Your Ears Have to be Exactly the Right Shape

Church was exceptionally good today. I can’t tell you all the reasons, but it went very well, from the time I left home until I left the building after the service.

My sister and I went up to talk to the pastor after the sermon. I wanted to let him know how my work on his book was going, and I guess she just wanted to say hi. I told him I only had 3,000 words transcribed, but he seemed very happy with my progress. I asked him to let me know if I could do anything else for him, and he said, “Cornbread!”

I gave him the URL of my blog last week, and evidently, he has read the blog and also watched my Youtube videos, and one of them is about cornbread. He has ruined my plan, which was to concoct a totally phony personality and convince him I was not only normal, but extraordinarily holy. Now I guess the truth is out, so I may as well relax and be the slouch that I am, in church as well as around the house.

The other obvious problem is that he and his wife may ask me to cook stuff for them, which means they’ll be lucky to last a year without buying motorized fat carts and having multiple bypasses. It has been 20 years since I’ve had a regular pastor. I don’t want to kill this one before I can learn anything from him. He says he has diabetes, so I guess I’m the last person on earth he needed to meet.

I took a bunch of brownies to the church on July 4, for some kind of outdoor thing they were doing, but I didn’t hear back about them. I assume they were spirited away by the first five or six people who got into them, so in all likelihood, no one else at the church realizes they existed. Maybe that’s for the best. At 540 calories each, they represent the worst kind of temptation.

The sermon was almost spooky; it was as if it had been written with my family in mind. A cynic would say that was because I met with the pastor last week, so he knew what to say. But some of the parts of the sermon that seemed most apt had nothing to do with anything we discussed. The basic theme was that you need to get the little private sins out of your life before they become public problems. When you try to lead a Christian life in spite of things you haven’t fixed, it’s like letting a scab grow over an infected sore. Sooner or later, it’s going to open up, and all that filth will spill out onto the surface.

I think when Jesus talked about binding the strong man and spoiling his house, he meant that you have to fast and pray and get the spiritual bad influences out of your life, and then the Holy Spirit will grow in their place. So that fits in with the sermon. You can put on a smiley face and pretend your days as a sinner are behind you, but I think some bad habits come from the urgings of malicious spirits, and you have to do something to render them harmless. Otherwise, you’re using human tools to fight powerful spirit-generated urges, and the urges will eventually win. This is probably why we occasionally see famous preachers on the covers of the tabloids, over the word “SCANDAL.”

Sometimes the pastor mentions things God has let him know. I have to wonder what that’s like. I get all sorts of urges which, in my opinion, come from God. I get insights, and sometimes I suddenly realize I’m doing something wrong. But I can’t say for sure that God tells me anything factual, the way some people say he tells them things. Many Christians cite examples of this phenomenon. I’ve seen plenty of weird things that I know were supernatural, but God never says a word to me. Not that I can hear, anyway.

He hasn’t mentioned the Forty Days of Teshuvah, but he talked about Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur today, in a way that expressed the same ideas. This is the time of year when you reflect, repent, and pray. You try to figure out how you’re screwing up, and you try to fix it. I didn’t feel too concerned about myself during the sermon, probably because I was already caught up in changing myself. I’m always leery of concluding a message isn’t aimed at me, but I think sometimes it’s okay. You can’t be wrong about everything all the time.

He asked us to raise our hands if we had ever committed sins after justifying them by saying we were only hurting ourselves. I didn’t raise my hand. It wasn’t because I was stronger than those people. It was because I generally haven’t bothered to worry about whether I was hurting anyone else. Maybe the people who raised their hands are better off than I am.

After fasting last week, I seemed to have more self-control in my life, and it appears to be a lasting thing. I’m still tempted, but now the self-control is just a little stronger than the desire to give in. That little edge makes all the difference. You don’t have to be nearly perfect to behave. After all, Obama won by only 7 percentage points, and that, unfortunately, was enough to make him the President. This is why we call him “The Iwon.”

For the last few weeks, I’ve had a persistent feeling–I would call it a conviction–that God was about to do something wonderful in my life. I keep wondering what it is. Is it the increase in self-control? That would be plenty, all by itself. Is it the new relationship with my church, which will let me do worthwhile things with my time? Does it have anything to do with helping my pastor write a book? I’ve started hearing really promising new songs in my head. I want to write those down this week. Could they be part of it? I’ve always had a problem with music running around in my head, yet I had a hard time composing original songs. Writing is extremely easy for me, but lyrics were even harder than tunes. Now that seems to be changing.

I have not made cornbread for the pastor, but I’ll be making it for my sister today. She decided she wanted soup beans and cornbread, so the soup beans are simmering, and if she ever gets over here, I’ll get out the skillet and make the cornbread. I don’t want any. She needs fattening food because of the cancer. I used some of my SHTF dried beans. You have to rotate them, because beans only keep for a year, and this seemed like a good opportunity. The beans and cornbread are going to be amazing, but I just don’t have the urge to stuff myself, so I plan to send the whole mess home with her.

I made an offer on a white Ford F150. I’m not doing any business today, so even though I know the dealer replied to my email, I’m not checking it until tomorrow. I hope he’s willing to be reasonable. The recession isn’t going away, and this is a year-old truck. I don’t mind giving him a fair price, but in this atmosphere, covering his cost plus five hundred bucks is very generous. That’s what I plan to give him. I am a sucker for giving that much.

It’s nice being old and patient. If I were in my twenties, I’d be tormented by the urge to make the deal and get it over with. As it is, I don’t care if it takes six months. Judging by the new unemployment figures, it’s completely possible that this truck will still be unsold at that time.

Christianity actually works, if you do it right. Your life won’t necessarily be perfect, but it will be right. If you’re thinking about giving it a shot, I highly recommend it.