Sometimes we take faith just on faith. Why is faith and religion battling in my brain; the war zone paltering with voices I can’t comprehend. People please, I’m not a dogma kind of guy; my belief system has coveted complete mystification. So, I ask a simple question, “Do you believe in Jesus?” I need answers before the next thunderstorm rides into my town on the fickle northwest wind—consecrates my confusion. Let me digress...
According to the Hartford Courant, a Manchester man, who police said spent a portion of his morning reading the Bible before running into the street screaming he was "the son of Jesus" and beating several people with a 2-by-4, was arrested last Tuesday. This in itself isn't confusing as this happens all the time in our town... well perhaps just on alternating Tuesdays before McDonalds switches to its lunch menu. Again I digress... Why is Steve Buscemi interrupting me? Ignore him: back to the son of Jesus.
Police suspect that Ruben Vasquez Jr., 24, was "on something" as he allegedly assaulted two men and two children, ages 1 and 3, and a police officer, believing them to be nonbelievers and followers of that “ sacrilegious Vatican-Dude” as he sang Joan Armatrading’s The Weakness In Me. The responding K-9 officer hummed along as officer Fidelis-Do sniffed Vasquez’s butt for Angel dust: apparently Vasquez’s strength was super-human—God-Like. I don’t like to be repetitive, so I’ll ask with a qualifying caveat emptor, “Do you believe in Jesus; his son, Ruben?
My inner-Roman Catholicism toys with me. The many voices singing Ave Maria lyrics interspersed with Janis Ian’s The Great Divide try conquering the reasoning within my cortex. I listen as Bruce Cockburn strums his guitar in an action speaking louder kind of way.
She was lost in so many different ways
Out in the darkness with no guide
I know the cost of a losing hand
Never thought the grace of God go high
by the shield and by the sword
and every congregation
has a pipeline to the lord
but there will be no salvation
and no place to hide for those who lied
and buried us alive to build the walls
of the Great Divide
Ava Maria…
Way too much weirdness…way too much: I needed to seek out truth; was Ruben of the most holy family, related to Jesus, ignorant of Mary Magdalene and the Our Lady of Guadalupe? I ask this because I’ve met Jesus impersonators, Mary Magdalene wanna be’s and Our Ladies of Guadalupes who conversed in Latvian—so nonsensical. But never have I encountered the son of Jesus, or Ruben for that matter. And just in case a revelation is transpiring amidst the humidity and summer freshness of stagnant Salter’s Pond water, I need an epiphany, a convergence on a conversion without proselytizing to my inner- apostate—I fear eternal damnation, having experienced two divorces and wild sex with a Baptist nympho. Amen? Just asking…
Some say confession is good for the soul. I went to church seeking a confession—the priest’s… not mine. Agnostic tendencies tend to fuck with me. How one might inquire? Well, if I were a committed man of faith I wouldn’t have written the word fuck. See the confusion? Oh, fuck it…
The coolness (temperature) of St. James’ inner-sanctum woven within the textures of dark shadows, oily incense dancing its odor dance and the purples and shades of blue on the stained-glass filtering only repentant sunlight made me feel momentarily holy; I wondered if I still fit in the confessional.
“Yes my son…” the shadow-priest said.
“I wish had a chair in here, my knee hurts.”
“That’s not how you start confession.”
“One question first…”
“Indulge me,” the shadow-priest said; his pious breath pontificated as he exhaled.
“Do you believe Jesus will return to this life?”
“But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.”
“No… will Jesus ever turn up here in Manchester?”
“Jesus was delivered up and crucified for the forgiveness of our sins. He was raised from the dead to provide the way of salvation. The only sin which has not been forgiven is the sin of unbelief in Jesus Christ's death and resurrection,” the shadow-priest’s voice became sardonic—sanctimonious.
“ Again… no… I’m asking is Jesus coming before the Rapture… I mean thunderstorm begins. By the way Mimi Rogers was so hot in that movie.”
“Movie?”
“The Rapture?”
“Yes she was… now say three rosaries and twenty Our Father’s for dwelling on Mimi’s hotness. Return only after you pray.”
