God’s Family: The Children

I have commented previously on God’s wife (here, here, and here) and dog (here and here). What about His children?

Of course we’re all God’s children. Jesus is the best and Satan is the worst. George Washington never told a lie but he’s the only U.S. president and God’s child who can say that. (I’d credit the wag who wrote the line about Washington but can’t remember his name.)

All of God’s children have got wings, robes, harps, shoes (some debate about this one), rhythm, swing, and trouble. They may not have money and they may have the blues.

So what about the kids still up there, living at home with God, who we never hear about?

God has three kids in the house: Bud, Randi, and Claude. Bud is a Buddhist who climbed a tree in God’s backyard a long time ago and never came down again. Randi is a two-billion-year-old teenager who lives in the basement and has a problem with the size of her wings. Claude… I’ve got nothing negative to say about Claude. Claude’s an angry young dude.

So nothing newsworthy about the stay-at-homes. Don’t call them Millennials! The Creator keeps it real up there in the Fields of Bethesda… or no, that’s a housing development in Maryland I’m thinking of.

There are stories about God’s special children, but I’ll save them for later.  I don’t want the next missile scare to be worse than the last one.

Birthday!

I’m 21 today. Happy birthday to me.

All growed up lol.

In three days I’ll be a U. S. Marine. Oorah!

Shouldn’t say that yet. Don’t have the right.

At last I’ll be living and working with real men and women.

The Corps will knock the vinegar out of me, the sooner the better. My mom already gave me the haircut. She was afraid if I came home and she wasn’t used to it, she might embarrass herself.

I’ll be starting out fixing jet planes. I never had any luck with mechanical stuff but they teach you. Is a jet mechanical? Propellers are, but jets seem more like rockets. Are rockets mechanical?

I’m doing some push ups, but maybe I should save my strength. If i flush out of training, or whatever they call it, I’ll never get over it. I guess I’d join the Army next but it wouldn’t be the same.

I’ve got an old movie about drill instructors at Paris Island. Jack Webb is the top one. I turn up the sound to get used to all the shouting. I don’t know what the rules are going to be about iPhones and iPads and so forth. They’ll let me know. Probably while calling me “maggot.”

This will also be my first time outside of Valdosta.

Wish me luck!

Missile-alarm Activity Guide

Missile Arrival Time – Activity Before It Hits

If you have 1 hr. (the missile won’t take longer) – Put your will in a lead box. If everything mentioned in the will is located near you, don’t bother.

If you have 45 minutes – Enough time to do something fun. What do you like? Food? Indulge yourself. Rock climbing? Climb your chimney. TV? Lots of buzzkill programming probable at this time; stick to DVDs. Sleep? If you can sleep in this situation, your mind is right.

If you have 30 minutes – Way too much time for anything religious, like prayer. An eternity if you’re praying, especially if you’ve got bad knees. But speaking of eternity, you might want to spend a second or two thinking about how you’re going to spend that.

If you have 15 minutes – Cook soft-boiled eggs!  One iteration for practice and another to eat, with seconds left over to wash the yolk off your lips. A good soft-boiled egg depends upon timing. Bring your water to a boil, then maintain it at a strong simmer. Add eggs to the pot. Begin timing. If you’re cooking one or two eggs, five minutes delivers a tasty runny yolk. Cook up to seven minutes for a firmer yolk that can still be eaten with a spoon. Don’t just check your watch. Set a timer to ensure consistent results.

If you have 5 minutes – You need something simple to do. Straightforward. No time to organize. I like to floss at stoplights, for example. If your life has not been so great, count your blessings. Five minutes should be plenty.

If you have 30 seconds – Bend over. KYAGB. (Why not go out on an old, old joke?)

Would you rather…? (Education)

Would you rather have students with dull eyes in eager faces, or eager eyes in dull faces?

Keep in mind that eyes aren’t exactly windows to the soul, like you hear. Instead, recent research indicates that our notion that the visual pathway consists of a series of cells and synapses that carry visual information from the environment to the brain for processing, is too simple. Instead, incoming information meets outgoing information in some as-yet-to-be-explained way, and “seeing” represents the conflation of these data streams.

So on second thought, it sounds like the soul is coming out halfway to meet the real world. If so, dull eyes can’t be good. Who wants a bad soul in an eager body? Cancel my subscription to that magazine that comes in a plain brown wrapper marked “Sex information inside.”

But eager eyes… Can the soul want to bust out out of the brain and go roamin? Pushing along that dull old body in a crazy search for the blue pill? Or is that just me?

It’s a conundrum, and don’t forget, choices are rarely binary. Never mind “dull” and “eager.” What about listlessness? A lot of listless students out there. I can be listless and I’m the teacher. A lot of teachers will tell you they crave eager students, the more the better, but when you’re hungover on a Monday morning after a fruitless weekend seeking legal love, nothing can be more intimidating than those rosy-cheeked faces! Thank goodness for educational videos.

With regard to Ms. Clemons in the school library, I will take any kind of eager I can get.

Ex-employee Slams Measles Church

Oh, the itch!

Jesus had chicken pox but he never had measles. You can confirm this in the Epistle to the Walmites in the Apocrypha.

Who did have measles? Search the holy writ. Google “measles god jesus the holy trinity a host of angels and saints true republicans” and see what you get. Nada.

And yet, as far as we can determine, by prayer and introspection, neither God nor Jesus was ever vaccinated!  Measles are caused not by invisible “germs,” but by sin, QED.

I was hired by the One True Megachurch as a greeter. My job was to watch for vaccination marks. Or “Satan’s Mark,” as Reverend Amoebes referred to it. Those with the mark were drawn into the church, placed in positions of power, and then blackmailed. The Reverend also had a thing for those marks, so there was some physical monkey business going on as well. I had no problem with the blackmail, as the receipts were used by the Reverend to  further the ends of the church. I wasn’t provided with the details.

It’s surprising how many different types of mark a measles vaccination can cause. Reverend Amoebes never tired of the variety.

Once the Reverend was through with them, the marked church members were banished.

Naturally, quite a bit of measles and mumps was to be found in the congregation, especially among the children, whereas in the rest of the city the diseases were practically nonexistent. The church was being tested by God. Once it passed the test, measles and mumps would break out all over the metropolitan area and everyone in the church would become immune. In the meantime, we were the Job of congregations, questioning not our suffering, everyone looking like spotted chipmunks with cheeks full of nuts.

Everyone but the Reverend, that is. Miraculously, he remained healthy.

So matters would have remained if I had not surprised the Reverend in his  study late one Sunday evening. Later he claimed that I was sneaking in to get at the chest containing his “slush fund.” I could have sworn he was in the vestry with Pearl Price at the time. She was moaning in there for sure. Was it just the itch?

In his study, the Reverend was changing out of his vestments. He liked to go downtown after midnight wearing black. When I walked in on him, he was between shirts and there on his arm was a vaccination mark.  No way I could miss it.

Now, I’m out on the street, unemployed. Obviously didn’t reach the slush fund. No market in town for my job specialty, not until the city comes to its senses and learns to detest vaccinations like I do.