Shawshank Retention

I no longer make “mental notes.”  Mental notes, for my aging brain, have all the staying power of an ice cube in my armpit. If I have a meaningful thought and I make a mental note, I will later amble back into the cells of my brain to retrieve it – and it will have escaped.  I call it my Shawshank Retention – my mental notes are a cerebral Andy Dufrane.  Hey, that thought was here, but now it’s gone.  Nothing left but a Rita Haywood poster.  Typical male brain functioning.  You start out with a profound thought and end up with a half naked lady.

So now I make real notes - with words on ink and paper.  I take my intangible observations and give them a tangible representative.  I write them in little Mead notebooks.  Mead memos, I alliteratively call them.  Paper and ink exist in the physical world, so they make my whimsical thoughts real.  They bring them into physical existence so they cannot, as the warden would say, “Up and vanish like a fart in the wind.”

Often my Mead memos do have a tinge of profundity.  I will read one days after I wrote it and think to myself – Self, you are a keen observer; I’d gravel at your feet if they weren’t my feet too.   But just as often they are simply questions, and usually the kind that have no answer.  Sometimes, however, I am able to revisit a question I’ve written later, give it some thought, and come up with an answer that, if not right, will at least appeases my brain enough to relieve it of its analysis. 

Example Mead memo I ran across today:  Why is the mosque this big and elaborate?  Why do we have churches or mosques at all?  Not exactly the kind of Mead memo that will bring my knees to my forehead, mid summersault, in an effort to gravel at my own insightful feet, but a good question still, I think. Especially when put into context.

Context.  I recently took a trip to the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque here in Abu Dhabi.  It is the world’s most elaborate Mosque.  It cost billions of American dollars to build; the 3 chandeliers alone are worth 10 million dollars and weigh almost 10 tons each.  It houses the world’s largest single piece of carpet, which took thousands of Iranian women 7 years to sew.  The carpet blankets the floor in a room that could easily house a Par 4 with ornate green and yellow padding. (Incidentally, when I asked my tour guide to see the Holy Vacuum used to sweep the carpet my inquiry was ignored – brushed under the rug so to speak). 

Following my tour, I Mead memo-ed my questions:  Why is the mosque this big and elaborate? Why do we have churches or mosques at all?  I guess my question stems from my personal belief that any God worth being worshipped would probably prefer people spend their energy and money pursuing acts of charity rather than ordering pricey, custom, stained glassed windows or posh rugs.  I have a hard time imagining God as a trophy wife bragging to Her friends about the gorgeous house people were building Her.  Seriously girls, wait 'til you see the chandeliers!  Why do churches or mosques always need all this stuff?

I suppose, also, that my question could have stemmed from my inadvertent Spanish interpretation of the word Mosque.  Mos meaning “more,” and que meaning “why.”  Ergo - Why more? Why do these religious communities need buildings with architectural splendor?   Wouldn’t less be better, really?  Don’t gilded spires and towering steeples intimidate and keep some people away? 

When I read my question today, the answer hit me; fell on me rather, like a 10-ton, 10-million-dollar chandelier. We humans need tangible items to represent abstract concepts.  Marriage, for instance, is an abstract concept, but couples wear tangible, concrete rings to represent it.  To make it real. 

Similarly, the monotheist concept of God is too intangible to hold in just our minds.  Capital-G God is like one of my mental notes.  You try to house the Celestial Concept in your nugget, and it melts away like ice in my armpit.  A God Thought is too intangible to work in your mind because it doesn’t exist in the physical world.  It’s a Celestial Andy Dufrane rock hammering Its way out of your brain.  A Divine Escape Artist. 

The churches and mosques, however, exist in the physical realm.  They are concrete.  They are more like my Mead memos, with their existence in the physical realm and their superior staying power. A thought can evaporate (another allusion to ice in my armpit); a building can’t.  Erecting an extravagantly tangible structure makes the Intangible Deity it represents seem much more real.  It helps people hold on to the thought.  

So that’s why people need churches or mosques.  But why must they be so elaborate, so ornate, and so extravagant?  Why must they be built with such a great deal of fufaraw?  I suppose because the intangible-capital-G God Concept they represent is so elaborate, ornate, and extravagant.  It’s such a weighty concept that it needs a weighty representative.  Hence the Sistine Chapel.  Hence the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque. 

I reckon if I had a thought, a mental note, that was as universally cosmic and divinely profound as the monotheistic concept of God, I’d want to write it down in something a little nicer than one of my Mead notebooks.  Maybe a leather-bound tome with gold embossing and a silky red bookmark that dangles regally from its lavish spine.  A weighty representative to accommodate my weighty concept.

So, just like I need Mead memos and marriage needs rings, monotheism needs elaborate buildings.  Simple.  Now that I’ve got that riddle solved, on to the next question in my Mead memo pad.  Seriously, how do they vacuum that 7 acre carpet?