I worked night and day for what seemed like eternity and felt that there were many concepts that became road blocks for me. I could not do explain these concepts alone, so I proceeded gathered together a handfull of likeminded baptized members of "ED WOOD = GOD" and, after a few months, legally ordained them as ministers of this church. These Reverends helped me transform the bizarre, dark web page into that which you now see.
These Reverends make up the "Board of Woodian Reverends" and still, to this day, help me with the workings of a religion. Occasionally, they will write a lesson, construct a new format for the web page, and will baptize and absolve people. The Board is not a hierarchy, not a governing board, not a ruling senate. This board merely helps me with the inner workings of the church in a spiritual way.
For the past few weeks, the Board and myself have been debating the question "What relationship does God have in Woodism?" The work that we have done now make up an entirely new lesson, one where God is explained. This explanation now makes up an entirely new tenet of Woodism.
God can be a confusing, vague topic of discussion for most religions. That seemed to bme to be the single most difficult road block to overcome in my Catholic school upbringing. I remember the nun teachers always saying "I can't tell you who or what God is, but you MUST believe in him or else."
As a direct result of this, I grew up with a mental image of God as Santa Clause. Both could hear everything, both knew when I had been bad or good, both judged me as a result of my behavior, and although Santa could not do everything, he could deliver every Christmas package in one day, meaning he DID have some super powers that normal people did not have. I was regularly desciplined for this belief.
It bothers me that parents tell their children more about Santa than God. People know about Santa Claus, but no one really knows anothing about God.
It seems as if most religions out there are more concerned with preaching rules for you to follow instead of trying to comprehend God. I was raised believing that God existed as a person, a tangible thing. Others taught me at an early age that, since the Bible said that God created "man in His image" that God had arms, legs, and a penis. Others taught me that God had skin which was white and hated gays and abortion doctors. Even others taught me that there was no God and that he was a fictional character meant to keep people in place, much like Santa Claus.
For the past ten or so years, I have completely "un-learned" everything others have taught me about God. I have erased it from my mind and started over. After much soul-searching and meditation, with help from the Board, I have copme to the following conclusions ...
Forget everything you once nknew about God. That does not exist.
Forget what the Bible concerning descriptions of God. Most of those are biased, hazy, old, outdated hearsay and outright lies.
Forget your mental picture of God as a tangible person with arms, legs, and a long beard watching down at us from a cloud. God is not a person. He did not create us in his image. He is not a man or a woman.
Even forget the word "God." Whatever is was that created us does not have a name like Mike or Julian or Cristy, so why should we call him God?
We were all created by something other than chemicals. We were all put her for our own purposes. We do not know what it was that put us here and can only guess. My guess was that it was a "being," not an alien or a superhuman person, but something that has the power to put us here. Everyone must have the belief that we were put here by some sort of "being" or "creator." It our job to decide for ourselves what shape that "being" takes.
I cannot tell you that what created us is named God and is a man and hates gays. I do not know that to be fact and neither does ANYBODY ELSE! Some people might be satisfied with my definition of an enigmatic "being" that created everything we see, but Woodism respects those people who need shape to the form. Therefore, I repeat, it is up to us to decide what shape the "being" takes.
When I use the word "shape," I am talking about what form your God will take in your own mind. Some might be happy with the shape of the Christian God, or perhaps the "being" takes the shape of karhma, or luck, or maybe even in your own inner spirituality. But whatever the form it takes, understand that shape only manifests in your individual mind and not in everyone's collective mind.
Woodism hold the belief that we were all placed here by something we cannot comprehend and therefore cannot believe that what we cannot comprehend is a person called God. Although refered to as a "being" in Woodism writing, we believe that we must all decide for ourselves what form this "being" takes.
There are inherant problems with the Catholic/Christian concept of "God."
For example, when someone dies, people find comfort in saying that God has a "master plan" for us all that we sometimes cannot understand. How can that be? If what put us here has a master plan for us all, then we all have no free will and everything we do is predetermined by God's plan. If God does indeed have a master plan, then everything from the Columbine shooting to the Holocaust was predetermined by God's master plan, making God sadistic as well as loving.
