Thoughts and Prayers: The Religion Thread

ftfy

 

I think he cribbed that from a Hallmark card.

 

Did someone say Dalai Lama Hallmark?

His Holiness the Dalai Lama is a Hallmark of Peace and Non-Violence: Former HP Minister on Birthday of His Holiness - Central Tibetan Administration

 

For reasons I’m still not entirely sure of, I volunteered to co-lead a group of junior high boys for our church’s big in-house youth discipleship weekend. At least it went better than the last time I was put in charge of church boys that age.

Right before leaving for college in the summer of 1993, I agreed to be a driver for three or four of the rowdiest little shits God ever injected with Y chromosomes. They kicked the driver’s seat and broke it and yelled and called me dumb nicknames almost all the way to King’s Island. Then I got onto the ramp for I-275 while the rest of the caravan plowed straight ahead towards downtown Cincinnati. My hatchback went dead silent as I screamed at them to shut up because we were now separated from our group in the days before GPS or even cell phones. (And for that matter, my parents didn’t know that 17-year-old me had volunteered to drive.)

I had no clue how I was ever going to find everybody again. All I knew to do was declare that when we got to the theme park we would go to the office and wait there until we got word from the rest of the party. Then I learned God still works miracles in the present when completely by chance we pulled into the parking space right next to the church van.

 

You know,

I think it was a miracle, but then my family believes all that divides us from the departed is some sort of wispy veil and dead relatives are sometimes drawn into very live arguments. As my late father used to say, "This is why I watch hockey for the finesse, not the fights."

 

And remember, no bishop has even suggested Bannon be denied communion.

 

I still think of the guy who volunteered to drive a group of us middle school boys around the state of Ohio to compete in Bible quizzing as half-saint. The shit he put up with for zero pay.

If I ever write a memoir about my evangelical childhood, it will open with us boys playing a game of who could shout the word “Fuck” loudest in the 15-passenger van until a millisecond before he opened the driver’s door.

Bruce died a couple years ago and I screamed “FUCK!” in his honor when I heard.

 

Perhaps “Texas Pastor” could be the next “Florida Man.”

 

Should have just MAGA-fied "The Music Man" - it would have worked fine. Yes, the band is terrible, but dammit, those are OUR kids playing horrible music.

 

It's weird - there is actually a "shadow Catholic church" in Michigan, with priests and nuns who don't view the Pope as the pope. They've been excommunicated of-course, but they make the right-wing Catholics look like unitarians.

 

And when you think of it - churches have been taking material written by others, twisting it in any way they see fit and profitting off of it for millenia.