Religion of the old kind. It is almost invisible in SL. It is strange to me, because SL would seem like an ideal to make converts, and to create a presence which is broader and wider. I read about parishes shutting down, about the rise of "mega churches" and I wonder why these forces aren't here. I wouldn't mind seeing more religion in sl. A cathedral that does a mass, well, I would go to just to see it. I could write the dance ball that would last long enough to have parishoners rise and fall at the right times. I don't believe in God, but I do believe in ritual.
Is this heresy to say that?
After all, if I were something other than tangentially Buddhist, I'd want to build a temple on line. Well alright I am building one on line, but to the god and goddess that I worship here: why else would I build a tower 300M tall, but which you walk up by being enveloped? It's a union of both the phallic and the vaginal. A spire to sex, if you will.
Partially because I live in an age which has become sexualized, and sexuality is its religion. I know I am not the first person to notice this. But after the 10th rendition of the magazine newstand girl's guide to sex... seriously, the "10 sex tips you have to know" which includes brushing your teeth is a bit too tame ... which is to rl sex what pose balls are to sl sex... I really wanted something that would take me farther and allow me to have depths that others could become lost in. Sex shouldn't be left to girls who are more than all vogue on the outside and all vague on the inside. If sex is our religion, then most of us are damned.
Is it heresy to say that?
As any one who is here knws, second life is a relgion of its own. It has a gospel, gods and monsters. Heavans and hells. It has its rituals and sacrements. It has its own language. We change our names. We are baptized, sometimes by fire.
One time I was working a club, a major patron dropped out of character to ream me out from the position of his rl. It was the moment that made be quit the club. I realized I had a religion, and that religion was being immersed and emmersed in what we do here. It violated something sacred about the splace (my word! a typo that wants to have meaning!) and time.
It was heresy to say that. Because the god there was the Linden (which given exchange rates has a severe case of ED). I was gone, and wandered in the wilderness for a week, without the steady stream of tips that working there had brought me. It was in this time that I changed from the girl who came on, simply wanting to push things until they broke, and to something and someone else. Strangely enough, that event was my baptism from being an avatar that was playing the game, to Lady Lillie, living her life. I'd been half way in, wanting to have a character, and it was that moment where that character's faith in herself was born.
That time sitting in my then apartment, and putting ads on boards and looking for a next place to call professional home was a very lonely stretch. I did things that were meant to stave off the darkness that closed in around me. Someday on Raise the Red Lantern, I will write some of those tales from the wilderness.
But that period opened up into my present, even with many changes. I had wanted a confused tangle of things. But the period of wandering told me something that was a polished pearl of great price. It told me that I wanted only one thing out of the hidden gods, and not merely the demi-urges of this place. A baptism that begins and never ends.
Take me to the river, drop me in the water.
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