Nailed

So I'm getting a kick out of all the religious questioning and backlash swirling around right now. There's the hoopla over The DaVinci Code, of course. And now I see Madonna has depicted herself in a crucifixion on her latest tour. I so dig her and her big mouth. Express yourself, baby.

This all comes at a time when I just visited arguably the most famous museum in the world, the Louvre, and had such a funny experience. While I appreciated the beauty and grandeur of much of the art, after a while I started chuckling at the recurring themes. I mean, if you wanted to play a cruel joke on someone, you could send them to the Louvre and tell them to make a right at the painting of Jesus on the cross. They'd be walking around in circles all day. One after another, painting after painting depicting suffering and solemnity. For me, it's a much more religious experience to stare at Monet's rendition of a garden or a bridge. I'd prefer to leave the obsession with suffering to the artists gracing the Louvre walls and, well, to Mel Gibson.

Even inside Notre Dame, an architectural and historic masterpiece, I started to feel like enough is enough. I think the minister at church helped me understand that inadvertently in her message yesterday. She talked about Ernest Holmes (author of Science of Mind) and how he didn't tell people where he was buried because he didn't want a shrine there. The idea is to live by his philosophy, not worship it or him. Now there's a thought foreign to the Vatican.

I'm all about demystifying the hoopla.