Trust in me
by Matt Worley

A few years ago I was living in a small two bedroom apartment with two others, and we needed another place to live. At the time there was a church building for sale near the University of New Mexico. We, of course, didn't have the $200,000 or so it was on the market for, but we thought the idea of having our own church was pretty cool. We could set up a large video system in the sanctuary and run movies for our "congregation." Live bands and lots of activities. The blue room (which would be the "chill out" room) and other ideas raced through our heads. Of course, it was all just a little pipe dream. We didn't have the money to pull it off--and we didn't have a religion to preach to anyone.

A few days ago A & E ran their biography of Charlie Manson. The women who were part of his "family" expressed remorse for their actions and blamed Manson for controlling their minds. Manson said, "I never told them to do anything. I told them to do what they needed to do, what they felt was right." At some time during Manson's conversations with his family, he also told them murdering famous white people would start a race war, and eventually Charlie would get to be God. We all had a good laugh about that. Manson also wanted to be a rock star, but he didn't have the talent. As we watched the story in our living room, it seemed as though Manson was really just a manipulative idiot with good drugs. I guess the same could be said for rocker Marilyn Manson, except he comes up with a catchy guitar riff every once in a while.

Germany (and many other countries) don't recognize Scientology as a religion (until about four years ago, neither did the United States), and the Scientologists aren't too happy about it. They accuse the German government of trying to create a situation against Scientologists in the same way Nazi Germany created a situation against the Jews. One of the core beliefs of Scientology is based on a science fiction story by L. Ron Hubbard, the religion's founder. A group of bad aliens were sent to Earth a long time ago and were sealed in a volcano. The souls of these bad aliens are the cause of all human suffering. Scientology is the process of cleaning these bad alien souls out of the body. You can't rid these alien souls through good works and thoughts, they have to be bought out by intense (and expensive) training sessions and classes.

39 people apparently killed themselves in Rancho Santa Fe, Cal. (not be confused with Santa Fe, N.M.), in a mass suicide last week. They took some alcohol and pills and fell asleep with plastic bags over their faces. According to early reports, the group put together web sites for entertainment companies and were members of a group called Higher Ground. Big fans of Stevie Wonder, no doubt. They believed an alien spaceship was following the Hale-Bopp comet through the solar system, and that they needed to die so the aliens could pick up their souls. Many of the victims (police term) were from Texas and New Mexico. There was no mention of the Roswell, NM, alien crash landing in the 1940s, but I'm sure that little legend was woven into the religion's literature somewhere.

A few of us have decided we might as well try and start that church after all. Maybe we don't have the building, but we've got the beliefs to create something. See, we feel that everyone should live in harmony with other people and the rest of the inhabitants of the world. I figure we can hammer out some nice fables and parables to go along with our list of core beliefs of the new religion. We don't have any cool alien conspiracies, race wars or natural events to exploit and sell, but maybe peace, love and tenderness might catch on. I figure if we write a good story, people will believe in anything.

Matt Worley is co-founder of the Pitty Pot Church. There are currently only a handful of members, but they look to grow in the coming year. For more information, please e-mail at: Okeefine@aol.com.

return to the Shut up, I'm talking page
return to the LIES home page
return to the A&A home page