'90s Psychological Thriller I Just Saw for the First Time

"The symbolic flesh-eating and blood-drinking of the Catholic mass has the same ancient roots as vampire legends; when gay demonstrators ('life-eating' monsters to the far religious right) disrupted the communion service at Saint Patrick's Cathedral in 1991, primitive and unarticulated blood-themes shadowed the publicly stated issues . . . A surprisingly high number of vampire aficionados (gay and straight) do turn out to be Catholics or ex-Catholics - at least in this writer's extensive, if unscientific, observation. In The Queen of the Damned, Anne Rice calculatedly imbued her ambisexual vampire with the traits of a pagan/Christian savior." (David J. Skal, The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror, p. 348)

Stigmata (three stars total) For yesterday's "Recent Psychological Thrillers" post, I originally intended to review a pair that are possibly still playing in theaters somewhere, Ryan Reynolds' "stuck in a coffin" movie, Buried (premiered at Sundance), and M. Night Shyamalan's "stuck in an elevator" movie, Devil (opened 9/17/10). The former wins my award for "Feel Bad Movie of the Year" and that's all I have to say about that. The latter would've just led me to write about my theological stance on angels and demons (not the Dan Brown novel, but we'll come back to him). I didn't want to be redundant with Shyamalan's final point on Devil, so I held off. Then the same themes showed up again in Stigmata (1999), so I'm taking that as a sign, but not like "Jesus in a pancake" (an actual line from Devil). Disconcerting as it may seem, I believe the devil's always around, but I also believe that angels are everywhere. I agree with Shyamalan that "we don't need the devil because man is capable of all evil alone." I also believe that temptation only matters inasmuch as we give in to it (this is where Stigmata comes in). Bad priests (or parishioners) can't discredit the good that any given church does. The devil is powerful but God's still in charge. The devil was allowed to let loose on Job but not to take his life, and in the long-term it was all for Job's good. I don't believe that the devil was ever trying to help Job in the long-term, nor do I believe he ever tempts us with what really matters. Conversely, I don't believe that God would ever try to hurt us in the long-term, nor do I believe he ever blesses us with what doesn't really matter. God gave Jonah an all-natural punishment inside the whale but I don't believe he would ever punish a person with the unnatural stigmata. I don't believe the movie Stigmata favors science over organized religion, nor do I feel it should shake anyone's faith in a loving God. It speculates on a conspiracy to suppress truth the same way that Dan Brown does in The Da Vinci Code, and it does so with better acting but worse music (here's looking at you, Chumbawamba).

Palm Reading: the Chicken Or the Egg?

"Remember that palm-reading is for entertainment purposes only. There is no scientifically-substantiated evidence of correlation between palm features and psychological traits. If you are going to do this, then keep it light, don't make any dark predictions that the sitter will worry about." (www.wikihow.com/Read-Palms)

DISCLAIMER: I personally don't believe in astrology, The Bible Code, The Celestine Prophecy, neither Ouija boards nor tarot cards. I don't think the placement of your facial features (personology) has anymore control over you than the placement of your home furniture (feng shui), but I'm all for people and places that are aesthetically pleasing. What can I say, I guess I'm no fun.

If my last couple blog posts seem like the answers to random Google Searches, it's because they are. I'm finally getting around to all those inconsequential topics I've been meaning to research, like palm reading. What I learned is that there a lot more variations on palm reading than I could have imagined, including chirology (which covers the spaces between the lines on your palm).

I feel obligated to mention that while I'm only including the findings for my right hand below (since I'm right handed), there's something to be said for both hands, the left traditionally showing potential and the right showing realized personality. Also, the lines in your hand change over a lifetime and anyone can consciously contradict their own palm reading.

1. Heart line - Mine is long and unbroken (meaning I freely express feelings and face no emotional trauma), beginning under my middle finger (meaning I'm selfish in love), with a faint fork crossing my head line and getting deeper down parallel to my life line (meaning that I should put matters of the heart over matters of the mind - I made that up).

2. Head line - Mine is short (meaning I prefer physical achievements over mental ones, maybe), curved, sloping downward (meaning creativity), separated from my life line (meaning I'm adventurous or enthusiastic for life) at its starting point but connected at a later point by a faint line (no idea what that means).

3. Life line - Mine is a complete half circle (meaning strenght) from just below my index finger down to the base of my thumb almost to my wrist (long = vitality). There are forks (meaning extra vitality) at 1/4 of the way down between my index and middle finger (meaning I'll be getting a second wind soon or overcome something terminal) and at 3/4 of the way down below my thumb (meaning the same thing but after I'm 70).

4. Destiny/fate line - Mine is almost nonexistent (meaning freedom, right???). It starts faintly at the bottom middle of my palm parallel to the my second life line fork (maybe something about my childhood or old age, but what?), then disappears, picking back up at the faint line which crosses my head line and connects to my heart line (see above).

5. Hand shape - Mine is squarish with flushed, pink skin and my palm is longer than my fingers, which makes me Fire (meaning I'm spontaneous, optimistic, egoistic, instinctive, insensitive, bold, and an extrovert - I would agree with all of these but I would also agree to some of the characteristics of Earth, Air, and Water).

6. Sun line - Mine starts on my ring finger and extends faintly almost to my heart line (meaning some fame for me).

7. Girdle of Venus - Mine starts very faintly between my ring and pinky fingers but ends before my sun line (meaning some emotional intelligence and ability to manipulate others).

