Interview with Mac Part 6

Paradise. Oil on Canvas. Mac

Part 6
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MM: I want to get back to your art.

MAC: So would I. What time is it?

MM: It's only 11:15. Don't wuss out on me. Oh and by the way, this is what sunlight looks like.

Why do you paint?

MAC: I like the mess and physicality of it. Plus it is very hard, whereas writing now comes very easy for me.

I guess I like the challenge of creating something beautiful from nothing.

MM: But not all your paintings are beautiful.

MAC: I disagree, except for the failed ones. Funny you should say that. My father was here recently and off all my painting he by-passed the one I thought the most beautiful and loved the one least likely. Art is that way. It's intuitive. I like that as well.

With writing there is also a lot of intuition. I especially see that in your writing, but not so much in my own. The Saint has some of both.

MM: Oh you had to bring him up. Do you know how many emails I get asking about our relationship to each other. I think sometimes we should just come out and rent a big house on Crete.

MAC: Very funny. No, I need my privacy. You of all people should know that. No I will leave it to you two.

MM: Why did you create him? Wasn't I enough?

MAC: I am not given to flattery, but I must say you have far exceeding anything I could have ever hoped for. I admire your fearlessness, your humor and unique view of the world. I sometimes wish I was you.

The Saint is his own man. While also a fiction, he is smarter than both of us. He does not possess your humor or ironic sense of life, nor is he as grounded in the real world as I have to be.

Frankly we needed a philosopher, and neither you or I was really up to the task. Sorry if that hurts your feelings.

MM: You bastard.

MAC: Hey, you get all the funny lines and the female attention. And you get to publish first. You'll always be my fav.

MM: (sniff)... Okay. But if he makes a philosophical mistake I'm gonna get out the rubber hoses and let the beatings begin.

MAC: Yes, well that is why I endowed you with a certain ruthlessness which I could never possess.

MM: Wuss.

MAC: Yes, you could look at it that way, or as compassion.

MM: Whatpassion?

MAC: "Compassion". It means to "come alongside".

MM: I like to look in their eyes...especially the haughty religious and then engage them until they run.

MAC: yes. When you look in my eyes what do you see?

MM: Sadness. I told you that before.

MAC: Well let's take those haughty Religionists for example, in particular those you took on a few months back at the White Chocolate Jesus site.

You seemed to find some glee in banging them like a gong, overturning their tables and commencing with the beatings until they all fled.

True?

MM: Yes. I admit it. I liked it that they took out their usual weapons of blaming and shaming and I was undaunted and simply kept to the issues.

MAC: Did you feel dirty afterward?

MM: Hell no!

MAC: Well I watched the whole thing and it made me very sad. I felt dirty for you.

MM: Why?

MAC: Religion, and its hold on people, is based in fear and anger, rather than faith, hope and love.

It's not often really about God at all. Rather it is about ego, money, fear and power. You do not need those things if you really believe in God. You may have to deal with those inclinations and issues in your own life, or in society, but you will certainly not run to embrace them first, and certainly not in God's name.

The fact is, Yahweh is very anti-religious.

MM: Yah-Who? Is that the divine search engine?

MAC: Very funny. You know darn well smartass. And isn't it funny that the Religionists would stone you for such a comment but God is proabably laughing?

MM: Okay. You caught me. But Excuse me...HELLLOOO...God is anti-religious? Isn't that all religion is, is about God?

MAC: No, faith hope and love are about God.

Religion is about power, control and scapegoating others because we have fear and anger within us.

That is why I am sad for them. I think they mean well but their lack of love and humility makes it impossible for them to not do damage to others. Their need to be "right" excludes some very core realities.

MM: Such as?

MAC: Well, someone once said that in the eyes of God we are always "wrong". All of us. We all know this on some level, that we are fucked up and need help. But those most opposed to this idea are the very ones who are so vehement about the dark side of humanity. Another deep irony.

MM: So you hold a pessimistoc view of humanity?

MAC: No, not at all. In fact, I see God everywhere I go and in everyone. People are beautiful and the love of God swirls around them whether they are aware of it or not. The Religionists are too afraid to just let God be God and let grace flow. They have to try and control it, bottle it and then sell it with their brand on it.

It doesn't work that way. Thus I feel sad whenever I see a group of them open up a new corporate chain and bottle it when they might just as well let it flow freely.

MM: You know you really aren't any fun anymore.

MAC: I was never really any fun after 1986.

MM: What happened in 1986?

MAC: No comment, except that I am now an iChristian.

MM: What does that mean again?

MAC: It means we are waiting for a new paradigm to emerge that is honest, relational, filled with faith, hope and love lived out in time and space, and perhaps, even a return to the words and life of Jesus rather than a poltical/consumer agenda of fear and dead religion.

MM: You know, you should have been a preacher.

MAC: I'd rather be a recluse and a writer.