Engineers Tend to Think

It's always interesting when I party with a group of engineers, as I did recently. They see the world in their own complex way. That old 1950s stereotype of the "nerd" is out of date. The engineers I know are not in the least socially challenged and have long since discarded their thick black-framed glasses, pocket protectors, and plaid slacks. None of them has a calculator hanging from a belt. Instead, they talk of the Next Big Thing in the world of inventions. Iranian engineer Fares (pronounced Farris) is sure that there will soon be software called Intuitive-Buy (IB). This IB software is one step up from the One Click ordering that Amazon has for fast online purchases. It is already hard not to buy from Amazon with the one-click order system. "Hey! I didn't mean to buy that! I have epilepsy of the hand, and I had an index-finger spasm!"

But IB will make buying even faster and easier than that, which will be a great boon to companies in these economic times. When a consumer merely considers making a purchase, IB registers that and five minutes later the UPS truck is outside delivering it.

Fares is off the wall in other ways. In his young days, he shared a house with another new engineer, Chris, who was not at home much. Chris was a good guy but just could not get around to buying living room furniture because he was rarely there. So the living room remained an empty cavern. But Fares was there often, and he had a girlfriend. Finally Fares talked to Chris about this. "Chris," he entreated in his charming, deep-voiced accent. "I would very much like it if you would get some furniture. It is a little awkward when I bring my girlfriend over and all I can say to her is, 'You want to go to bed?'"

The World Famous Stethoscope Video

Judging by how many times I have received this, it has been memorable to many. It starts out funny, and then, wham! A friend of mine asked what our United Methodist churches could come up with to attract this kind of attention. If you're one of the few people who have not seen it yet, it's here.

Intervals

I was going to write something but instead I'll pause.

I will break the silence with a song about nothing, thus continuing the interval in a diffferent way. Here is a piece of doggerel learned many years ago.

Nothing nothing nothing nothing
I sing nothing all day long
I sing absolutely nothing
How d'ya like my nothing song?

After a hectic two days in Spanish City it's good to get home, ahead of a winter storm no less, and have some "nothing time" or downtime. For me, downtime is up time. It restores, renews, and refreshes. Sometimes we pay a lot of attention to what's in front of us and less to what is in between what's in front of us. We all need intervals to process, absorb, and think. After God created the world in six days, God rested on the seventh. That period of nothing is called Sabbath to us Jesus-loving folks. As the old saying goes, sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits. One company had a guy sitting and thinking and staring out the window. A recently hired efficiency expert saw this and insisted, "Get rid of him! He's doing nothing!" His companion answered, "The last time he did nothing, he figured out how to save our company a million dollars."

Great ideas, like plants, take time to germinate. Speech would be meaningless without taking a breath in between sentences. Those who fail to do so risk being diagnosed with verbal diarrhea. I have seen a few cases of that. Music needs its rests in between notes or it is just noise. Even my caterer friend tells me that the secret to great food is taking a few initial steps with it, such as spreading the first layer on a sandwich, then leaving it for a few hours before doing anything else.

I take a rest
A rest is blessed
And I suggest it's often best.
You may have guessed
What I've confessed
So put my statement to the test.

One wag even saw fit to commemorate such a downtime interval with a historical marker. "On January 27, 1869, right here, nothing happened."

I'll end here so you can go take a break.

How to Throw People Off

I've always been a fan of Groucho Marx. I never knew what he would say next. It might be a clever pun, or a remark that was not exactly risque but could be taken that way, or just something that was a total reversal of what was expected. He once told a date, "I've had a wonderful evening, but this wasn't it." He has had scores of imitators, including Jonas, my friend from HiTekk whom I've discussed before. I once went up to Jonas to greet him at work early one Monday morning. "Hi Jonas," I waved. "No, but I wish I was," he answered.

Pastors have their own version of causing people to do a double take. Tonight the Smalltown United Church Women met at Jonelle Hatfield's house. It's always a treat to meet there as Jonelle is an artist, interior designer, and flower arranger extraordinaire. It's better than a Home and Garden show. Not only that, but we all got to eat her spaghetti and meat sauce which made the whole evening, week, and year worthwhile. Now that I've had Jonelle's spaghetti, 2009 is just all right with me. Of course as it was a meeting of church ladies we all observed the highest rules of Emily Post etiquette while stuffing our faces to the max. After the mega-munching we planned the Smalltown United Church Women program and hostessing calendar for the year. Someone asked me if I would be able to be at the program next year on January 16, 2010. I thought about it for a minute and then shook my head.

