered a backlash to the Discord & Slack that I preached at the beginning of the year, with many good people bearing down on me with criticism and many other good people coming to my defense. Things look good for me now, but I don't find out for sure until tomorrow if I'll be president for a second and final year-long term or not.

And yet, the blessing amidst the Bureaucracy has been the rediscovery of the core of my faith--the experience of forgiveness and communion that practically defines church for me. Peers in ministry may come and go, but these are things I can carry with me wherever I worship. And that is worth bucketloads of XP.

So LEVEL UP, once again. I'm still in the game, at least for one more year.

God bless us all; God knows we need it.

Peace & Slack,
Reverend Jack

See also:
First Anniversary
Second Anniversary
Third Anniversary

The real God, not that other douchebag...

2007-04-25T19:00:59Z

This guy has so pegged EXACTLY my own feelings toward and relationship with God. Highlights quoted after the cut. But really, you should follow the link and read it all for yourself.

http://daily.stanford.edu/article/2007/4/24/ireAndViceDouchebagsForJesus

God is a middle-aged man who understands failure and stupidity because he invented them. He can be angry and jealous, prone to destructive rampages which psychiatrists would refer to as "acting out." But he can also be kind and loving. Like us humans, he has the capacity for regret (He’s never forgiven himself for forgetting to put the dinosaurs on Noah’s Ark). He only wants to do right by his kids, but everything always seems to get worse. Even after the long span of his life, he still isn’t sure if he’s a good man who does bad things or a bad man who’s just kidding himself.

...

I like my version of God because he’s not infallible, because he can change, because, dare I say it, he can evolve.

...

The last time I can remember asking myself questions like this, I was in seventh grade and the only person I could ever talk to, the only guy who understood me even when I didn’t, was God. I would tell him stuff I would never tell anyone. I would beg him to protect the people I loved, and ask him to let them know how much I loved them, because I knew I’d never get around to telling them myself. He didn’t hate anybody.

I miss that guy, sometimes. Even if he doesn’t really exist, he was the best imaginary friend I ever had.

Open-Mic Worship Service

2007-04-24T02:27:44Z

Once a month at Channing-Murray, I've started hosting an "Open Mic" worship service--best described to IMSA folks as Club Pseudo meets Sunday Church. I've done three so far and gotten about a dozen people at each. Everyone brings their own icons and adornments for the ~~alta~~worship table, and we take turns reading from our respective scriptures, leading each other in song, lighting candles of joy and concern, meditating, preaching. We're even multimedia enabled. My two contributions last week were to sing along with NIN's "Year Zero" as an example of a "Kyrie Eleison" and play a scene from the movie "Jeffrey" where Nathan Lane plays a gay priest explaining the meaning of life. We also had a woman sing fantastic Hindu hymn, and another woman sang an earthmother song, both very beautiful to hear. There was a dude who was just passing through town, traveled a lot on weekends for his job and so visited a different UU church each week, who told us about how he had just given up his car in favor of a bicycle & public transit. Several poems were read, candles were lit and prayers were said, and much more...it was awesome church.

Usually these are on Sunday (I hope to stabalize that to the Nth Sunday of the month by early fall) but the next one is Saturday May 19th at 1pm-ish, as part of the fifth annual Midwest Discordian Ministry Assembly. Anyone who's reading this--give a shout if you want more info.

MIDWEST DISCORDIAN MINISTRY ASSEMBLY FIVE

2007-04-24T02:10:42Z

Short and sweet invite for now--

MIDWEST DISCORDIAN MINISTRY ASSEMBLY 2007

MAY 18-20, 2007

Red Herring Vegetarian Restaurant, Urbana, IL

Hot Dogs Will Be Served On Friday

Anyone reading who's interested should give a shout and I'll get you more info.

