New World Notes

Bizarre Berry and The Deeper Story

Mr. Story, Our Intrepid Correspondent

When Douglas Story wrote about Bizarre Berry's marvelous caves of Lascaux in Modesta as his World from My Window contribution, he wound up with a far longer (and just as fascinating) profile of a uniquely strange and gifted Resident, who spoke to him on everything from the taboo of ugly avatars, to creating the caves, to his custom-made crack ho, to... the Unitarian Universalists of Second Life. 

THE SACRED AND THE PROFANE

I stopped by Rafin Grimm's floating castle last week, to ask him why he'd disassembled his Roman Catholic cathedral. When I got there, however, he already had company. So while Raffin and I talked about the status of spirituality in Second Life, a curvy brunette in a sculpted fetish bikini went on waving her riding crop at a muscular man with nothing on but a pair of crotchless black leather chaps.

"I am Catholic, and very in touch with my relationship with God," says Rafin. He's a tall young man with dark hair, in stylish gray slacks and a black, longsleeve shirt. And while he adds that he's neither a perfect Christian, "I try to be good and do good things. That's what the church was going to be."

Things didn't turn out the way he planned, however.  I discovered this through fellow Second Life blogger Jonathan Akebono, who'd heard about Rafin's church, and recently asked him where it had gone.

"Actually, I took my church down awhile ago," Grimm replied. Akebono told him he was looking for a place in Second Life to pray, but Grimm couldn't help him there. "It was just causing a lot more problems than good. And nobody seemed to use it. I think it is funny... people like having sex clubs and all that here, but you build a church and it is like you are the biggest jerk in the world."

WHERE TWO OR MORE ARE GATHERED...

Convening with the infinite in a virtual world (originally published here)...

"Thought you might find this newsworthy," someone named Etain Peregrine tells me yesterday, by Instant Message. "There's an 'authentic Catholic mass' happening right now, Sunday morning, on Second Life."

It's about 11:30AM, and though I don't often go in-world on the weekend-- or, to be frank, go to church-- I log in, and Etain teleports me into Indigo. Where there is, as it turns out, something very much like an authentic Catholic mass already in progress. A man named OmegaX Zapata is at the altar, and he's dressed in priestly garments, and he's reciting the liturgy:

"When supper was ended, he took the cup. Again he gave you thanks and praise, gave the cup to his disciples and said: 'Take this, all of you, and drink from it: this is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant...'"

Someone hands me a liturgical book, when I enter, and it's what Indigo's parishioners are using, to read along with the Mass.

Lord... remember our brothers and sisters who have gone to their rest in the hope of rising again; bring them all the departed into the light of your presence...

This actually isn't the first church in Second Life to offer services-- of course, the many weddings held in-world are usually performed in churches-- nor is it first to be used with a genuine intent to worship. A few weeks ago, for example, a church was evidently built by a Second Life resident who happened to be a retired Episcopalian priest. (His grandson, another resident, helped set up his account.) The church was removed, after another resident gave the church a negative rating, with a statement to the effect that she didn't care to see the promotion of religion, in Second Life. (Unlike previous churches, this one apparently involved a fair amount of proselytizing; for instance, one resident told me, the retired priest was handing out T-shirts that read, "Jesus had a Second Life, too.") In any case, the negative rating unleashed a flurry of controversy, in the Second Life forum, on the bounds of theology, free expression, and community. Did it constitute religion bashing? Should religious symbols and buildings enjoy some kind of social exemption from negative ratings, or should they be fair play for such criticism, just like political objects? The rhetoric raged back and forth, and somewhere in there, for whatever reason, the church was removed, and for whatever reason, the retired-clergy resident has not responded to an interview request.

Meanwhile, Rafin Grimm, the angel-winged owner of Indigo's church, is leading the faithful in a recitation of the Lord's Prayer. "... thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread..." and beat for beat, nearly all of it matches the Catholic Masses I attended every Sunday, as a boy, at St. John Vianney in Kailua.

"The peace of the Lord be with you always," says Father Zapata. (And the title of his avatar designates him as "Father".) "And also with you," the churchgoers reply, and I already know the priest's next words, before they arrive on my screen. "Let us offer each other the sign of peace."

A dozen or so residents turn in their pews and give words of greeting to each other.

"Peace be with you, everybody," says Rafin, smiling. Hank Ramos offers peace to Zate Kojima, who offers peace to everyone, and to someone named wench Phaeton.

"Like all churches," my friend Fizik Baskerville whispers to me, "people are asleep in the back rows."  And so they are.

"Peace be with the two away-from-keyboard bodies in the back!" Zate adds, laughing.