"I can't. I have a funeral that day."

International Epiphany

I met a friend of a friend in Corpus yesterday. Her name is Vanessa, but she loves to dance and is so exuberant people call her Cha-Cha. Cha-Cha has long dark hair and big dark eyes and her eyeballs dance when she laughs. Last night she wore a Mexican embroidered dress and red sandals.

She is Puerto Rican and has traveled to Italy, Britain, South America, and elsewhere. She had plenty to say about how they do things in other countries. She says she has another nickname besides Cha-Cha and it is CPR. "No, I'm not a medic," she told me. "That stands for 'Crazy Puerto Rican'." Cha-Cha used to smoke and when she was in Italy she asked someone to light her cigarette. "I said it wrong though," she giggled. "It came out really bad in Italian; I ended up saying Light My Fire."

Cha-Cha just got back from Cuba. "They don't celebrate Christmas in Cuba. They celebrate Three Kings Day. On that day, children put a shoebox under the bed with grass in it for the kings' camels. When the kids wake up the next day, the box is gone and there are gifts under the bed in its place." The father of the household in which Cha-Cha was staying told his children that year, "Don't put grass in the box. The camels will be okay. But those three kings will be thirsty when they arrive. Leave the shoebox under the bed with three shots of rum."

Missionaries at the Door

When I was brand new at my first parish in Microtown, I was unpacking and loading dishes into the cabinets when I heard a knock on the door. I was delighted. I thought it was church members coming to meet me. Turned out it was two Jehovah Witnesses come to save my soul and pass on a copy of the Watchtower to make sure I got to heaven. Not long afterward, I learned a good way of coping with such events from my clergy friend Doug and his wife. Before entering ordained ministry Doug had been a corporate employee in Salt Lake City, one of the tiny minority of non-Mormons living there. He was on the regular circuit for Mormon missionaries to come visit. Two of them visited him at least once every other month.

One night he heard a rap on the door. He did not know it then, but what he was about to do would ensure that no Mormon missionaries, Jehovah Witnesses, or Fuller Brush salesmen ever showed up uninvited again.

At the time he was carving up a giant joint of meat for grilling. He was holding his red-streaked carving knife and had some blood on his apron. He opened the door to see two conservatively dark-suited young missionaries on his doorstep. He grinned at their look of surprise at his blood-stained garb and knife. "Hi, nice to see you," he greeted them. "Can you come back later? We're Druids. We're in the middle of a sacrifice."

Moos, Baas, Snorts, and Squeaks

All of the above are sounds from the Smalltown Regional Junior Livestock Show now on proud display at the local fairgrounds next to the carnival rides and bric-a-brac booths. I stopped by tonight to admire the clipped and coiffed animals and their proud owners in jeans, cowboy boots, button-down shirts and silver-studded leather belts. The Livestock Queen posed with all the winners with her dark hair, sparkling tiara, and Pepsodent dazzling smile. After the clean-scrubbed beauty of the queen and her court it was a contrast to go into the pig pens and see giant pink porkers rooting and snorting. It made me want to put up a hot dog stand right beside them that said Dine With Swine.

I watched the judging going on in the ring as the proud young 4H and FFA exhibitors marched their animals around for the audience in the stands on three sides to all get a good look. If I were judging, I'd make my decisions based on how much or how little the animals looked like puppies. The more puppylike the better. Those floppy-eared sheep and lop rabbits that looked huggable would all get ribbons from me. Of course that's not how it works really.

It was mighty hard for this citified gal to fully process how the judges made their decisions about the "muscular" "balanced" lambs chosen for the coveted fair ribbons and prize money for college funds. They all looked muscular enough to wrestle each other and win. In fact I saw a couple of lambs with heads intertwined testing each other's muscularity, if that's a word. They had more than enough muscles to butt each other's heads now and then and balk at their owners pulling them into the ring. Those were some of the most balanced lambs I've ever seen too, not that I've run into any unbalanced ones. "Help! I'm being chased by an unbalanced lamb!" All the lambs stood evenly on all four of their legs and not a one of them fell down.

