Skip to main content

The End, Probably, is Upon Us

Carol Isaac's own photo, I think. 
I lost my checkbook, but Carol Isaac found Jesus on a potato chip.

"Oh, my god, Vern!" she said, "Look at this!"  Vern looked, and he said, "It looks like Jesus on the cross!"  Carol chipped in, again:  "I think so, too.  It seemed like a sign or something.  I got all fuzzy and warm."

Sure enough:  it was a sign or something.  Maybe a potato chip.

Carol decided not to eat Jesus on the cross.  She just took pictures of it, instead, and put Jesus on the chip into the china closet.  She didn't want to take a chance bringing it to church to show the minister because he has a history of breaking things, or something.

Richard Chin, who reported the story in the Pioneer Press, also reported that Jesus had been sighted recently in Bakersfield, CA, and in St. Petersburg, FL, and even in Shippensburg, PA.  And, he says, you can find Jesus on Cheetos on YouTube.  A spokesperson for the Potato Association of America says that Jesus has also been sighted on potatoes in Maine and Canada, but that what is a supernatural appearance to some looks like rot or disease to the Potato Association of America, but that the chips are safe to eat, even if you see Jesus there.

I am not taking sides on this issue.  It is too important to allow for snap judgment or uninformed opinion and--truth be told--that is all I have to offer.  I will say this:  I found my checkbook, and that gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling, but I am nearly certain my warm and fuzzy had more to do with being able to make a payment on my pickup than the kind of thing that Carol and Vern felt.

I don't want to seem mean-spirited about these appearances, but I am more grateful than I can say that Jesus has not made a certified appearance on Rick Santorum.  And I do not believe, for even a moment, that the small blemish on the small of Callista's back, so artfully covered at every public appearance, is another Jesus sighting.  I do not, in fact, believe there is any truth to those reports!  No, I believe the Almighty does not take sides in Republican Presidential Primaries!  Anyway, all Callista has to do is to produce a long-form birth certificate specifying that she is pure and unblemished, and maybe a delicately-worded doctor's report that she has no tattoos or potato chips.

(These are really interesting times, are they not?)



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back:  two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed!  Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore.  The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil.  We farmed, too, of course.  All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor.  Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them. ...

That's all we want: fairness! Not more guns and more war! Fairness!

The five police officers who were killed in Dallas are certainly not the officers who killed innocent citizens. There is more than enough tragedy to go around. "What is happening to our country?", Mari asked this morning. I had no answer.  We do have an answer.  We do not want to say it. There are lots of answers, all of them pertinent. We are a racist society, like most human societies. We are a society in the midst of enormous changes-- social, political, economic--and we do not know what to do about it. We are divided unsustainably into absurdly rich, and an enormous number of crumbling middle class families, and poor. We have guns everywhere; military guns, guns just for killing people, cheap guns, heroes carrying guns into churches and supermarkets, idiots who think guns ought to be allowed in bars and schools and ball games and beauty parlors and political rallies. Our political process is almost useless. There are good people in Congress, but there...