Sunrise, Sunset....mostly Sunset

2007-03-09T00:01:30Z

I have a photo gallery now, called Head in the Clouds. It's pretty much all daytime sky photography, since that's what I've been obsessing over since getting a digital camera; there are a few outdoors shots that focus on something other than pretty clouds. I welcome thoughts, comments...I like to hear which ones are people's favorites. For only two months of picture taking, I think I'm doing pretty good. But I can't wait for storm season...that's when the real fun starts. :-)

Joining the Fight For Awesome

2007-03-03T22:25:00Z

I just placed an order for the new edition of Revelation X, using a gift certificate given to me for Decemberween by hecateuse and the_sween. Posting here was the fastest way to thank them for enabling this awesomeness. Thank You! :-D

Also, I'd like to mention that online bookdvdemporium gift certificates are totally awesome gifts, and hereby exempt from RevJack Declaration Anathema #423, "Condemnation of Gift Certificates."

I HEART FATHER CHRIS

2007-02-19T17:22:56Z

I was just flipping through some of my old posts about evolution last night, reliving the frustrating nightmare of trying to talk to anti-creationists; then today I stumble onto this post from Father Chris, leaving me with the warm comforting sensation that someone else is out there presenting my views much more eloquently than I ever could, so I can just kick back and relax and link to them. :-D

http://chris.tessone.net/2007/02/19/the-authority-of-science/

Quoting Chris [

It's interesting to see how the roles of church and natural philosophy/science have shifted over the years. In the medieval church, one believed that God had particular attributes primarily because the hierarchy told one God had those attributes. Nowadays, the church's teaching authority plays some role in that, but we also put significant emphasis on experience of God. With science, on the other hand, we are increasingly moving in a direction where only specialists need concern themselves with replicating and validating results — the hoi polloi can simply accept these results on faith, because canonical science is so good at what it does.

Except there's plenty of evidence canonical science isn't quite that good.

...

I'm disappointed by the contempt in which many people hold skeptical religious conservatives. Many of those who hold science in high esteem are somewhat more informed, but to suggest that they have themselves done the work to validate, for instance, the theory of evolution and are not accepting these results on faith in the integrity of science is beyond disingenuous. Skeptics of evolution may have the bad luck of being on the wrong side of the data, but the problem lies in the authority they choose to accept — it doesn't make them stupid or fit for scorn. In fact, they are revealing a weakness in Western science that many on the other side have a hard time seeing.

] Well said, Father Chris.

What wouldn't Jesus do?

2007-01-18T20:17:11Z

This is in regard to one of the posts mentioned at here and includes my answers:

Would Jesus knowingly allow terrorists, murderers, rapists, child molestors, theives, and the like to freely enter into our country illegally?

Yes.

Would Jesus support providing illegal criminals with FREE health care

Yes.

Would Jesus KNOWINGLY provide illegal criminals with FREE education?

Yes.

Would Jesus Christ want to knowingly grant amnesty to a pack of illegal animals that just gang raped a young teenage girl?

For God's sake, yes. Perhaps you missed the memo about forgiveness.

Would Jesus share George Bush's "compassion" for such criminals?

Probably moreso.

Would Jesus Christ twice take an oath to protect His country from invasion

Nope, probably not.

and then immediately commit TREASON against Americans by ABSOLUTELY REFUSING to secure our borders?

But he might do this.

Would Jesus Christ go behind the backs of His fellow citizens and make an agreement with a foreign government to provide social security benefits for that government's citizens and the time they were here illegally?

No, he'd probably do it up front.

Would Jesus Christ have the same definition for compassion as George W. Bush?

I'd guess not, but maybe.

Did Jesus Christ die for all of those that will repent and submit themselves to Him?

He also died for those who won't.

Far be it from me to speak for the Son of God, but I do believe the only question that would have an answer of "yes" here would be the last question that I posed.

I weep for the state of religious education in this country.

However, Jesus does believe in justice and the rule of law.

Oh, I'm sure he *believes* in them, given that the ostensible point of his death was to overcome our inevitable death at the hands of justice and law alone.

With Bush's border and immigration policy being so treasonous and disgraceful, it's a wonder that he could possibly expect anyone to want to follow any laws. What's the point?

Eternal life through the forgiveness of God.

RIP Robert Anton Wilson

2007-01-11T20:10:10Z

I wish a good journey to one of my great inspirations, Robert Anton Wilson. May his soul find rest, and may he remind angels and demons alike that even the afterlife is nonsimultaneously apprehended.