Too Strange Not to Be True

My last post mentioned drug and alcohol addictions. This story relates to that theme. If I had stayed up all night I could never have invented this. I checked it on the "urban legends" sites for its veracity and as I did not find it there it seems to be true. Here goes.

A southern Florida resident named Nathan had his house burglarized recently. Thieves ignored his wide screen plasma TV, his VCR, and even left his Rolex watch. What they did take, however, was a generic white cardboard box filled with a grayish-white powder. (That's the way the police report described it.) A spokesman for the Fort Lauderdale police said that it looked similar to high grade cocaine and they probably thought they had hit the big time. Later, Nathan stood in front of numerous TV cameras and pleaded with the burglars: "Please return the cremated remains of my sister, Gertrude. She died three years ago."

The next morning, the bullet-riddled corpse of a local drug dealer known as Hoochie Pevens was found on Nathan's doorstep. The cardboard box was there too, with about half of Gertrude's ashes still remaining inside it. Scotch taped to the box was this note which said: "Hoochie sold us the bogus blow, so we wasted Hoochie. Sorry we snorted your sister. No hard feelings. Have a nice day."

Our Favorite Addictions

While we have serious addictions in Smalltown like everywhere else, drugs and alcohol being the top two, we also have relatively harmless ones. The hands-down winner for favorite fun addiction here is the Dallas Cowboys. During a Cowboys game the whole town shuts down. I have walked the Smalltown streets during these games and they are as quiet and empty as a church on Monday morning. Never mind that the Cowboys performance this year has been less than stellar.

Question: How do you keep Dallas Cowboys out of your yard?
Answer: Put up a goal post.
Question: What do Dallas Cowboys and possums have in common?
Answer: They both play dead at home and get killed on the road.

Question: What do the Dallas Cowboys and Billy Graham have in common?

Answer: They can both make 70,000 people stand up and yell "Jesus Christ."

In other states such as Minnesota ice hockey takes the place of football. If someone in Minnesota is watching an ice hockey match and the house catches fire, the guy is likely to say, "Hold on! I can't leave yet -- Larsen is about to score a goal! Besides (cough), the fire (cough) is still in the next room!"

So there are football addictions and ice hockey addictions. In my home state of Indiana they have basketball addiction. In addition to sports addictions, some people have food addictions. Sometimes those go together. There's nothing like a beer and snacks in front of a TV watching sports. A man in my sister-in-law's family said he was having a hard time with food addiction. To remedy that, he had followed the example of Alcoholics Anonymous and their Twelve Step program. He was enrolling in a Twelve Course program.

Talking to Myself, with Audience

The best sermons I preach are from my own experience. I preach the sermon I'd like to hear and let others overhear. Usually that works for someone else too. Today's sermon was how God at baptism declares, "I like you!" I told the folks that maybe there was someone present who needed to hear that. Possibly there was someone who had a family member who didn't seem to like them, or they were at odds with a friend, or had a coworker who specialized in undermining their self-esteem. As God has declared how much you're liked, I said, you don't have to believe their evaluations of you.

The sermon recalled my Aunt Thelma from long ago, may she rest in peace. Aunt Thelma used to come up with real zingers. Thelma had long blond hair, then long gray hair, then long blond hair again after she dyed it. Going to see her was a memorable experience undertaken in the name of duty because she was "lonesome." When she got ready to "tell you something for your own good" she would wag the index finger adorned with the giant amethyst Uncle Sidney got her in exchange for an easy divorce.

Her piercing green eyes behind cat's glasses would narrow to slits as she began, "I remember the time you were mean to your cousin ten years ago. I can tell you exactly what you said, word for word. It's a vivid memory. Good Golly, you've gained weight, haven't you? Aren't you dieting? By the way, I've decided it's a good thing you haven't reproduced."

Then she would wag her amethyst-ringed index finger and add, "You know, you should have more confidence in yourself."

Picturesque Speechless

Esther Essofigus sent me this ad. In days gone by, a customer got a free toaster from First National Bank when he or she opened an account there. Times have changed.

Cheyenne's Religious Search

I talked to my friend Cheyenne in Austin today. She calls herself a recovering religious person. I don't know what that means. I do know that once when I was surprised by something and blurted out, "Oh God!" she replied "You called?" Later I heard her say the same thing. "Oh God!" I also cleverly responded, "You called?" She responded, "No. Just talking to myself."

