Rachel Gold: books | marketing | play | enlightenment

Happy Thanksgaming!

From the same family that brought you the hit holiday National Day Off for Jews (celebrated Dec. 25), we present: Thanksgaming! 

Celebrated annually on the same day as Thanksgiving, this holiday gives gamers everywhere a day to give thanks for our tremendous good fortune in the variety of great games available, the easy accessibility of the “flow” state to us, and the way games bring together diverse people over vast distances.

There are two main ways to celebrate this holiday (though of course you’re invited to invent more):

1. Spend the day at home in comfy clothes, eating easy to prepare foods and playing your favorite games. Periodically log in to the social networks of your choice and express heart-felt thanks for these wonderful games and your brilliant achievements in them. Congratulate your friends on their Thanksgaming achievements.

2. Spend the day with family and friends and play games together. Give thanks for the way games bond people, build teamwork, and keep your crazy relatives from fighting (much).

Isn’t it time for a holiday that unites gamers without requiring us to leave the comfort of our homes, dorms or apartments? Join us in celebrating Thanksgaming and consciously increasing the amount of happiness in the world by doing what you love to do and sharing that with others.

 

Are there fundamentalist atheists?

In the past few months, I've had some very interesting conversations about religion with my friends, that span an enormous range of experience from a Christian friend politely asking if I wasn't concerned about ending up in hell to an atheist friend wondering how I could possibly defend religion. (Well, okay, the conversation got a lot more colorful than that, but that's another story). 

I confess I'm fascinated by the folks called "new atheists" for reasons I hope I can illustrate below. This second installment of my summaries of "The Case for God" by Karen Armstrong will take a quick glimpse at the history of atheism and a slightly longer look at the modern phenomenon of the "new atheists," plus some general goodies about religion, science and unknowing.

The Case for God - review #1

I'll start by saying that I love Karen Armstrong's books and I considered this one to be a personal favor to me, even though we've never met. With the rise in media coverage of the "new atheism," I was really hoping someone with rock solid credentials would come out with a brilliant and reasoned response. For that you really can't do any better than Karen Armstrong. Now I can have the deep joy of telling anyone who wants to argue religion with me that they should go read this book first.

This is a dense 332 page book with about 60 pages of notes and glossary so I'm going to summarize some of the points in this article, but will also pull out specific themes in later articles to explore in more detail.

Online Tarot

My favorite site for an online Tarot reading is The Osho Exerience which features both the Osho Zen Tarot and their Transformation Tarot (which is not actually a Tarot deck but rather a collection of 60 wonderful teaching stories on cards). When you load the site, you'll see a link to Zen Tarot on the lower right of the menu bar and that will load up their Tarot deck in Java and allow you to do a few different kinds of readings. On the right menu bar from that page you can also select the Transformation Tarot if you want to explore that deck.

The Osho Zen Tarot is widely applicable with many fine cards about meditation practice, but also some great modern challenges expressed, including cards for stress and exhaustion.

Enjoy and let me know about your experiences!