The Neo-pagan Guide to Finding Baby Jesus Outside The X-box.*

I’ve decided to write another book. Not one with pages. An electronic book. An e-scroll book.

I was so inspired by my own recent blog, there seemed no other course of action to take. It was such excellent writing, the world deserves it. The working title of the book is: *The Neo-Pagan Guide to finding Baby Jesus outside the X-Box.*

This is the first “others-help” book, which fits in well with my originality and creative genius. An outlet for it, so to write.

Writing a self-help book seems quite a superfluous exercise. Why would I write a book to help myself, when I could avoid the whole publication process, and just tell myself things in order to improve? It makes more sense to write a book to help others. To impart my wealth of knowledge and wisdom. It would be redundant to impart it to myself. I already possess it.

It’s a bit like why God created humans. He was bored with His own magnificence, and thought others should share in His good fortune. It’s not like God needed humans to make His life more meaningful or purposeful or complete. He did it out of charity. The goodness of his own spiritual heart. Being a pure spirit, He wouldn’t have a heart as we know it. How would you perform CPR on a spirit, for instance? You’d end up trying to resuscitate the floorboards or the linoleum or the tiles. And look quite silly.

Neo-Pagans are my niche audience, albeit that includes at least half of the world’s population. It’s more of a niche subject.

I’d like to make it abundantly clear that this book is not for Muslims. Neither the good ones who live in Australia, or the bad ones. The fanatics, religious zealots and suicide bombers. If St Francis of Assisi couldn’t covert a Mohammedan to God, I’m not even going to try. I’ll catalogue them outside of the Neo-Pagan box and just call them pagans. Plus I don’t want to offend them and end up like Salmon Rushdie with a fatwa on my head or wherever they put them. I’d rather wear a turban and pretend I’m from Punjab. And follow the IPL. Which, by the way, is not an abbreviation for a terrorist movement. I claim no responsibility for mentioning the IPL.

The book is a selection of spiritual conferences I preached to myself, and committed to memory.

They are based upon the premise that people find religion interesting and would like to learn more about it, as long as no-one they know finds out what they’re up to. Instead of having to say, ‘I’m reading the Bible,’ people can say, ‘I’m reading the Neo-Pagan Guide to Finding Baby Jesus. It’s a great read. Very amusing.’ Then afterwards, they can go to a secret place, pray in private, and flick through Sacred Scripture.

By the time they finish reading, they will be well on the path towards sanctity and canonisation, without having to justify their fervent conversion to anyone. Instead of dying and having a funeral where a priest says they’re going to hell, they can have a service more akin to a celebration of life, and instant canonisation service. Which is very popular today in the modern Catholic Church. Today, Catholics can live lives of complete debauchery and sin for decades, and still get a lovely funeral where the only focus is the good things they did in life. As though sin itself is an outdated concept. “He was a great man and pillar of society. I remember the day he came to church on Sunday. It was 1968 …”

If anyone suspects people reading my book are becoming Jesus-lovers or Bible-bashers, and challenges them, they can reply with, ‘What makes you think I’m taking religion seriously? Surely not this book? It’s a humorous look at religion. There’s hardly anything serious in it at all.’

Then, they can go to confession and tell a priest they told a lie.

Later on, they can write their own books to convert others. Based upon my book. As long as they credit me. “Give credit where it is due,” so the saying goes.

The conferences, or sermons, are based upon the pithy maxim of St Francis de Sales: “The world esteems us as mad. Let us consider them fools.” They are also the product of St Francis of Assisi’s advice: “The only person you should preach to is yourself.”

So essentially, it is the raving of a madman to a collective group of fools on the subject of self-improvement. Of others. The rantings are based upon the delusion that I have already achieved spiritual enlightenment, and need no improvement, being as I am, already perfect. And ready to convert the world to my way of thinking. Which makes for good reading. If you dismiss the inherent self-deception. (And yet, this is what all self-help books are. Books written by people with enough presumption and pride to consider themselves teachers of others, when their lives bear testimony to the fact that they are the ones in need of instruction. But there’s a huge market out there for such books. I might even include an insert cookery book, since they are popular. Lamb chops with heretic and infidel sauce, garnished with hypocrisy, on a bed of Baptismal-white Basmati rice sprinkled with blood-red martyr’s jus).

Amongst the piffle, dribble, inanity and banality is enough truth to deceive the majority of people. Albeit there is no money-making angle. Outside of book royalties. Once the publishers have taken their cut for editing what needs no editing, that is. Grammar is for anal-retentives who can’t recognise a conversational tone in writing. And want to big-note themselves on their abilities and university qualifications. Whereas, dispensing with grammatical correctness for the sake of a darn good read is what successful airport novelists do. The ones who never win literary awards, but make more money than the people who write literary masterpieces which people pretend they have read to big-note themselves at social gatherings of like-minded individuals, while they sip drinks they would never touch in private and eat food they wouldn’t feed to their budgerigar in case it died of starvation, and the RSPCA or PETA had them imprisoned for cruelty to animals.

I often quote myself but have never been known to plagiarise myself.

Anyone who reads this book, and is not inspired to become a saint overnight is probably too busy for God. And should buy celebrity gossip magazines to accommodate his or her short-attention span.