Clicking with the Spirits

I am consumed with guilt every time I go to Scrabulous.com. I think, if instead of going to Scrabulous.com, I wrote a few pages on a novel, I'd be selling the movie rights by now. If instead of going to Scrabulous.com, I got on the treadmill, I'd be wearing a size 6 by now. My daughter heaps on more guilt by telling me that I love Scrabble more than I love her.

Yes, I really love playing Scrabble online! It's literally a religion. Here's why I think so:

Once upon a time, I became interested in the Swedenborgians. The original Swedenborg -- I forget his first name -- was unbelievably learned. He was not only a scientist who made major contributions to human knowledge, but also a man of literary accomplishments. Apparently, he was not known by his immediate community as a nutcase.

He claimed to be in contact with spirits who told him what the "other side" was like. And he wrote it all down verbatim, in great detail.

His sources said that in the afterlife, spirits are grouped by a kind of attraction system. If you were a spirit, you'd have constant access to communication with like spirits -- people whom on Earth you'd think of as boon companions, or soul mates, or best friends forever. It's a meeting of passion, I gather; a merger of a deeper commonality.

But these spirits are not locked into our kind of space and time; they are free to travel, bodiless, and maybe even faceless.

As in most of my studies, I soon grew tired of facts (read: something somebody else wrote) and let my mind range free over the possibilities (read: daydreaming). So what I took away from Swedenborg's theories is basically what you just read in the preceding paragraphs.

But doesn't that much sound exactly like the Internet? Bodiless, faceless interaction with spirits with shared passions? Not moving from our desks, yet ranging all over the world, through many time zones (if not yet time periods, like the Mesozoic Era or the Stone Age). Finding souls with whom you literally click?

That's why I find myself ceaselessly gravitating to Scrabulous.com. Not everyone I play is a kindred spirit, but the chances of finding one there are better than, say, in a meeting of the Limerick Historical Society. (Believe me, I know -- I went to a singalong they sponsored, and they weren't singing protest songs.)

And it's faster to get to Scrabulous.com -- and to park there -- than to visit Harvard Square, where I also think kindred spirits are likely to abound.

I'm not a big believer in an afterlife. In fact, I deliberately try not to believe in one, because I think believing in an afterlife gives us license to rationalize treating people badly in this life.

So this meeting of the minds via Internet excites me. I don't have to wait till I die to cavort with all these other people!

So, I cavort on, fulfilling my spiritual needs on Scrabulous.com. It's just another aspect of my life, like music, or animals, or my family. Why shouldn't Scrabble get some time, too?

Well, whether it should or not, it does, and that is that. Guess where I'm going now?