I wanted to scream “Shit”, but I farted a righteous one instead.
As I left the confessional, I swear I heard faint whispers of, “Oh Mimi… Oh Mimi.” I could be wrong; the thought of having no rosary beads distracted me.
That night a storm avenged doubt’s darkness. Lightning lit up the sky: outside was illuminated in a strobe light of fury. Winds ravaged the trees. Hail pounded the steaming asphalt. Ozzie stopped singing War Pigs/ Luke’s Wall on iTunes, ending on: Now in darkness world stops turning… ashes where the bodies burning, before all power was lost. In the distance, I heard sirens. The rain poured down an odious wetness.
After the storm abated, Eye Witness News reported that a fire apparently caused by a lightning strike then fed by a broken propane line heavily damaged a Manchester home.
William H. Pilatus, 83, who is vision impaired, and his seeing-eye dog, Judas, were home at 140 Cavalry Road at the time of the lightning strike about 9:45p.m. and tried to call 911, but couldn't connect. Manchester dispatchers immediately called him back and Pilatus told them he lost power after a lightning strike and that he could see a propane-fed fire. Firefighters arrived six minutes after the call and escorted the man out of the house. His dog, after fleeing the scene, returned and reluctantly led Pilatus to the home's foyer, said Chief Charles Bukowski of Manchester Fire-Rescue-EMS. It took firefighters about 36 minutes to control the fire. No injuries were reported. A neighbor with a heavy, slurred cockney accent commented, “God’s love is like apples.” I swear the neighbor said, “God’s love is like Alpo.”
Do you believe in Jesus? in Ruben? in God’s love? Alpo?
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I'm really wanting to be Amish.
When he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching
From his lonely wooden tower
And when he knew for certain
Only drowning men could see him
He said "All men will be sailors then
Until the sea shall free them"
But he himself was broken
Long before the sky would open
Forsaken, almost human
He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone
And you want to travel with him
And you want to travel blind
And you think maybe you'll trust him
For he's touched your perfect body with his mind.
No sequel.. perhaps a prequel?
J. Robert Godbout
Hell of a storm ... wasn't it.
Lorraine
There are heroes in the seaweed, there are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love and they will lean that way forever
while Suzanne holds the mirror...
thanks for reading. My nephew told me he ran into a dude in Vancouver who said that.
I will see your divorces and the Baptist nympho, and raise you a blow job in Singapore... but I do not fear eternal damnation.
As for your question, I have an agnostic's view of the Son of Jesus, but I do know that there are always two... a Master and an Apprentice. Oh wait... do I have that right??? RAted.
I'll call on the blow job and raise ya a three way with a wicked alto and two luscious sopranos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AratTMGrHaQ
We are thinking alike today.
Owl
The Ruben dude is real. The sandwich is my favorite.
Theo
My nephew is visiting from Vancouver: I blame him.
I get the awful feeling that this was written just so you could plug that "Rapture" movie again...w/ yr all-time favorite gal mimi r.
but the point you raise is a most serious one: the jesus epidemic currently infecting our fair city of village charm...
I walked across town today, it was a pleasant cloudless afternoon, and lurching along our pleasant avenues was an army of characters from "night of the living dead"...psychotropically benumbed, muscua lry challenged human debris seemingly searching for a Messiah to lay hands upon them and lead them away down the Ct river valley perhaps to storm Hartford, as Jesus #1 stormed Jerusalem. Perhaps to surround Gov Rell's mansion, to bring her to her senses regarding her 19 vetos , deadlocking our state govt....I was tempted to take up the messiah mantle myself, and lead them away, but i had business at Mary Cheney library: bringing resolution to my library fines, now at $50....I hope they found a suitable christ or son-o-christ to bring them to full life again, or at least found a grassy place to lay down & sleep it off...
Jim
This really happened in Cheneyville. Last Tuesday I believe, but my faith is flawed. Back to Salter's pond with Mimi.
And, Chuck, you said you loved my soprano voice and all that went with it and now here you are using me to one-up Harp. I am crushed.
always loved Janis. As for the soprano ... ; )
Here’s the thing. We wanted to post an excerpt from U.A. Fanthorpe’s “Getting It Across” here, but the more we read, the harder it was for us to cut her off. Hope you will forgive us for commandeering so much of your comment space to share the poem in its entirety, but we think it’s worth it.