Cheyenne is in full revolt against the religion of her childhood. She claims to follow four religions specific to women: Panty-Ism, Bra-Manism, She-Donism, and Slotha Yoga. She says she still misses her days living in the hippie-heaven Haight-Ashbury area of San Francisco in the 1960s. She and her husband Joe as newlyweds had a tiny apartment there while he was attending college. He had a bad cold one day and trudged off to campus sniffling and sneezing. He stopped on Ashbury Street to swallow some Vitamin C. A long-haired hippie with frayed jeans and a tie-dyed T shirt with PEACE on the front noticed him popping pills and asked, "What ya got there, man?" Joe snapped, "That's ascorbic acid." The hippie's eyes opened wide. "WOW, MAN!" He was impressed. So Joe sold him some.

A Generation Vanishing from Church

For a thought-provoking read check out They Like Jesus But Not The Church by Dan Kimball. Even if you don't read the book, the title says it all. I don't agree with all of Kimball's theology, but his basic premises are sound. People under the age of 35 are usually not in church. Yet Jesus is everywhere in pop culture. Shopping malls sell bobblehead Jesus who nods his head up and down as his left hand is raised in blessing. One advertiser says this Jesus doll may inspire you to "exercise patience and forgiveness on the highway." These dolls are big sellers in gas stations. Actress Pamela Anderson has a T-Shirt saying, "Jesus Is My Homeboy." Mike Dirnt, member of the band Green Day, says, "I'm down with J.C. He's cool." But ask the young people what they think of the church, says Kimball, and they come up with different stuff. I cringed when I read this, but it's probably good to know what the perceptions are.

• The church is an organized religion with a political agenda
• The church is judgmental and negative
• The church is dominated by males and oppresses females
• The church is homophobic
• The church arrogantly claims all other religions are wrong
• The church is full of fundamentalists who take the whole Bible literally

My initial reaction was, "That's not fair!" and "We're not like that in my church!" Probably all true. But most of these people don't know any Christians or Christian pastors. Their parents may not have gone to church either. Their impression of Christianity comes from the media and their friends, and maybe a bad experience they had at church in the past.

Welcome to post-Christian North America where the fastest-growing religion is either Islam or Wicca, depending on who you read. (No, not Mormon nor Jehovah's Witnesses, who have almost as many people leave as come in.) The Barna Group, who have surveyed religion in this country for years, say that the proportion of North American Christians was 86% in 1990 and declined to 77% in 2001. It has probably gone down since then because, according to Barna, "There does not seem to be revival taking place in America. Whether that is measured by church attendance, born again status, or theological purity, the statistics simply do not reflect a surge of any noticeable proportions." Kimball says the antidote to this is twofold.

One, remember that this generation loves Jesus. They're very open to talking about Jesus if we cultivate caring relationships with them first. After developing connections, we can start to debunk some of the myths and invite them to check out the church. Question: How many Christians ever hang out with non-Christians? Kimball started frequenting Starbucks to meet non-Christian people. He found plenty of them. Like missionaries in foreign countries, we need to find out who and where the people are. We do not adopt their practices, but we seek to understand first and dialogue second.

Two, like good missionaries, we need to provide "both an apology and an apologetic for the church" (Kimball). An apology for ways the church may have hurt these people, and an apologetic (defense) for who we are and why we are that goes beyond simply quoting Bible verses. Some may need to learn how to do this. It means being able to answer difficult questions. Be of good cheer. Early Christians had to do plenty of this centuries ago, and Christianity seems to flourish best as a countercultural minority movement anyway.

Let the adventure begin!

Blogging about Writing about Writing

Someone once inquired of a famous writer, "Is it hard for you to write?" She thought for a minute and then answered, "Not really. All I do is sit down at the keyboard and open a vein."

Graphic but true. I wonder if other writers write for the same reasons I do. In one way it makes no sense. Writing, like all art, is not on the same level as working and eating. It is not essential for survival. But it is universal. I would love to hear from other writers about their reasons for writing. My own reasons go like this, depending on the day and the hour.