8. Union lines - I have five (meaning strong relationships, not necessarily romantic). The deepest is halfway between my pinky finger and heart line (meaning my marriage probably) and extends nearly from my knuckle and around to the middle of my pinky finger on the palm side. The next deepest is halfway between that one and my heart line but only half as long (I don't know which direction means earlier or later in life). There's a faint one between the above two that's just as long as the deepest (maybe meaning I'll know someone as long as my spouse but we won't be as close). The other two are very faint, very short and located between the deepest line and my pinky finger.

9. Mercury line - Mine is totally nonexistent (meaning no health issues, business acumen, communication skills - check, check, but I don't know about that last one).

10. Travel lines - I have four deep ones, five faint ones, and six or more very faint ones (meaning personally significant trips in my lifetime).

So check back with me in 50 years and we'll see what's what. Going back to the title of this post, I find palm reading to be a little like "the chicken or the egg" riddle. If you're looking hard enough for something, you'll find it (numerology). How can you really know if something would have happened with or without your reading it? All I know is that there's one thing the devil desires and has always desired and that's our free will.

My Sunday School Teacher Is Not a Socialist

"I even began to feel that contemporary literature and art were these amazing distraction mechanisms, that they didn't really deal with any kind of spiritual dimension of the human existence or even the dangers we were facing as a species." (Daniel Pinchbeck, Interview, June/July 2009)

I had wanted to write weekly posts about the side conversations that my wife and I have during Sunday school, but she no longers talks to me during that time. This is because she's in a different room from me, teaching three and four year olds now. But I can still share the things I hear in Sunday school that have nothing to do with the gospel. Here's three:

"Women in the work force are to blame for rising real estate prices." This is an exact quote from my female teacher. She claimed to have been a feminist-minded college student in the '60s but now she "can see secular advantages to mothers staying at home." I can't even remember what the lesson was about when this came up, it was a few months back.

"The higher the taxation of a country, the lower the spirituality of the people." Different teacher quoted here - this one's male and happens to be an immigration lawyer by profession. At the time he claimed there were studies that proved this, but gave no citation. Yesterday, I approached him to ask where he was introduced to that concept, and he told me it came from conservative talk radio host Dennis Prager.

"Legalizing marijuana will only increase deaths from DUIs." Our class discussion went from alchohol in the media to vegetarianism to drug use. I raised my hand to make a comment about eating as "close to the vine" as possible, but as you can probably tell, substantial tangents had already eaten all our time. I just can't wait for next Sunday!

Everything I Need To Know I Learned in Sunday School

This isn't to be preachy but for me to keep a record of my thoughts and the side talk that I have with my wife during class at church. One of the lesson points yesterday was on keeping the sabbath day holy and resting from our labors. Someone compared the things we should do on Sundays to the things we will do in the next life. My wife turned to me and whispered something to the effect of: "I don't want to sit on a cloud and play the harp in heaven. I just want to die and stay dead." I had no idea she was so tired. Neither of us really believe that anyone will sit on a cloud and play the harp in heaven. I feel obligated to mention that my wife doesn't really want to die and stay dead either. She is afraid of death though (I'm not), and what she fears most is being separated from loved ones who may or may not end up in the same place as her. This isn't to suggest that she feels superior to anyone she knows, if anything she would sacrifice a better place in heaven just to stay close to a loved one. We make quite the pair because I'm afraid of life (as in living with loved ones), and what I fear most is others' disapproval and unmet expectations. After death that will all be over with and we'll just have to deal with it, case closed. There's a reason I live half a day's drive from my nearest relatives. Don't get me wrong, I lead a happy life and I'm not anxious to die. Nor should my happiness be misconstrued as contentment. I know I'm far from perfect and therefore I hope I don't die anytime soon. I also hope that my wife gets over her fear of death before her time comes because she's a good person and deserves some rest.

Lots of Books on Religion Over the Last Month

Founding Faith: How Our Founding Fathers Forged a Radical New Approach to Religious Liberty - Steven Waldman; "America's national origins are neither Christian, as some insist, nor secular, as others claim. Rather, Waldman, a founder of Beliefnet.com, writes as he makes a full and fair survey of the founders' religious views, their faith was religious liberty - a revolutionary formula for promoting faith by leaving it alone"

Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous and Inspiring Thing I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible - David Plotz; "And so he began posting his impressions on Slate as, at age 35, he read all the way through the Hebrew Bible for the first time, without the help of any books or experts, offering unvarnished reactions and analysis that have now been gathered between hard covers and supplemented with an introduction, epilogue and lists: The Bible's 12 Best Pickup Lines, Eleven Heroes You Don't Want to Be Named After, My Favorite Prostitutes. He uses one of the newest, most fleeting genres we have (the blog) to examine one of our oldest, most enduring books."

Jesus, Interrupted - Bart D. Ehrman; "seems to be riding the same anti-religion wave that has swept Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion) and Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great) onto the best-seller list and late-night talk shows. But he says that while they share some readers, he tries to distance himself from the so-called new atheists. "They seem to understand so little about religion," he told me in a telephone interview. "If somebody attacked science with as little knowledge, they'd be laughed off the map."

The Purpose-Driven Life - Rick Warren; "Finding meaning in one's life through God"

Take One - Karen Kingsbury; "Christian filmmakers engage in a desperate attempt to keep their dream project from falling apart"