( m&m )
Getting It Across
by U. A. Fanthorpe
‘His disciples said unto him, Lo, now speakest thou plainly, and speakest no proverb. Now are we sure that thou knowest all things.’
St. John 16:29–30
This is the hard thing.
Not being God, the Son of Man,
—I was born for that part—
But patiently incising on these yokel faces,
Mystified, bored and mortal,
The vital mnemonics they never remember.
There is enough of Man in my God
For me to construe their frowns. I feel
The jaw-cracking yawns they try to hide
When out I come with one of my old
Chestnuts. Christ! Not that bloody
Sower again, they are saying, or God!
Not the Prodigal fucking Son,
Give us a new one, for Messiah’s sake.
They know my unknowable parables as well
As each other’s shaggy dog stories.
I say! I say! I say! There was this Samaritan,
This Philistine and this Roman . . . or
What did the high priest say
To the belly dancer? All they need
Is the cue for laughs. My sheep and goats,
Virgins, pigs, figtrees, loaves and lepers
Confuse them. Fishing, whether for fish or men,
Has unfitted them for analogy.
Yet these are my mouths. Through them only
Can I speak with Augustine, Aquinas, Martin, Paul,
Regius Professors of Divinity,
And you, and you.
How can I cram the sense of Heaven’s kingdom
Into our pidgin-Aramaic quayside jargon?
I envy Moses, who could choose
The diuturnity of stone for waymarks
Between man and Me. He broke the tablets,
Of course. I too know the easy messages
Are the ones not worth transmitting;
But he could at least carve.
The prophets too, however luckless
Their lives and instructions, inscribed on wood,
Papyrus, walls, their jaundiced oracles.
I alone must write on flesh. Not even
The congenial face of my Baptist cousin,
My crooked affinity Judas, who understands,
Men who would give me accurately to the unborn
As if I were something simple, like bread.
But Pete, with his headband stuffed with fishhooks,
His gift for rushing in where angels wouldn’t,
Tom, for whom metaphor is anathema,
And James and John, who want the room at the top—
These numskulls are my medium. I called them.
I am tattooing God on their makeshift lives.
My Keystone Cops of disciples, always
Running absurdly away, or lying ineptly,
Cutting off ears and falling into the water,
These Sancho Panzas must tread my Quixote life,
Dying ridiculous and undignified,
Flayed and stoned and crucified upside down.
They are the dear, the human, the dense, for whom
My message is. That might, had I not touched them,
Have died decent respectable upright deaths in bed.
--rated--
"Indeed, the faith-filled sons and daughters who know God through Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, and Christianity must come together in joy and mutual respect or we will crucify each other and destroy the world God made for us all. "
Rev. K Chalker 2003
J. Robert
call on the mister's daughter and raise you the minister's wife.
It was a crazy weekend. But I got to hold and feed a 2 month old baby girl. That was humbling.
My dogs say Alpo is Spam for the canine palate.
on Alpo, my sister sells [organic?] dog food. Mentioning Alpo will piss her off. I'm just bad like that.
I'd have to see some evidence of god and her love... I'll get back to you.
Long live Ruben! Long live Mimi...
i knew you'd understand!
I'm not smiling in a laughing way, I'm smiling because I mos def (he's a rapper too!) get what you're saying. "Believing" almost always seems counter-intuitive. It also seems to be counter-intellectual as well. But it is what we make it.
GREAT piece, as usual and very thought provoking.
My front page for the day and a Double Doozy EP.
Rated
I hate it when I feel left out. And so I will just pout, wish I were less literal and more poetic, and wait for the next train. It does give me hope that He, the One who raises all this dust and all these questions, could reach out to the broken vessels we call humanity and call us "beloved."
;-)
rated.
Monte
Baigent just phoned.......he wants to speak to you. Congratulations!
thanks for double doozy.
Monte
I thought of what you might think as I wrote this. Thank you for visiting the weirdness. But I do ponder if one tells me they are Jesus... So many turned Him away.