One, I write because I have to. Scribo ergo sum. Second, I think that after multiple drafts, rewrites, word order changes, grammatical checks, and sweat, I end up with something good. If something inside me did not tell me the work was good, I would stop forever. When God finished creation God declared, "It's very good!" I have the urge to participate in that creation celebration. Third, I serve the work. Every artist with integrity does. The work has a mind of its own and it can be contrary when I try to serve it. Often I sit down at the keyboard with an agenda, and something else shows up and says, "Write me." Call it God or The Muse or the Artistic Spirit, some entity keeps me company when I type, veering me off in sometimes odd directions.

Finally, I hope I not only serve the work, but serve the readers. If someone gets inspired, or gets angry, or cries, or laughs, or sees their own story in mine, or glimpses the universal story of what it means to be human, I have served God and the work well.

After that, it's Miller time.

Still Saying the Darndest Things

Art Linkletter made the famous observation that kids say the darndest things. They do. They may be naive, but they are not dumb. Spending time with brother Vince, we reminded each other of what we used to say years ago. When my grandmother was about to make a visit from Indiana to our home in Ohio, we always stocked up on Budweiser and peanut butter, which she enjoyed. My father bought extra as he always stored some of it in the basement. As he was carrying the extra sixpacks down the cellar stairs, my six-year-old brother piped up, "Beer, beer, beer everywhere. GRANDMOTHER'S COMING!"

Vince's remarks, off-the-wall though they were, could not compare to what my clergy friend Christine blurted in public at five years old. Christine was a PK (Preacher's Kid) and her father was pastor of the small Memorial United Methodist Church in Serene City. The church's tradition was to give the pastor and his family a Christmas gift in the church sanctuary during worship time on the Sunday before Christmas. This particular year, the chair of the board came up near the altar with a large box and beamed, "I hear that this is something you really need." Teresa whispered loudly, "What is it, Dad? New underwear?"

Kids haven't changed much. Lola Flushpoole's four-year-old granddaughter recently drew pictures on her bedroom wall with bright crayons. Her mother snapped furiously, "Colleen, don't you know how angry I get when you do that?" The girl nodded. "I know, Mom. I'm praying for you." This is the same kid who prayed about her sister by saying, "Lord, please don't let Sydney cry when I hit her."

Asian Aerobics

Asian cultures intrigue me. There are many of them, and one place to get a close gaze at things Asian is San Francisco. Strolling along Washington Square in that city, I encountered Chinese senior citizens doing morning aerobics of some kind. It was not Tai Chi, but an elaborate form of dance complete with chanting. Both the movements and the chants were highly complex. I transcribed what they were saying. Badly, of course, as I don't speak Chinese, but perhaps along with the picture you can get some sense of what was going on. It was quite lovely to watch.

Pah wah ching (make chopping motion with arm)
Mah sha chong (chop chop)
Chang nay hew (stretch high)
Tsao ting shung (clap)

I wondered how all those people managed to move together with perfect timing, and at the same time remember the chants and motions. It was way more complex than cheerleading or drill team, and these folks looked well past retirement age. I suspect that it takes a communally-oriented culture to master this kind of tight choreography. Heightened awareness of others and what they are doing seems key. Shades of the Beijing Olympics opening and closing ceremonies here. Do these folks learn to do this in nursery school where the teacher says, "Pay attention kids, you'll need this when you're seventy!"

Wisdom from Tony Tee

Tony Tee is an Asian friend of my brother Vince. He waxes eloquent on current events and foreign affairs. He is an engineer, not a diplomat or foreign service agent. Still, working in electrical engineering at Intel, he travels the world and observes what is going on globally. At the New Year's Eve party at Vince's house, he opined that the United States is on the fast track to becoming a third world country. We have vast income inequity between rich and poor. We lack a manufacturing base. All that needs to happen now is for China and India to develop large middle classes who will start buying their own goods. Once they do, these countries will not care whether or not they export anything to us. Given our present economic condition, it remains to be seen whether we will have the means to keep importing from these countries. If we do not, we may become like Nicaragua or El Salvador with their tiny aristocratic elites and vast masses of the poor. Already leading CIA experts say that North American influence in the world is on the wane and will be significantly reduced by 2025.

What will save us from becoming marginalized, Tony said, is innovation. If we become pioneers in biotechnology, nanotechnology (the control of matter on an atomic or molecular scale), robotics and such, we have a chance to remain a major player. Fortunately we have excellent universities all over the country that are working to make this happen. If I were in the Department of Education I would be pushing for major changes in math and science education to prepare future innovators.