SLACK 101

2006-09-08T15:21:32Z

Here comes my first sermon of the year...

SLACK 101

"Repent! Quit Your Job! Slack Off!" Thus preaches the Church of the Subgenius, the nation's premier gonzo space cult. But what is Slack? Why do we need it? Why does The Man want to take it from us? Local Discordian minister Reverend Jack Ditch (Jonathan Prykop) starts off the new academic year with an introductory lesson on the most important concept in religion since Love hit the scene.

Sunday, September 10th 1:00pm
Channing-Murray Chapel (above the Red Herring)
1209 West Oregon, Urbana, IL

Refreshments & conversation afterwards.

New sermons on revjack.com!

2006-08-07T03:19:28Z

Howdy folks! Long time no update...but that's been fixed now. All the content from my old site has been moved to http://www.revjack.com/, and a few new things have been added, including the text of two of my recent sermons:

The Attack of the Discordian Universalists

and

The Battle of Ultimate Concern

Also look for changes in the Ordination and Midwest Discordian Ministry pages, a sexy new pic of me on the main index, a Blessing for a Pot Luck Altar and a play I wrote in high school.

In other news, did you hear about Gender Ambiguous Liturgy Dude? He stirred up quite a bit of discussion about the gifts and graces needed for ministry and better ways of doing ministerial formation, as well as a few thoughts on ministerial jesters. Good times, man.

Upcoming Rev. Jack Worship Service...

2006-05-17T19:25:21Z

Rev. Jonathan "Jack" Prykop and the Midwest Discordian Ministry Assembly in association with the UUC Worship Committee present...

"I am Chaos! I am the substance from which your artists and scientists build rhythms. I am Chaos! I am the spirit with which your children and clowns laugh in happy anarchy. I am Chaos! I have come to tell you that you are free! I am Chaos! I am alive; I am life itself. I am Chaos! And this Memorial Day weekend, I'm taking over your church..."

Level Up!

2006-05-05T20:20:49Z

Happy third anniversary of my ordination!

Three years ago today, on the fifth day of the fifth month of the two-thousand-and-third year of common reckoning, I received my ordination in the Universal Life Church. As I have in the past, I take this opportunity to look back and consider how I have grown as a minister over the past year.

Midwest Discordian Ministry continues to grow, and our fourth annual Assembly is coming up on Memorial Day weekend. I continue to preach online against fundamentalists, Christian and Atheist alike, and generally sow the seeds of Slack and Creative Chaos in the world around me.

After the success of my "Believe in Jesus!" sermon a little over a year ago, the opportunities to preach just started rolling in. By August, I had finished off my "Building Our Own Religion" spirituality group and I was now helping to organize and present worship services as a board member at the Channing-Murray Foundation and as co-chair of the Worship Committee at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Urbana. I not only organized my own services, but also helped arrange for speakers at many other services as well. It was far more challenging than I had ever imagined, but there were some great successes mixed in with only relatively minor failures. Here are the services at which I actively preached:

9/11/05 C-M "The Giant Fighting Robot Jesus"

10/16/05 UUC "We Worship"

10/30/05 C-M "All Saints Welcome!"

11/20/05 C-M "What Universalism Can Learn From Catholicism"

11/27/05 UUC "Spreading the UU Gospel"

01/22/06 C-M "A Ritual for Everybody"

02/26/06 C-M "The Battle of Ultimate Concern"

04/30/06 C-M "The Conspiracy of Light"

I'm not sure how much the people listening to these sermons valued them; they seemed to be received well enough, but regardless of that, I found value simply in their creation. The exercise of taking an idea and turning it into a short presentation has been invaluable in helping me to really understand my own beliefs. Even if I lay off the preaching in the upcoming year, I'm hoping I can keep up some kind of regular sermon writing, simply for the personal benefits.