Thanks... anyone from Christchurch, New Zealand can speak to me anytime.
"Angle!" he said, "Why must you be so obtuse?"
"I have no time for you word play, Devil Mouth. Your need is acute. "
Great post Mussy, being atheist (wow one little space -a theist -and I could believe in god.) I don't believe in Jesus but I don't let that stop me from having semi regular conversations with him. For a myth he's pretty knowledgable and as for what he gets out of it he says it's nice to talk to somebody who doesn't want anything from him. Sometimes he gets a little whiney though, "I die for them and this is how they act? WTF?! " But all in all I got to agree with Chris Christopherson. Me and Jesus we got our own thing going.
thanks for stopping by. I'll have to remember that but for a sapce comment. And yes I too dig on Kris.
my religious preoccupations have morphed into delusions of grandeur with a slight trepidation of unknown phobias.
Michael
Mimi doesn't call here either. Damn that Tom Cruise.
Well, apparently you did! And I thought I had a long weekend! Ah, the nephew! This explains alot!
I need a vacation.
Any ideas?
thanks for dropping by; I feel so repentant at the moment.
It sure doesn't.
Yes. Played his best ball with the Giants.
The vessel image brings me to the river and Suzanne... and then my my mind flies to Joan Armatrading....
"If you're so strong then resolve the weakness in me.
Why do you come here, and pretend to be just passing by? "
We all wonder that.
...and I think of the confessional. Being a converted Catholic, I have never been locked inside that confessional box. We look each other in the eye......... and I've said my share of Rosaries.
I am a believer and have faith and live my life that way. This email gives me one more OS person to worry about.
Love and Peace;
denese
With Felipe and Matty.
Denese
I sprinkle little messages via lyrics and song in my writings.
I too have said many rosaries... and in the end isn't there only faith?
"I believe in everything, I believe in nothing. I believe in this moment alone. It's all we've got."
You have defined my writing style.
rated for being original and real
PS- Last night in the movie "New in Town' a character asked Renee Zellweger if she had found Jesus, her reply was "I didn't know Jesus was missing!"
I think there might be a book in that...........
Were you drinking anything when you wrote this post? :)
New Town is a great movie... and yes Renee's words are true.
Bill
You do understand... you gotta read between the lines. : )
Penguin
you know I like the condiments.
Patricia
the whole purpose of this piece of writing is confusion. If I left you confused then I succeeded. You got nothing to worry about come Judgement Day.
scanner-dude
today you're da MaN !
Or the lion hunter in the jungle dark
Or the chinese dentist or the british queen
They all fit together in the same machine
Nice, nice, very nice
Nice, nice, very nice
So many people in the same device
Oh a whirling dervish and a dancing bear
Or a ginger rogers and a fred astaire
Or a teenage rocker or the girls in france
Yes, we all are partners in this cosmic dance
Nice, nice, very nice
Nice, nice, very nice
So many people in the same device
I wanted all things to make sense
So wed be happy instead of tense
Oh a sleeping drunkard up in central park
Or the lion hunter in the jungle dark
Or the chinese dentist or the british queen
They all fit together in the same machine
Nice, nice, very nice
Nice, nice, very nice
So many people in the same device
So many people in the same device
I'll have some ambrosia salad with my tea. : )
"But then, a sign appeared before him. A sign from above. A star rose in the heavens, the wind howled from the West, the Red Sea parted, a pyramid fell, and a baby cried. And, another sign. Like thunder! A small foreign car exploded and... the traveler knew that he could no longer be driven out of the Promised Land."
Bless you for bringing back the Church of Confusion. :-D
no... it has everything to do with this post. Hypocrisy infused into religion.
"Some say confession is good for the soul. I went to church seeking a confession—the priest’s… not mine."
Someone recently said to me that I shouldn't worry, as in Heaven, Jesus will forgive me for my sins. I said that Jesus is the one who should worry, as when I get there, he'll have a lot of explaining to do.
RATED!
RATED
Just this morning I heard my cat signing:
"Alpo loves me
This I know
For the TV
Told me so"
That is what a true conversion sounds like.
That line alone should win this thing a Pulitzer.