Pop star Madonna, who’s had a successful career for 30-plus years, has found faith. Well, sort of.
The veteran entertainer, who was born Madonna Louise Ciccone, sounds more like Oprah than Kathie Lee Gifford when it comes to prayer.
“The ritual of prayer isn’t a religious thing as much as it is having a ritualistic moment to acknowledge things and not take things for granted,” she told Interview magazine. “For instance: the fact that you wake up and there’s air in your lungs; the fact that you have a job to do; the fact that you have friends; the fact that you have your health. You’re going to do something that’s going to bring you joy. We take these things for granted. And you know, I think it’s important to call angels to you to protect you.”
In another interview, Madonna said this:
“I became very obsessed with death and the idea that you never know when death will arrive, so one has to do as much as possible all the time to get the most out of life,” she said. “And death was a big part of my life growing up. I went to lots of funerals,” she told her friend performance artist David Blaine.
She has a lot to say about how so many people in the music and film industries take drugs—whether just to feel some euphoria or even in a vain attempt to get closer to God. And let’s give her credit for coming to the conclusion that the latter effort is an illusion; it just doesn’t work.
“It’s about how people take drugs to connect to God or to a higher level of consciousness,” she told Blaine. “I keep saying, ‘Plugging into the matrix.’ If you get high, you can do that, which is why a lot of people drop acid or do drugs, because they want to get closer to God.”
She continued, “That’s the illusion of drugs, because they give you the illusion of getting closer to God, but ultimately they kill you,” she said. “They destroy you. I mean, I tried everything once, but as soon as I was high, I spent my time drinking tons of water to get it out of my system. As soon as I was high, I was obsessed with flushing it out of me. I was like, ‘OK, I’m done now.'”