This past year, I also began to plant some roots with Fr. Gary and Antioch Catholic congregation of St. Mary Magdalene's. I helped arrange for them to hold their services at the Channing-Murray Foundation. I brought my friend logodaedaly to one of their services, and he was so enamored of them that he joined their seminary, and is now well on his way to becoming an Independent Catholic priest! I've been meeting with Fr. Gary quite a bit lately, and he's really helped connect me back to the authentic source of my faith. I hope to explore my love of the sacraments with them more in the upcoming year, and possibly explore the idea of becoming a priest myself (presuming I'm not yet already one.)

Last October, I was deeply honored to perform the wedding ceremony of my dear friends deaconobvious and dsjones. During the course of the opening prayer, I swallowed a fly without dropping a beat; I delivered the sermon from the heart, rather than from a script; the beauty and blessedness of Love surrounded us, and afterward my friends tried to convince me that this ceremony alone was worth enough experience for me to level up.

Maybe not then...but definitely now.

*ding* REVEREND JACK IS NOW A LEVEL 4 CLERIC!

I'm not saying that level four cleric is anything near to what I thought it would be way back when I was level one. This is more of a retroactive leveling system, a way for me to look back and catalog my development as a minister. I gained new powers--spells like "UU Worship Service" and "Rudimentary Church Administration." I also, as always, learned more about how much I have yet to learn: how to be as wise in my interactions with each and every person as I strive to be when I speak to a crowd from a pulpit.

I've had some hard knocks, but on the whole, my third year as a minister was a resounding success. As for what the fourth year holds...well, let's forge on ahead and find out!

This gets kinda long, but hey--you asked!

2006-04-27T20:33:58Z

Questions from deaconobvious...

1. Goddess is in us, and around us, and peeking up our collective skirt. Where do you find Goddess on a daily basis?

If by Goddess you mean Discordia, then everywhere. There is naught I can look at, but that I see Divine Chaos. If by Goddess you mean the androgynous force of interconnected compassion, love and goodness that also often goes by the name of God, then almost everywhere, except where the world hurts me or fails to live up to my standards, and even there I consider it more a flaw in my perceptions than a lack of Goddess in the perceived. If by Goddess you mean a specifically female force that stands in contrast to a similar male force, then almost nowhere--I only ever end up with lots of people pissed at me when I start speaking in terms of gender, so I try to avoid seeing the world that way.

2. Everyone finds themselves not wanting criticism sometimes. How do you mentally limber yourself to accept it when you feel it's necessary?

I either think of my mother (who is talented at harsh criticism, though I love her to death anyway) or of Jesus Christ (who patiently suffered criticism to the point of accepting crucifixion, but loved us to death anyway.) My problem is usually not with my ability to accept criticism, but rather with my ability to recognize my limits: I'll go out of my way to engage with people who criticize me, enjoying the refining power of critical debate, until I crack...and suddenly I'm all deeply wounded and bawling my eyes out and shouting "How dare you judge me!!!1!!" I'm slowly learning to back down from a debate and say "Your criticism is unwelcome and unnecessary" when I really need to, before things come to blows.

3. Do you feel that you are bringing more mysticism to Christianity, or more Christianity to mysticism? Why?

Tough call. In the past, I appealed to Christian symbols simply because they were the primary symbols of the mysticism I was taught; in the same way that a quantum physicist picks up some of the terms of Newtonian physics and transforms their meaning to suit modern discoveries, I think of myself as doing the same with Christianity. Preaching as a Universalist has been an attempt to reframe these old symbols in terms that are acceptable to folks who have been burned by poorly practiced Christianity, and I'm not ready to abandon that endeavor. But I have found myself wanting to preach more at specifically Christian churches lately, just so I can cut all the Remedial Christian Symbolism 101 out of my day-to-day teaching. And I'm starting to see hints that, once I digivolve into my Ultimate Form (Pope SuperMechaJack), I'll be pretty openly and blatantly Christian: I'm starting to find that far too many folks aren't merely rejecting the words of Christianity, but rather they're rejecting the worship of forgiveness and loving self-sacrifice in ANY language or symbolism. And at that point, I might as well just grab a soapbox and start telling them about the hellfire that awaits. So I'll go with "more mysticism to Christianity."

4. From personal experience I know the 'great sucking joy' of long distance love. What are some of the things you do to help cope between fixes?

