Dear God...

Catholic upbringing and a smattering of Buddhist books on the bookshelf aside, I'm not really the religious type. So when I read that global trend site The Cool Hunter had launched dear-god.net ("spirituality for the new millennium"), my initial reaction was one of cynical and unholy eye rolling.

Having browsed through the site, I stand corrected. Not only has some moving content been posted up by users, there are also touches of humour - done without making it a piss-take.

According to the Cool Hunter:

"From the founder of the cool hunter comes dear-god.net; a startlingly new concept of spirituality where people from all over the planet reveal their innermost hopes and fears in the form of prayers to god. "Dear God is completely non-demoninational and the term god is used in the broadest sense – encompassing every religion’s concept of a higher power; be it a Christian god, a Muslim god or simply a fluid idea of universal energy.

"In its first week, the site has sparked an organic revolution, with people all over the world embracing the opportunity to unburden themselves, to share their hopes and fears with others in an effort create hope, healing, inner peace and clarity."

Or in plain English - it's a kind of global bulletin board / blog / social network where you send in your "prayers" - essentially your thoughts about whatever is on your mind, which others can then comment on.

Recent "prayers" at time of posting seem to be grouped mainly into either relationship / sex ( 'I'm a Christian and my sex life sucks'), self realisation ('Maybe now I can take off the mask and live the life I want to'), politics ('Free Tibet'), or the deeply personal ('My ex-boyfriend just died').

Put together by London designers 'Something Somewhere', the site is striking.

It makes use of the old adage of a picture being worth 1000 words, with every post being accompanied by a fairly powerful image. Other touches on the site include the ability to 'get on God's mailing list' (get posts sent to you), and an RSS feed 'fed from above.'