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WHAT IS GOD? PREFACE FROM PETER RODGER’S ‘THE OMG CHRONICLES’ COURTESY OF HAY HOUSE
WWW.HAYHOUSE.COM.AU
I was on a ski lift at the Deer Valley Resort in Utah when the idea came to me. I was watching incredible vistas of bright white slopes slowly and silently unfold below on a perfect winter’s day. The sun was so bright, bouncing off the wedding-cake folds of fresh snow, that it flared my goggles. The overpowering beauty of the earth beneath me inspired me to mutter to my friend, “God — this is like—God-kissed.”
“Hmm,” she agreed without thinking.
I pondered my statement for a while. It had seemed so natural, so easy, and instantly understandable as it had tripped effortlessly off my tongue. But what exactly did it mean?
We had been attending the Sundance Film Festival. I had been working for years to get an independent film off the ground, and I had just heard that my financing had fallen through.
“You know what I should do,” I announced, rather than asked. “I should make a film asking people around the world, ‘What is God?’ That would be really cool.” My fate was sealed.
I have an extremely actIve mInd that gets bored very easily. I have always tried to fight this, but I realize it’s a battle I’m never going to win. So I’ve developed a strategy to keep myself from becoming insane with boredom when I’m in positions of imprisonment— for instance, going out with people with whom I don’t want to be. My strategy is . . . napkins. Since paper napkins are always available, whenever I feel a fit of boredom coming on, I grab a few, pilfer a pen from a bartender, and entertain myself by inventing little adages. Consequently, I literally have stacks of napkins from all over the world, filled with meaningful phrases (well, meaningful to me, that is)—many of which can be found at the beginning of the following chapters.
But there’s one adage for which I wish I could take credit. A bizarre psychic enlightened me to it in London years ago. Crippled, he would hobble into a darkened room on a weird contraption, then proceed to wag his head about and glaze his eyes until he entered a trancelike state, at which time he would start to “become” a spirit called Ishmael. I’m not sure whether it was Ishmael talk- ing or the psychic—but this is what he said: “Yesterday’s breath is memory, tomorrow’s breath is contemplation, but the air in your lungs now is what is keeping you alive.”
I like that statement. It has a certain ring to it, and it became a source of strength for me throughout the entire project.
Ever since I completed my adventure, many people have asked me why I dropped a successful career as a director of commercials and advertising photographer to pick up a camera and travel for so long asking people, “What is God?”
My semi-ersatz reply is that I was fed up with the childish school-yard mentality that permeates our world—I call it the “My God is greater than your God” syndrome—where we have grown men slamming airplanes into buildings, shouting, “God is great!” Where we have the Reverend Pat Robertson saying that the nation of Haiti was devastated by a large earthquake because its people “made a pact” with “the devil.” Where we have the constitution of a country (Iran) dictating that its supreme leader is “God’s representative on Earth.” And where we have people blowing them- selves up and murdering innocents because they believe it will buy them a place in heaven.
But before I start sharing this adventure with you, let me tell you a little about me. I’m a curly-headed Brit who moved to Los Angeles with my family in 1996. And, dare I admit it, I am now middle-aged, although I still feel like a teenager. I am deeply addicted to traveling, experiencing new adventures, and discovering new places. I was heavily influenced by my late father, George Rodger, who was a photojournalist and taught me how to see in a photographic, visual-storytelling way—a privileged education that I then nurtured into a career. I love food and have always been fascinated by people. I’m an Aries, and have a tendency to jump into things based on gut instinct, which has caused me trouble on more than one occasion.
I grew up in an Anglican household and went to church every week. I attended Sunday school and was baptized and confirmed. I was brought up to believe that God was this kind, fatherlike spirit in the sky in the image of man; and if you wanted to go to heaven (which was a really nice place) when you died, then you had to behave yourself on Earth and abide by His rules.
It never occurred to me to question this upbringing until I started traveling extensively and was introduced to other cultures. Then, when 9/11 happened, I realized that a lot of what goes on in the name of God seems to be diametrically opposed not only to what I had been taught, but also to what the prophets of all the main religions preached. It wasn’t until I started to study the world on a more spiritual level that I began to realize that so many of us were as conditioned as I had been. Suddenly, the whole concept of God just didn’t seem to make any sense to me anymore.
What kind of a world would my children grow up in? In an age of over-saturated information . . . awareness, understanding, tolerance, and ultimately peace were being threatened by religious dogma, barbaric actions, and polarized opinions. Knowledge seemed to be flowing at an unprecedented rate. Wisdom seemed to be ebbing at an unprecedented rate. It seemed that truth was becoming diluted by too many voices all keen to reference the name of God to further their own agendas.
KNOWLEDGE
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