Also, if God has a master plan, then why pray? If God has a master plan, then God has everything predetermined for everyone, meaning prayer is useless.
These questions seem to be ones that other religions, ones that hold a concept of "God" seem to not answer. The "being" does not have a master plan for everything that happens. We were sent he with free will. We decide what happens to us. We determine our fate (prayer will be covered in Lesson 14).
It is important to understand that "GOD" is a concept created by Catholicism and Christianity. It's their representation of whatever "being" created us. It's their way of trying to bring sanity. God is what THEY believe in and what millions of people have taught is fact. But since nobody can fully understand what put us here, everyone must come up with their own representations of God.
Many people do not believe in God. That's ok. There is not a superhuman person on a cloud conrtolling everything and singing "Coombaya, My Lord" over and over again. But there is something that we do not understand that created our existance and we must all struggle (and it is a struggle) to give that something a form in our minds.
I remember in 8th grade, three Latino girls were given detention because they were playing the roasry during mass. The teacher, Mr. Billar, was furious and then them to the principle because they prayed a prayer when everyone else was praying a different prayer. They actually got punished for praying "wrong." Isn't a prayer a prayer?
My problems with prayer persisted even past Catholic school. Whenever people say grace before eating, I freeze up. I don't know what to do and usually end up bowing my head quietly and singing "Hey Jude" in my head. On the rare occasion that I attend a Catholic or Christian mass, when the congregation prays, I either sing a "Sifl and Olly" song or think about pro-wrestling.
I have serious problems with praying out of a book the same way everybody else does. So, when I find myself in a position where prayer is a necessity, I usually blow it off. This bothered me for quite some time, that a minister would have problems praying. However, after a lot of meditation and soul-searching, I think I have found the root of my problem.
My problem comes not in that act of praying but in the mainstream definition of prayer. As a child, I was taught that praying is talking to God, praising God, and asking him for things. Now that I'm older, more mature, and mouch more spiritual, I must question that.
Praying is the act of trying to mentally establish your own spirituality through establishing conversation with unknown forces.
When you pray, you are trying to gain spirituality in your mind by mental discussion with something unknown. That is the purpose of prayer, not to praise and appease God or to try and get him to bend his so-called "master plan" to fit our needs (as discussed in Lesson 13). Praying is man's way to open the soul and gain a better understanding of one's spirituality.
There are many, many other ways to establish a connection with your spirituality other than prayer. Other ways include transcendental meditaion, quiet meditation, and yoga. There are many options open other than prayer.
Prayer is not NECCESSARY within Woodism! It is not a rule that one MUST pray before bedtime and pray some sort of rosary every month or so on. Prayer is just one of many options available to a Woodite.
However, if you chose the act of prayer to be your gateway to a better understanding of the nature of spirituality, then so be it.
Let me stress that the prayers that I list here are not the ONLY prayers and are not the only WAY to pray. I personally pray spontaneously and, if memorizing prayers is not for you, then I suggest extemporaneous prayer.
With your three fingers together, you make the main perpendicular line of the cross, going from up to down.
Then, with your three fingers apart, you sign the three horizontal lines of the cross, from left to right.
You sign this in front of you with the cross facing you as you would view it.
Also, with each prayer, during the signing of the Woodian Cross, you chant "TE WOOD LAUDAMUS. IN ED WOOD'S NAME WE PRAY TODAY."
At the end of each prayer, you repeat the cross and the phrase.
MY DEAR SAVIOR ED WOOD,
MY DEAREST ED,
I am a Woodite, a member of a rare flock of happy outcasts. I live my life based on who I am and what I believe will make me happy. I am happy being what other are not and I don't care when people throw stones at me. I believe in Ed Wood and his messages. Those who believe will find freedom from those who do not. Peace can only come through assuredness and blind faith in the absurdity of life as a Woodite.
ALTHOUGH THE FINGERS OF SOCIETY POINT AT ME,
I COME TO ASK YOU TO EXTEND YOUR PEACE TOWARDS ME.
PLEASE KEEP ME CALM, FACING FORWARDS TOWARDS YOU.
MAY I BE FILLED WITH PEACE AND UNDERSTANDING.