Well, there's webcams and message clients and cell phones. By the time I'm all "plugged in" to chat with him, I feel like I'm in a rudimentary VR suit. I think there have been times when this has actually helped our communication, rather than hindering it: I haven't been able to use frequent sex as a substitute for authentic relationship building, and it's great dating a fellow geek who can understand that sometimes the most difficult things to say are best said in text.

But having just last weekend gone through what was the most-difficult-to-bear goodbye I've said to him yet, I found myself clinging to two general concepts:

* The joy of togetherness is always followed by the pain of separation; to paraphrase Lorien from B5, there's cause to envy those who live short lives, because only they can maintain the illusion that love is everlasting. Best to enjoy what I've got while I've got it than to bemoan its temporal nature. This helps the philosopher in me cope.

* It doesn't hurt so much that I'm packing my things and moving to Pittsburgh, but it feels Good and Right enough to keep forking out dollars for plane tickets. This helps the pragmatist in me cope, and hopefully Jason can forgive me for running an economic cost-benefit analysis on our relationship.

5. What was one of the keystone books that opened you up to your current spiritual life?

More often than not, I read a book because it's a good explication of something that's already opened in my spiritual life: I studied the Bible because I was Christian, rather than becoming Christian because I studied the Bible; I read the Principia Discordia long after embracing the philosophy of Discordianism, almost as an after-thought; I read The Book of the Subgenius because I was already sucked in by SubGenius radio. If I wanted to recommend books to people that would open them up to my current spiritual life, I'd recommend these, but the books themselves weren't what got me here.

Though honestly, now that I think about it, I could probably say Harry Potter had a pretty big influence on me, especially from book three on. I'd never had a good paradigm for thinking about or practicing magic until Rowling pointed out that things like laughing at something scary or thinking of my happiest memory can have downright magical effects on the world around me. Whereas I usually encounter keystone stories in other mediums before turning to their book forms, the emotional subtlties of Rowling's magic system don't really come through well in the movies, so even though I saw the first three movies before reading the books, the books were the actual keystones.

And y'know, now that I'm thinking about children's stories rather than scripture or philosophy, there is one book that simply cracked my reality wide open. I read it in third grade, which is why I often forget about it, but I've never found another story quite like it, and its impact on me has been undeniable. It's called "The War Between the Pitiful Teachers and the Splendid Kids" by Stanley Kiesel, and it opened me up to views on authority and authority figures that I've carried with me ever since. It's the story of a bunch of kids at a "special ed" school, each with their own unique behavior and learning "disorders," who initiate what becomes a worldwide war against teachers. The teachers' secret weapon is the "Status Quo Solidifier," which turns ordinary kids into perfect Young People. This book inspired the "Titu the Terrible" type stories that I wrote throughout middle and high school, which themselves have played a large part in the Jack mythology that courses through my head today. It's the book that taught me how to be a rebel. You'd love it, Deacon.

Questions from logodaedaly...

1. With MDMA upon us, I'm wondering—where do you see your ministry headed in the next year or so?

Oh Good Lord, let me get through MDMA first! ;-) But seriously, I spent the past year focusing on "worship" in a Unitarian Universalist context, which pretty much meant writing sermons, and I'm gonna be setting some of that aside. That path will be splitting in two, insomuch as I hope to explore more sacramental forms of worship with you and Gary while diverting my sermonizing into essays and short stories rather than live performance (think "direct to video" where video==the web.) Institutionally, I'll be taking on greater responsibility at Channing-Murray while setting aside some of my Green St commitments, but I'll actually be doing so in the interests of greater ecumenicism; C-M is turning into a nice base of operations for working with several local churches and religious organizations, and I want to start branching out. I'm also hoping to explore ways in which I can better ground my ministry in practices that I find personally spiritually fulfilling, so that I can avoid some of the burnout that left me feeling hopeless and undirected for large swaths of this past year.