This country has a long history of dealing with great challenges. If the USA can get out of its own way and encourage ethical invention and innovation, it can remain a key performer on the global stage for years to come. Many have said in the past that one major event or another would finish us. Nothing has done it yet. While I take seriously what Tony Tee says, I also concur with what a news pundit said years ago. "It is amazing how long this country has been going to hell without ever getting there."

Signs of Suds

Beer has its uses. Sign at Sea City flea market:

BEER. Helping Ugly People Have Sex Since 1862.

Airline Safety Announcements

The airline passenger safety announcements given just before takeoff have been endlessly mocked, but there is plenty in them to snicker about. However, I took that speech seriously this time. The plane I boarded to go to California experienced a cabin de-pressurization on the flight prior to mine. It came in to land and fire trucks whizzed after it with red lights flashing. The passengers actually had to use those oxygen masks that drop down on these occasions. As the people disembarked, they looked none the worse for the experience except for a few crying children.

We boarded and sat down. The plane was not flying yet but the rumors were. A lady behind me discussed the mechanical malfunction with a friend over her cell phone. "No, they didn't fix it. We're going to have to fly to Dallas really low so we aren't up where the air is thin...Yes...maybe ten thousand feet, maybe less...no, they aren't fixing it here....no, they've deferred it to Dallas." Wonderful, I thought. How reassuring to fly in an aircraft with a deferred mechanical problem. The plane is on fire, but we'll fix that later.

To keep my mind occupied I rewrote the airline safety talk. I hasten to add that the flight went just fine and we flew as high as anyone else would. Too bad. I was looking forward to that kiss-the-ground style of flying, buzzing the buildings below and watching people flee in terror. I love anything that causes trouble. My revised airline pre-flight announcement took into account not only the recent safety situation, but also having to pay fifteen dollars to get my bag checked.

"Welcome to Blue Sky Sunshine Airlines, ladies and gentlemen. Please fasten your seat belt. You only have one half of a seat belt. You can purchase the other half for five dollars. We hope you were comfortable in our departure lounge; at least you were if you paid the ten-dollar seating charge. Sitting on the floor is still free. Today's flight may or may not come with a snack. Should our flight crew choose to serve one, you will be given one peanut. In the event of a sudden cabin depressurization, oxygen masks will drop from the compartments above your seat. To start oxygen flowing, pay twenty dollars. Exact change is appreciated. If you don't have exact change you will still be able to breathe, but not as often as you used to.

"As a reminder, this is a No Smoking flight. During the flight, anyone interested in smoking or being part of our Gone With The Wind production is invited to step outside the cabin. I know I've been talking so much that the flight is now over. We hope you've enjoyed giving us the business as much as we've enjoyed taking you for a ride."

Seeing All Things New

I'm a joy freak. And it doesn't take much to get me there. Reading Facebook this evening I noticed several of my friends bemoaning going back to work after the holidays. It seems I'm not the only one who finds early January tough. Yesterday was Communion Sunday, so today I took communion bread and wine to our nursing home residents. We use special Methodist wine by Ernest and Julio Welch. I met a 95-year-old man named Lupe Sanchez for the first time. After I prayed for Lupe following communion he chimed in, giving thanks to God that I came and met him that day. He is in pain from a broken back and he lost his wife last year, so his statement of big gratitude for a small visit was special. I may have to work in early January in cold weather but my back does not hurt, I can see and hear and walk, and I get to do stuff like this and call it work. Life is not so bad.

I concluded yesterday's sermon with a visual aid showing that sometimes we have to rearrange the categories in our minds to allow for finding Jesus in unexpected places. That's what the Wise Guys, I mean Wise Men did when they were directed to Bethlehem. Nobody would have expected Jesus to be born in that village full of country bumpkins, but hey, there He was. It was astounding that the Wise Men didn't say, "It can't be Bethlehem. It has to be Jerusalem. Jerusalem is the happenin' place where the action's at, and Bethlehem? Let's just say we ain't going there. If we hunt around Jerusalem long enough we know we'll find Him here." But they adjusted their perceptions to fit the new reality instead of trying to fit the new reality into their perceptions. That is not easy to do. To show how we all, including me, have to contend with preconceptions all the time, I offered the following quiz to the congregation on poster board. I told them, "If you get this right you're doing better than I did!" As far as I know, nobody figured it out until I told them.