YOU SUFFERED TO BE DIFFERENT FROM SOCIETY.
MAY I HAVE THE STRENGTH TO DO THE SAME,
MAY I BE STRONG IN THE FACE OF RIDICULE,
AND MAY I BE REWARDED WITH JOY.
I DO NOT FEAR THEIR JUDGEMENT OR THEIR RIDICULE.
I DECIDE FOR MYSELF WHAT IS RIGHT AND WRONG
AND I EMBRACE THE POETIC ABSURDITY OF LIFE.
MAY WE ALL LIVE LONG, STRONG, AND DIFFERENT.
Written by Reverend Steve June 8th, 1999.
I grew up a poor, dark skinned Mexican-American, jumping from city to city until I finally landed in Phoenix, Arizona in a neighborhood that bore no racially tolerant friends. I played with the other white kids in our patch of suburbia, but I wasn't allowed into their homes by their fathers, their mothers, and sometimes they bluntly told me why.
My agnostic parents enrolled me in a strict, dogmatic Catholic school that banned "devilish rap music" and gave children detention if they didn't sit up straight or have their shirts tucked in properly. I found myself torn between what my school taught me and what my family taught me.
Growing up, my only friends were the OTHER outcasted wastes of society. The overly smart, the frighteningly dumb, the slack-jawed yokel, the introverted shy, the video game obsessed, the overweight, and the rebellious became my saving grace.
In an effort to make some sort of sense out of my life during my transition from pre-teen to teenage smart ass, I became a willing participant in an unhealthy dosage of alcohol, tobaccoo, painkillers, and unhealthy romantic relationships. Also during this time, I became locked in a quiet inner debate regarding my own sexuality. I was lost and confused.
I took comfort in Disneyland.
I know that it reaks of commercialism. I know that the Disney company rules the park with a frightening amount of totalitarian "big brother" sensibilities. I know that they pack people into their money-based cash machine theme parks like lambs to the slaughter. I know that a frightening amount of people have died on their rides and that this information is purposely hidden from the public. I know that when you enter the park you give up all rights to freedom and become a mindless, drugged up idiot. I know all that. But, somehow, I love it anyway, as anobody who knows me personally already knows.
It's hard for me to explain my almost sexual obsession with Disneyland. There's a whole handfull of reasons I could sipt out. Perhaps there's something about the innocense that I never had as a child that now I long for. However plausable that might sound, I think there's something else to it.
The place is too cute.
There's something about the overly cute theme of everything from the rides to the shitters that makes your whole experience so overwhelmingly cute that I want to vomit with disgust. And yet, the disgust is humorous. You cannot believe how wrong everything seems to be, and that humorous sense of doing something differend brings me in time and time again.
You cannot tell me that "Mr. Toad's Wild Ride" stinks of an Ed Wood nightmare. You cannot tell me that the cardboard sets of the old "Submarene Voyage" ride doesn't hint at "Plan 9 from Outer Space." You cannot tell me that Ed Wood wouldn't have written the music to "the Tiki Room" if he had the time.
And now, after all these years and Disneyland trips, I finally have a religious reason to go.
In the newly released Ed Wood book "HOLLYWOOD RAT RACE," Ed Wood talks about Disneyland. Specifically, he talks about the now closed ride "CIRCLE-VISION" and how it represents the teaters of tomorrow (specifically, page 135). Within one paragraph, Ed Wood shows the happiness and joy that I feel everytime I have ever went to Disneyland.
Unfortunately, a few years ago, the Circle-Vision theater in Disneyland has since been closed down. HOWEVER, while waiting in line for the Tomorrowland ride "ROCKET RODS" you pass through the former Circle-Vision theater.
Therefore, I, Reverend Steve Galindo, the founder of Woodism and the leader of The Church of the Heavenly Wood, do hereby proclaim that the Circle-Vision section of the Rocket Rods ride in Disneyland to be A HOLY PLACE WITHIN THE RELIGION KNOWN AS WOODISM.
When you walk through the Circle-Vision theater, say an Ed Wood prayer, and remember that you are walking in Ed Wood's footsteps.
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