2. Where did the original idea for MDMA come from?

This one is very easy. The Midwest Discordian Ministry Assembly is a direct descendant of the Great Lakes Pastoral Ministry Gathering, a now-defunct convention of mostly lay hippie/yuppie/liberal Catholic ministers that I attended for several years in my teens. It was the highlight of my year, the one place where I could swap tricks of the trade with other lay ministers, and so when at the last Gathering we were told, "Now is the time for you to go out in the world and create your own Gatherings," that's exactly what I did.

3. If you had a choice between being a major religious figure (Dalai Lama, Pope, whatever) with power to influence billions or an unknown mendicant crank roving the streets preaching, which would you choose? Why?

I wonder how much power the Dalai Lamas and Popes of the world really have to influence billions when their positions can only be achieved by agreeing with billions in the first place. The real power seems to lie with the mendicant cranks, the ones who sow the stories that take on a life of their own and ultimately demand recognition by the Popes and Dalai Lamas. And even then, things tend to end very poorly for the known mendicant cranks: the various saints, martyrs, Jesii, Buddhas and such who usually have to die horribly before being reborn as highly influential myths. What I'm kinda hoping is that Jonathan Prykop can live out his life slackfully and peaceably, knowing only times of prosperity and fading into obscurity after death, while Reverend Jack remains behind to endure the inevitable suffering born of influencing billions of people.

4. What's your favorite irreligion? :-)

On the one hand, any answer other than "my own" would run contrary to every reason why I embrace neophilic irreligion in the first place. On the other hand, The Church of the Subgenius.

5. Where did you get the confidence to just ordain yourself and start ministering?

The church I was raised in took a very broad view of ministry: Pretty much anything in the church that involved doing good for other people was considered a ministry. Religious education was a ministry, lectoring was a ministry, helping to distribute the Eucharist was a ministry, helping the poor was a ministry, cleaning up the church grounds was a ministry, dancing and singing at Mass was a ministry--even dressing up like a clown and entertaining kids was a ministry. So that laid down the basic empowerment to view my work as religious ministry.

My mother has been Director of Religious Education at my home parish since I was seven, so that opened me up to the "behind the scenes" aspects of religion, and took the edge off the awe & wonder many folks have for religious ministers. I got to see that even priests crap and drink and get angry and make mistakes; I didn't have to become disillusioned about such things because I was never illusioned in the first place.

The ordination itself was a matter of legal technicality when an old friend asked me to perform her wedding ceremony; I probably wouldn't have gotten ordained at that time if it weren't for legal necessity, because I was doing just fine on my own authority and I didn't want to posture as if my authority were greater than anyone else's. The fact that this ordination coincided with the time in my life when I was deciding to pursue religious ministry as a vocation has simply been a great convenience for discussing the arc of my ministerial development. Whereas the fact that this ordination occurred on 5-5-2003 is the kind of parsimony that myths are made of: "It is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness" and all that jazz.

But if you're asking where I got the cojones to stare bishops and popes in the eye and speak as if my words carry all the weight of divinely inspired scripture...I couldn't really tell ya. Pride? Hubris? Maybe I'm God's Chosen? I keep waiting for that moment where the world humbles my unrepentant messiah complex, but every mistake I make and every weakness I suffer only seems to make me more divine. Go figure.

---------------------

The Rules:
1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."
2. I will respond by asking you five questions of a very intimate and creepily personal nature. Or not so creepy/personal.
3. You will update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

Science, Faith and Mapmaking

2006-04-19T05:53:09Z

This is a redux of a comment I made over at the Unitarian Jihad.

Science is currently rife with maps that have confused themselves with the territory. That is to say, science should be like the art of mapmaking in the territory of observational reality. Faith is the key of the map, wherein the mapmaker explains how the symbols on the map relate to the territory. It's necessary for a map to have a key in order for anyone to use it. But when you find yourself going to court to prevent certain symbols from being used in map keys, when you insist that everyone must use the same key or that a map with the wrong kind of key isn't a map, when you start to speak as if the key were to be found in the territory itself or you teach that a map for one territory must be considered authoritative for unexplored territories, it all indicates that you've lost touch with the difference between map and territory.

