Lord-a-mercy
The Holy Spirit's individual war vs. me rages on. I have no idea what I did to deserve this kind of special attention (the technical biblical term I believe is "wrath"), but it must have been particularly heinous and disgusting.

So in other words, not entirely outside the realm of possibility.

I think perhaps, like Job, I am being singled out in order to be made an example of. But where Job was punished arbitrarily for his goodness for the sport of God and the devil, I think I am being chosen as an exemplar of modern American liberal Catholicism: a little bit Jesus, but not nearly Jesus enough. I think it all goes back to the time when they were asking for petition signatures for mandatory parental notification of abortion outside my old parish in Mission Viejo. Perhaps glaring and spitting on the sidewalk at the petitioner's feet, in retrospect, was undiplomatic. I just knew it would come back to bite me in the ass some day.

I am being divinely harrassed, I know it. The new pope (I'm still working on the nickname... B16... B-1-6... B-One-Six... ooh hey, Bone-6, very gangsta) is cracking down and he's calling in some favors to whip us in line, one sinner at a time.

Just yesterday, the same day the new pope was elected, the hills across the street from my house (and this is absolutely true) caught on fire and burned all day. Look:


It only burned about 80 acres and nobody was evacuated or hurt, but the lessons in that raging holocaust of underbrush were clear: 1) repent, sinner! 2) I shouldn't throw my cigar butts out the window of my car. I'm not saying the burning bushes spoke to me or anything, but what they didn't say spoke volumes.

And on top of that, today begins what we call the Birthday Season at my house. My middle son turns four today. Roughly two weeks from now my youngest turns two and two weeks after that the oldest will be six. Given the choice between being burned alive and the Birthday Season... well, I honestly couldn't tell you which I'd choose. But it seems rather interesting that we get a new pope, there's this fire, then the dreaded Birthday Season just happens upon us out of nowhere. Yeah yeah. All coincidental, I'm sure.

Of course the Holy Spirit doesn't work directly on earth usually. This church plot against me will have had to mobilize a global army of the Faithful in order to achieve their ends of annoying me. I'm sure there are agents of several secret Brotherhoods of the Cross and Sisterhoods of Christ's Holy Blood and Knights of Columbus and Illuminati surrounding me even as I type this. I would say it's just like the plot of The Godfather Part III if I thought I understood the plot of that movie at all. I just remember it was all Catholic-y. And Sofia Coppolla making out with Andy Garcia. Blech.

Where was I? Oh yes, institutional persecution of me as an individual. Please join me in a prayer of humility and regret so that I can be made acceptable in God's sight. Let's bow our heads:

Dear Heavenly Father. You got me. You are all powerful and quite a specimen of otherworldly omnipresence. If you were a 10 year old girl or a man with crippling asthma I would consider fighting back, but as you can hear and see and do all, I have no choice but to surrender. I surrender humbly to You in all things. Except for that contraception thing and the celibacy thing and a couple other issues, but we can talk, can't we? Anyways.

Amen.



This post on the Narcissus Scale: 8.9


Pops
- posted by Pops @ 9:52 AM