Which number below does not fit in with the rest?

1. One
2. Thirteen
3. Thirty-one

And the answer is: The number two, because all the other numbers contain the numbers one or three. If you're like me, you automatically excluded the digital numbers 1, 2, and 3 and limited the possibilities to the three numbers written in longhand. So I then asked the congregation this. When we search for Jesus, what do we include and exclude? Who do we include and exclude?

That is a very interesting question.

Australian Comedy

I continue to keep the post-Christmas letdown at bay by recalling great memories of my recent California trip. Staying in my brother's home, we watched the bawdy old Ms. Australian Comedian (Ms. AC). Saying Australian comedians are bawdy is like saying three-day-old fish stinks. Shows an impeccable grasp of the obvious. At any rate, in California I transitioned from irreverence to utter decadence in the form of Australian comedy and too much chocolate.

Ms. AC was a master of the double entendre. That is, nothing she said was the least bit dirty unless you took it that way. Read the following examples from her Christmas talk show special while imagining a high-pitched Australian accent.

"See these hand-knitted socks? They were done by my husband Stanley in the nursing home during physical therapy after his stroke. He doesn't have the use of his hands yet, so he knit these completely with his mouth. Stanley is really into oral socks."

One of her guests mentioned that her husband was a gynecologist. Ms. AC inquired, "Does he ever bring work home?"

She also interviewed one of Britain's most handsome movie stars. Although he was about 60 years old at the time of the interview, he was still drop-dead gorgeous. He was England's answer to Paul Newman. Ms. AC asked him if he did anything special for Christmas. He told her he liked to cook and made a turkey stuffing from his own recipe. He described what was in it and it did sound good. Ms. AC advised, "You ought to market that, darling. I mean, Paul Newman markets his salad dressings and donates the proceeds to charity. Those salad dressings are very popular. Women love salad dressings by Paul Newman, and I know they'd love stuffing by you."

Blog Dialog

One of the advantages of a blog over a book is its interactivity, giving others the chance to comment. One of my readers noted my wanting to ask God about the weight of a lifetime of belly button lint. (Note to self: Watch out for those 3 AM blog posts. After midnight, surrealism sets in.) He said that when I arrive in glorious Heaven, belly button lint may no longer be a pressing issue. He's probably right, but who knows. When I get to heaven, God may shake the Divine head, shrug the Divine shoulders, and say, "You bother me by asking about belly button lint? How rude. I like that in a person. Come in and have a beer with me. By the way, six pounds two ounces!"

And if not, maybe God in Infinite love and mercy will forgive me anyway and overlook my off-key, off-base, off-road, off-off-Broadway take on things. It comes with being left-handed and right-minded. People who think weird like I do tend to be left-handed. The right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, so despite evidence to the contrary I am in my right mind. When I lived in Central City I was more in the middle of the state, which didn't make me middle of the road, middle management, or fair to middlin'. It did make me a left-handed, right-minded, centrally-located wiseass.

In My Ideal World

In My Ideal World (IMIW) is a business term used at the company I used to work for, HiTekk, to describe a hypothetical optimal circumstance. At HiTekk, one works downward from the ideal world picture to get a realistic scenario. We all seem to have IMIW pictures in us. Some of them look like the one above. The new year of 2009 pulled me away from the dreamy nostalgic Christmas card scenes IMIW, and back to reality. Early January has always been a little bit blah for me and maybe that is why. There is the post-Christmas house cleaning to perform, the realization that as always I spent too much money, and the arrival of income tax forms. No wonder it takes a few days to get reoriented. But I still keep thinking about what things would be like IMIW. In random order, this is how matters stand IMIW.

IMIW every dog that has ever lived will live again, and none of them will be vicious because there will be nothing to be vicious about. Same with people.

IMIW people get excited about mingling with people from other races and nations and say, "Great! I can learn something new from them!"

IMIW we all have built-in GPS systems and nobody gets lost.

IMIW we are all so darned healthy nobody ever dies.

IMIW the landscape is gorgeous and the climate so favorable that people sit on their front porches and socialize with friendly neighbors while they snap their green beans for dinner that come from their own gardens.

IMIW Girl Scout Cookie Thin Mints are available year round and at all times. Treats such as this do not make you fat. Salads make you fat.