I find that all the valid reasoning that went into what was originally described as a freedom of religion is better described in modern terms as a freedom of worldview. That is to say, it's a fundamental human right to create your own key for your own map of reality. The government should provide for the teaching of mapmaking, but has no right to establish a mandated authoritative mapmaking standard. More importantly, to tie this all back to Unitarian Universalism, a church that professes to embrace the free search for truth should probably not be advocating a single particularly contentious standard of mapmaking moreso than any other.

Emergent Theology

2006-04-17T17:45:53Z

Normally I don't clutter this place up with test results, but the results from this one encapsulated my theology so well that I just had to share. Thanks to logodaedaly for pointing it out.

You scored as Emergent/Postmodern. You are Emergent/Postmodern in your theology. You feel alienated from older forms of church, you don't think they connect to modern culture very well. No one knows the whole truth about God, and we have much to learn from each other, and so learning takes place in dialogue. Evangelism should take place in relationships rather than through crusades and altar-calls. People are interested in spirituality and want to ask questions, so the church should help them to do this.

</td>

Emergent/Postmodern

82%

Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan

71%

Classical Liberal

68%

Roman Catholic

61%

Modern Liberal

57%

Charismatic/Pentecostal

57%

Neo orthodox

46%

Reformed Evangelical

25%

Fundamentalist

What's your theological worldview?
created with QuizFarm.com

what's up with the retreat for this year?

2006-04-10T21:30:04Z

the_sween asked me what's up with the retreat this year, so I thought I should put out some kind of informal notice, which is that the retreat is still totally on, May 26-28. The Channing-Murray is reserved and the Sunday service is scheduled, but I haven't done any formal planning sessions or really told anyone much of anything about it, except to toss around ideas informally. A few months ago I started to dive into some rigerous planning to make this year's retreat the awesomest one yet, trying to set up a planning committee and workshop schedule and whatnot, and it just left me miserable and stressed out. That's when I realized that rigerously planning a Discordian retreat was only going to kill it. So now, I'm focusing on patching a retreat together haphazardly from whatever resources I manage to pull together at the last minute, and I'm once again getting excited and looking forward to it. It'll be fcuking spectacular.

So yeah, more info will be forthcoming, including invites (hopefully this week.) Sween, I told Deacon Obvious you were interested in helping with food. Feel free to start a conversation with me about this or any other ideas you might have, either here or in notesfiles or anytime you next drive down here.

In the meantime....I've got a prototype mix! I still got about 10 minutes of blank CD left, and I wouldn't mind seeing a couple of these bumped out for something better, so all suggestions are more than welcome.

MIDWEST DISCORDIAN MINISTRY ASSEMBLY 2006:
THE SUBURBAN APOCALYPSE MIX
Prototype:

01 - "Little Boxes" from the TV Show "Weeds"
02 - "The Tower of Babble" from the musical "Godspell"
03 - "Over Our Heads" from the movie "I Heart Huckabees"
04 - "No Hiding Place Down Here / Vinegar" by Chris Chandler
05 - "Pray Your Gods" by Toad The Wet Sprocket
06 - "The Christians and the Pagans" by Dar Williams
07 - "Zero Is Also A Number" by Nick Cave
08 - "Cthulu's Call" by Obsidian Voice
09 - "What If God Smoked Cannibas" by (Weird Al?)
10 - "Only (El-P Mix)" by Nine Inch Nails
11 - "Ave Maria" by Paul Schwartz
12 - "King Without a Crown" by Matisyahu
13 - "Happiness Runs" by Donovan
14 - "Love Invincible" by Michael Franti w/ Spearhead
15 - "Holy Now" by Peter Mayer

Happy Birthday deaconobvious

2006-02-22T04:13:24Z

Coming this Sunday...

2006-02-21T21:07:25Z

"The Battle of Ultimate Concern"

Feb 26th, 2006, 1pm at the Channing-Murray Foundation

What is the purpose of our lives? What is the most important thing that a human being can do? Though philosophers have debated these questions for centuries, most of us answer them daily through the choices we make and the actions we take. Join Jonathan "Reverend Jack" Prykop and the Channing-Murray community as we don our spiritual armor, take up our swords of righteousness and prepare to charge headlong into the Battle of Ultimate Concern.