About The 93 Prophet

It occurred to me the other day that using an archaic greeting, and the word "prophet" as the title to this blog may need some explaination. Don't worry, it's nothing painful, and hopefully will make those with misgivings a little more at ease.

The "93" is simply a greeting that members of the Thelema religion use as a "shorthand" for the longer greeting of "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law" (used for Hello) and it's customary response of "Love is the law, love under will." Without getting too terribly mystic on anyone, the number 93 represents both Love and Will when you are working with Thelemic numerology. If you want more information on Thelema (and it's founder Aliester Crowley) please visit here.

Which brings me to Prophet. No, I do not see myself as some sort of prophet for the masses, either in the religious sense or in the sense of being the next Nostradamus. I do, however, believe that all of us are our own prophets in the sense that with Love and Will combined we have the power within ourselves to become whatever we wish. We also have the power to create the society we wish to live in. To me, a prophet is nothing more than a person who sees their world, and lives within it accordingly, through a different lense than most. That is an apt description of my life so far.

So, if you had any misgivings about what this blog was about, just remember that the title of it literally translates to "The Will and Love Prophet." I might have actually used that, but seems a little too mushy for my tastes.

The NFL Draft and Changing Loyalties

I'm not normally one that pays attention to the NFL draft, which as anyone how glanced at the sports page of a newspaper undoubtedly knows happened over this past weekend. With the exception of a few outstanding high-profile college players, I don't need to know who went where at the end of April. I'm not going to see the vast majority of these guys on a field consistently for at least a couple of years. But the draft, and it's seeming insignificance, was brought home by the fact that the trade of a 10 year veteran between the Raiders and Patriots could overshadow the whole thing. Of course, I'm talking about the Randy Moss trade.

Now this trade poses a problem for me. I live in Patriot country, actually within hearing distance of Gillete Stadium if the wind is right and the amps get cranked loud enough. Why is this a problem? I don't like the Patriots! I grew up just north of Denver, and if you have ever met a football fan from there you know there is only one team in the NFL we are ALLOWED to like: The Broncos. I am an Elway fan. I like Shannahan's coaching. And yeah, I wish Elway would somehow come back from retirement!

Trouble is, I haven't lived in Denver for damn near 20 years. I have been on the east coast and my solution to this is that while the Bronco's are my team, I pick individual players that I like to watch from other teams. This meant that when I couldn't get the Bronco game on TV here I would watch a game with one of my favorite players. This is how I got to like Randy Moss. He is in my opinion the best wide reciever in the game now, and a very close second to Jerry Rice all time. This was great while he was in Minnesota. I didn't have to worry about wanting to go see a game so I could see him. He's good, he's not worth a two day drive. The last two years he spent in Oakland was a bitch, since of course he was in the division with my beloved Bronco's. But Art Shell predictably made it easier on me by not knowing how to coach. But now, Randy Moss is going to be here, which brings to light another trouble spot.

I picked individual players, but football is not an individual sport, which in turn meant that invariably I would end up rooting for the team they were playing for. Minnesota worked because of being the perrineal underdog, even Oakland worked since they were the "bad boys." But the Patriots? I liked them better during the early 80's when they couldn't win a game if the other team stayed on their buses. At least then they weren't a threat to the Broncos. Maybe it is time to change my loyalties from childhood, and just stick with the individual player thing. It seems what the NFL wants me to do with the whole free agency thing. I can live with that.

Sometimes We Just Move Too Fast

I just finished watching Cars... Yeah, the animated, G rated flick put out by Pixar... Yeah, I know I'm a single 37 year old male who happens to be sitting alone watching a "kid" movie... I know, I know, I need a life, and I'm working on it...

Anyhooo... there was one point in the movie when they were explaining what happened to Route 66, and all the little towns that straddled it before the huge expansion of the interstate system that got me thinking. Sometimes, we are just in too big of a hurry in this country.

I don't mean just the act of driving across it, though that is definitely a great example. But this plague is striking at every part of our day to day lives now. We are either in a hurry to "get on with life" and start making our killings in the business world, or in a hurry to have kids and get the family started, or in a hurry to hit the bar before last call for alcohol so we can manage to get through a night with a spouse we just can't stand. There are a million things we are in a hurry for, and not one of them makes most of us a damn bit happier than we were sitting on the sofa watching the Soprano's!

Or we are in a hurry to get gardens planted, flowers in the flower beds, the yard fertilized and the weed killers spread. I know these things need to be done, even that some people actually want to do them. But whatever happened to taking a walk on the first nice spring day and actually getting out of the house, out of the office, out of the cars, to just relax and enjoy the outdoors even if only for a couple of hours? Is it going to kill the garden dreams if it gets planted over two evenings instead of one? Are the flowers going to bloom a different damn color if they are planted two days late? Somehow I just don't think so.

I know we live in a culture that measures everything on what you have or don't have materialistically. What kind of car you drive, how nice the damn lawn is manicured, how much money did you make last week, month or year. I know we live busy lives and most of us are just managing to keep up. But I know something else, too. Taking that drive down Route 66 at 50 miles an hour rather than staying on the interstate at 70 may mean spending an extra hour or two to get to your destination. But I know for every minute you spend on Route 66 is an hour more you can manage to keep your sanity when you get back on the interstate of your life.