IMIW I send everyone an autographed glossy 11 x 14 signed portrait of myself for Christmas and people beg for more. I get requests for the portrait from all over the world.

IMIW there is no drug problem except there is one excellent drug to get people high now and then. It is legal, there are no side effects, it works great every time, and people only take it when they feel like going to war with somebody.

And IMIW every day is the first day of spring.

Our Bodies, Other Bodies, Every Body

I am a follower of Jesus, which means I believe that Jesus was God in a human body. An embodiment of what is divine and spiritual and ethereal. Jesus was the ultimate bridge person, being both human and divine. He made the secular sacred. That means that there is no division between the secular and the sacred. The sacred permeates everything. That also means that even if we get messages from family and culture that our bodies don't matter, they do. What we do with our bodies matters. How we take care of our bodies matters. All matter matters.

I am glad because even after almost fifty years, I stay curious about bodies and what they do and don't do. I find it regrettable that human beings don't fly. I have had wonderful dreams where I soared over oceans and mountains like an eagle, and I wake up outraged that I don't get to fly to work. I know that some of the fishes of the sea have beautiful and bizarre bodies, but they live in the farthest depths of the ocean where nobody but other fish can see them. So who are they beautiful or bizarre for?

While doing laundry or the income tax, I wonder: If I could gather up all the belly button lint I have produced in a lifetime, how much would it weigh? And when I get to Heaven I wonder if I'll get answers from God about stuff like this.

Monster Motorbikes and Jacked Up Trucks

During a two-day visit to San Francisco last week my brother Vince, sister-in-law Leenie, and I trekked up to North Beach for some fantabulous Italian food. As we walked back to our lodgings, a gleaming black motorcycle roared by. It was adorned with fire, lightning, a shark's face and other fierce images that blurred past me in the rush and noise.

Left in the wake of Harley-Davidson motor and exhaust, Leenie nodded knowingly. "Small penis."

Given the number of spam emails I have received on this topic, I realize it must be an issue for some. In saying so, I am embarking on foreign territory and a world I cannot possibly understand. No pun intended when I say that penis size does not loom large in my life. For grins, I have contemplated answering one of those emails with "What can you do for me?" To be sure, in adolescence there was talk about breast size and how some girls got all the boyfriends because they were "stacked", but I don't recall obsessing about this beyond the usual teenage angst.

People make fun of what provokes their anxiety. We make hilarous films about the army and the police because soldiers and cops have messed with our lives for a long time. We tell wonderful jokes about the afterlife because death is the ultimate freak-out. We have countless sex jokes because coitus and its consequences generate all kinds of concern.

And a cardinal rule of nightclub comedy is, "Always go for the joke about the schwanz."

Not All Christmas Nuts Are Chestnuts

Before I surge ahead into 2009, I pause to invoke some nostalgic Christmas images to keep me going through the back-to-reality that is January. So here's a wave and a last shout-out to chestnuts roasting on an open fire, a one-horse open sleigh, silver bells, Christmas lights twinkling, Jack Frost nipping, carols in the air, and a partridge in a pear tree. Do you feel warm and fuzzy yet?

It was good to get away to California for a week to see my brother and sister-in-law and mother and others. Some may look forward to holiday chestnuts and peanuts, but my brother Vince and his wife Leenie are my favorite Christmas nuts. They are nuts about each other and the world thinks they're nuts too. Vince is about forty and a senior engineer at Intel. He wears glasses, sports a mustache and goatee, and has brown hair sprinkled with gray and a hairline that is starting to recede. Leenie is a petite strawberry-blond Irish Catholic gal who laughs at least ten times a day and generates fun wherever she goes. She is the champion caterer and foodie of all time. (Speaking of nuts, her seasoned Christmas cashews are to die for.) She once catered a bash at the Skywalker Ranch for George Lucas.

Yet she's down to earth about her eats too. Recently when she got hungry she went with Vince through a McDonald's drive thru and got a basic cheeseburger. It was her first food of the day even though it was almost lunchtime. As the sandwich was handed to her through the window, she took a bite and assumed a facial expression of total bliss. "Joy on a bun," she sighed rapturously. Vince's green eyes twinkled behind his glasses, and he grinned and put his arm around her. "You, Leenie, are joy on two buns."