Give Me That Old Time Religion

You know how kids like to holler, “They get all the good stuff!” I think I’m starting to feel like a kid again, because when it comes to religion in this country, they, the people who lived long ago, most definitely got all the good stuff.

What am I talking about you wonder? I’ll tell you what I’m talking about. Two thousand years ago, twelve, or I guess it was eleven after the one guy killed himself; anyway eleven dudes got to watch Jesus fly off up into outer space. I would love to have seen that. What do we get? 200 middle aged Catholic codgers learning how not to play with little Johnny’s pee-pee.

Now I know there’s a lot of things in this ole world that you just can’t control; like when you were born, or where you were born, or who else is alive when you are. And as tickled as I am to have enjoyed contemporary things like Willie Nelson, man landing on the moon, and Alabama winning back to back national titles, when it comes to the religion sector around here, these modern times are definitely the pits.

It just seems like we can’t get a good old juicy miracle like they used to. No, we get stuck with trying to find something special in those nice but not too fanciful pretty sunsets, or a tumor that disappears for no medical reason, or, and I always like this one, when our favorite ball-team takes the title. Can you say Diamondbacks?

I mean wouldn’t you just once like to see a woman turn into a pillar of salt? I’ve got an ex-wife I would pay to see that done to, a couple of times if you could. Maybe Mortons can recommend somebody. I have seen it hot enough when I was in Tucson, Arizona to cook eggs on a sidewalk, but I’ll bet that drew nowhere near the crowd that that bush did catching on fire that time all by itself in the Old Testament. And I’m a handy one around the kitchen; why I even make my own beer, so I could have probably picked up a tip or two if I had just had the chance to see all that water turn into wine. Of course, you don’t want to do that too fast. If your specific gravity hasn’t settled out, you can blow the tops off your bottles; but I’m sure the Big Man had that part completely under control.

You know to think of it; maybe I have been privy to more miracles than I first thought. I know you won’t believe this one, but, when I was about seven, I had a wart on my hand. I tried everything under the sun to get that off. I dug it, rubbed it, picked it, poked it, put Compound W on it; but nothing ever seemed to work. My mom’s mom was visiting us. She was in her sixties at the time. Anyway, she told me to get a piece of string, so I cut some newspaper cord about six inches long. She took that string, tied it in a knot over my wart and told me to go bury it in the yard. I did what she said down to the t, and sure enough, sometime over the next few days that wart went away, and I’ve had the prettiest hands ever since. My girl friend thinks I have Richard Gere hands. I guess that’s a good thing, but that sure was a surprise.

I don’t know if it came out of the Bible, but my other grandmother would always do things on the family farm according to the signs, signs of the moon I think she meant. We couldn’t doctor cows, or plant gardens, or mow hay unless the signs were right. I’m not sure what her final batting average was but things usually worked out to plan.

Would these count or be considered in the same level as Biblical miracles? I don’t believe I’ve got enough to start my own religion or anything like that; I just wonder.

The Catholics are about the only faith I know of that seem to have had any miracles lately. I recently passed through a little community down in South Louisiana Cajun territory. The sign at the city limits said that there had been a miracle in that very spot only 150 years ago. Dang; missed that one too.

I don’t know, seems like the people back then were a whole lot more colorful, larger than life in every way. I would love to been in the locker room in 1099 when Pope Urban gave the dramatic and all inspiring speech that sent hundreds of thousands of Christian soldiers storming out across Europe to take back what was rightfully theirs from those stinking Muslims. He must have been a real man’s man to have pulled that off; a big stout son-of-a-gun I’m guessing. Today’s pope? An octogenarian with a spit cup grabbing on with dear life to a golf cart as he tools around the Vatican. Sometimes life really isn’t fair.

There have been several big trials in religious history. Of course, first there was Jesus, and then Stephen, and later Paul. Jim Bakker had to go to trial. I remember he cried like a baby when they threw him in the patrol car. Like the evil guy in Austin Powers says, “Throw me a bone here”. A few more modern day miracles would go a long way towards changing us skeptics in the world.

It just seems like you have go back, way back in time to see any sort of miraculous occurrence. But I ‘m not so sure you can believe what you read anyway. Nope, they weren’t covered live in the news, no eye-witness accounts. Heaven forbid somebody standing there grab a pencil and come up with a few measly one liners on what just took place. It seems, as the story would go, these miracles were only written about later, much, much later. Of course everybody talked about them. They talked about them for years, hundreds of years in some cases, put their spin on it of course, and then passed them on down the line. Eventually years, decades later, some guy then got the clever idea to put it into print. I say a day late and a dollar short. Though I’ll tell you, if I ever see anything that comes close to knocking a wall over with a bugle, or however that one went, I’m writing it down. Why I’ll even take a picture.