The 'Funny (ha, ha)' side of religion

Timberrrrrrrr

Worztron

joseph brand

Worztron wrote: »

The Pope's 'cap' looks like the kippa.



Maybe it's because Jaysus was a Jew?

robindch

Alan Bennet goes to mass. With a mobile phone. With Twitter installed.

robindch

Hilary Fannin: I was top of the class in drinking down the nuns’ wild tales

http://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/hilary-fannin-i-was-top-of-the-class-in-drinking-down-the-nuns-wild-tales-1.2197230

Irish Times wrote:

"May is the month of Mary, the month we all love so well."

In the big, red-brick convent where I went to school as a child, an establishment for dignified little girls with Alice bands and knee socks and ink pens and pristine copybooks, where we skipped down the gravelled path each morning with a penny for the black babies in our mitts and a churning gut full of apprehension underneath our pinafores (or maybe that was just me), the month of May was a pretty big deal.

In that icy universe of polished tabernacles and plaster saints, and all those poor banished children of Eve, moaning and weeping in a valley of tears, possibly somewhere just outside Limerick, a whole month of daffodil-fuelled holy happiness was a big deal. May, blue and vivid and sun-kissed, was when all the angels and saints had a well- deserved vacation from the weariness of the world, and the pale-blue virgins hopped off their plinths and took a break from their endless beseeching. When the baby Jesus slipped out of his heavy plaster swaddling and splashed around in the baptismal font in his armbands.

May was when grim Irish classes and mind-bending mathematics classes were cast aside, so that we little girls could walk in slow procession around and around the tennis court, kneading our rosary and telling the Virgin Mary how very much we loved her. Heady, holy May was when you were so full of sanctifying grace and good intentions, so intent on good deeds and pure thoughts, so close to that other kingdom of the dead, that you could almost feel your guardian angel’s soft, hot breath on your neck. I remember that slow trail around the tennis court as if it was yesterday.

Man, I loved a bit of fervour. Hand on heart, I’d like to acknowledge the energy that the nuns (“the Poor Little Sisters of the Divine Jaysus”, as my father liked to call that particular order) put into the telling of the great, mad story of their strange, exotic world. They told a hell of a tale: talking snakes and seductive apples,blood-hot seas and crowns of thorns, and glorious resurrections, to name but a few. Not to mention chilling accounts of nice devout girlies, children just like us, on their skinny knees, chatting to a weepy virgin, who believed in their devotion so much that she made herself into flesh, and flew down from heaven to have a chat about all that ails this strange old world. I was pretty crap at just about every subject the nuns threw at us, but I was top of the class in drinking down their wild, wild tales.

Half a century later and it’s May again. There are no rosary beads in my purse, no mantilla in my carrier bag. I’m not lying awake at night worrying about pagan babies in limbo or the possibility of uncalled-for stigmata. Instead, I’m getting ready for the opening of my new play, Famished Castle. The first scene I wrote in this play was a story that one woman tells another, a story embroidered with loss and death and love and flesh. And maybe everything is about loss. I read somewhere that all our stories are about coming to terms with our own intricate expulsion from the garden.

I’m dead grateful to be working. Many playwrights are hawking their own equally wildly inculcated stories around in shoulder bags and laptops, looking for a home for stories deserving of our attention. I know my luck. I’m indebted to the company that I’ve been keeping this last month or so. The best thing about working in theatre is its communality: you cease to be alone. Suddenly you are among loads of people crowded into a small kitchen, trying to get a cup of tea before the read-through. They are the actors, director, dramaturgy, technicians, costume, set, sound and light people, and stage managers with sharpened pencils.

They include the young theatre practitioners, who were there to gain experience in their chosen fields, I counted some 30 people in the room when we began our journey in early April to where we are now. I don’t know if the nuns, whose words my imagination clung to back in those devout daffodil days, would necessarily appreciate the dark, comic, broken journey the four characters in Famished Castle undertake. I don’t quite know if the fire those educators ignited was meant to burn so long.

Worztron

robindch

Jesus is building a new home. For over one hundred million quid. In Ballymena:

http://www.belfastlive.co.uk/news/belfast-news/evangelical-churchs-mini-village-plans-outskirts-9230650
http://www.hpa-architecture.com/projects/the-gateway/

The "Spiritual and Socio-Economic Regeneration Partnership" (SSERP) consists of a religious facility of over 20,000 square meters, including a church seating 4,320 people, and separate facilities for 1,200 kids and 400 "youths". And includes a food superstore, petrol station, drive-thru restaurant, entertainment centre, health centre, taxi office and car parking. And much else.

No sign of any creationist museum.

PopePalpatine

I wonder how much the DUP will manage to funnel into this.

Worztron

BlaasForRafa

I almost put this in the Hazards of belief section but decided to post here because it's so absurd it's laughable. A muslim scholar's view on Oral sex.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S54B05lbbAE

joseph brand

Billboard in NZ.

robindch

Cameron to introduce Inequalities Minister to protect the rights of bigots

http://newsthump.com/2015/05/13/cameron-to-introduce-inequalities-minister-to-protect-the-rights-of-bigots/

NewsThump wrote:

Bigots, zealots and chauvinists will be given extra protection by the government after David Cameron announced he would be appointing an Inequalities Minister. With bigotry and hatred under pressure from legislation and the court of public opinion, the government has moved to protect those who hold views most people find abhorrent.

As one government source explained. “Simply putting someone who voted against equal rights for gay couples in the role of Equalities Minister isn’t going far enough for many supporters, so we’ve listened and taken steps.” “This new role will ensure people who hold hateful, prejudiced views will be free to impose them wherever they see fit.”

“The new minister will be responsible for making sure that any new British Bill of Rights we us to replace the European Human Rights legislation, holds dear the right to be mean to people we just don’t like.” Our source went on to explain this is the last cabinet position announced, due to an expected stampede from Tory MPs wanting to do the job.

They told us, “We had to do it last because literally everyone wants this job. Iain Duncan-Smith has even offered the PM a blank cheque for just a month in the role. He seemed to think he could do a lot of ‘good’ in the role.”

robindch

Worztron

BlaasForRafa

Great news chums! You CAN use toothpaste during Ramadan, I'm sure you'll all be relieved to hear that. Just be careful not to swallow it or you'll go to hell!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiCo51Nag2g

Hotblack Desiato

Personally I'm not fussed on the question of spit or swallow

BlaasForRafa

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Personally I'm not fussed on the question of spit or swallow

At least you'll have minty fresh breath when you're being spun on Satan's rotisserie

Worztron

legspin

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Personally I'm not fussed on the question of spit or swallow

What about chewing....?

Hotblack Desiato

I'm fairly fond of that, it's banned in Singapore lah.

joseph brand

It doesn't say that Satan is odourless. You'll smell him before you see him, is what I take from that.

joseph brand

sbsquarepants

BlaasForRafa wrote: »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S54B05lbbAE

Whoa, hold on there just a cotton picking second. When I'm taking a leak I have to aim with my left hand? And piss all over the place?
Sorry allah, but I fear the wrath of missus squarepants way more than I fear you - righty it is:D

AstraMonti

Worztron

silverharp

joseph brand

"Everybody say Cheeezus"

Worztron

Nodin

Worztron wrote: »

Is it weird I find him less clatterable looking like that?

Worztron