Blue Moon

Blue Moon

smiling at me

“I believe most people have heard of the colloquial expression, “once in a blue moon.” I assumed it adopted the moniker because it was a rare occurrence. Most expressions that gain traction in a culture are those that relate to something people don’t understand; a blue moon being one of them. Blue skies smiling at me and the delta blues, being other examples of what has happened over the centuries to anything touched by the light of a blue moon. Superstitious? Some people were, while others continued to believe the blue color was the result of a magnesium mist that had coated the moon after it had been slated for exorcism by the Dali Lama. Despite the fact it was a civil matter which caused no end of consternation, and being that there were those that wanted the Constitution changed to allow for the unspoken alliance between churches and the State, to become the reason for ridding the Constitution of any decree of God and the laws of man, from contradicting one another.”

“Now wait just a cotton pickin minute,” Doddle O'Donnell piped up from one of the few seats occupied in the senate chamber. “If we allow God into our Constitution what’s to keep Him out of our pool halls, taverns, and an assortment of adult related establishments, where I’m sure if you thought about it with your brain and not just your imagination, you would see the potential for long lasting harm growing out of each conflict within one of the establishments. You know how it is at a Friday night football game when your team is behind by 60 points, and the game has yet to be called even though none of your players are able to stand, and yet at half time, the team despite their afflictions crawl for the comfort of the goal post to where they know God is waiting.

Boys need a place to vent, cuss, holler, scream, hopefully not because they are in pain, and use the lords name even though they know they’ll regret it later. Now, what if the Lord Himself was there? What are these Boys supposed to do then, wait for Him to start given the halftime pep talk? We got to be real here when it comes to inviting controversy, under these circumstances, into the flock. Only God knows how that would end up. There is nothing more debilitating than having your but handed to you on a platter and then being asked if you’d mind doing the carving.

And what about them ladies who work day and night to provide for their dead-beat husbands? You really think those women are going to do what they know how to do best, with someone looking over their shoulder and giving advice on not only the practicality but the necessity of choosing a wife’s abilities over a strangers. Some of the ladies got more miles on them than some peoples odometer can handle, and you think they is going to take advice from a 33-year-old virgin who ain’t even rich? You are looking at a bloodletting of the churches role. You want to close the only loop hole those poor souls got left?

I’m here to tell you, death bed conversions is the reason only half of God’s creation isn’t going to hell. Now we didn’t make the rules, but being representatives of the people, and I should add, which consists of about half women, I think we ought to consider what a half empty church on Sunday is going to mean to the collection plates around the country. You do know that churches are for the most part “too big to fail.” You wanting us to go before the people and tell them we need more money to bail out the churches, after we’ve invited God into our bedrooms? We’d look like hypocrites, and not just any hypocrite, but a hypocrite who disparages mother’s, sisters, wives, and first cousins. It isn’t going to look very conservative when half the people will be in the streets protesting for equal rights, when they supposedly already have them.

No, this ain’t one of those once in a blue moon kind of moments. We make a mistake by asking just anyone to come to our aid, and I’m here to tell you, you are going to get some of those creatures from California coming in here and telling us how to live; God wouldn’t like that one bit. Now, as I was saying…”

“Hang on there a minute. You Texas folks think God spreads his good graces only on you. That’s why you are always highest and lowest in all the surveys I’ve been looking at.Highest in incarceration, near the top of the heap when it comes to private prisons, most kids to drop out of school in a single year, and lots more we haven’t got time for. And then on the lower end of the spectrum we have you being the lowest in math skills, reading, and a dozen more things, but I don’t want to bore the good people of this chamber with your failings, so I won’t.

I’m from Massachusetts by way of Vermont and Connecticut. The way you were carrying on about God being on your side made me think of something somebody told me once, “God don’t pick sides, cause usually both sides isn’t what He had in mind when creating something in His image.” I took that to mean that we are all subject to scrutiny from time to time.

Now this business of combining church and state seems a might on the ambitious side when you got Televangelists on every corner wanting to see justice for Jesus. Now you can’t have justice when you are favoring one side over another and expecting the unfavored to be happy about it. We got women too you know. Some of them are even in Congress, and I can tell you from experience that without God’s help they wouldn’t be sitting there trying to get us out of the mess you and your people put us in. Don’t even get me started on the President, who as far as I can tell isn’t representing the country, both sides of it anyway, but he is representing only the interests that suits him and you. If you are going to represent all the people you can’t be going around slamming doors in people’s faces, when all they want is for you to listen.

I’d bet, if I was a betting man that everyone in here is in favor of, as Jesus so aptly put it, giving to Ceaser what is Ceaser’s and Gods what is Gods, which says to me, even Heaven believes in keeping the two apart. You know being Christian doesn’t give you the right to exclude all the other religions. One or two have I believe a larger following than Christianity. You go trying to keep them from worshiping the God of their choice and you are looking at starting WWIII, where no matter how separated you are, you are still going to be dead or lit up like Christmas at the mall. War does not segregate, separate, or pick sides. In war there are no winners, only losers. One more thing I’d…”

“Are you seriously trying to tell me that after we just passed the largest funding bill for the military in the history of our country, and I do believe we will be adding to it next year, being that the world is in such terrible shape that it’s beginning to act like two cabinet members fighting over one syringe. I’d like to know before you fall off your high horse, if you voted for or against what we are calling the “Pummel Bill.” And there ain’t no Mr. Pummel if you were going in that direction. It refers to pummeling or punching, hitting, and basically anything you can think of to use against an opponent so that you win.

Just because the last couple of undeclared wars were considered wars but weren’t, and we lost all three to be exact, doesn’t mean we didn’t do our share of pummeling. People these days just don’t have the stomach for a war that lasts much longer than a couple of weeks, and you know how wars go, you can’t know going in how long it’s going to take to lose. As far as I see it, we are poised to do away with war entirely. If we keep shrinking the time necessary to lose, we might just lose right off and be done with it. I was…”

“Well, that’s just wonderful, but then what are we going to do with all the money we allocated for wars if there aren’t any? We can’t hardly give it back, or the tax payers are going to be asking why we took it from them in the first place. If we were just going to give it back, and with no interest, why take it and be pretending it’s for something else. You can’t keep selling bridges you don’t have and expect people not to complain.”

“I see your point but people being what they are, people, they need to be against something, even if they don’t know what it is. I’m for letting them decide whether God should be part of the team that makes these decisions. When people are part of something they are less likely to complain about things not being right. I’d be expecting Jesus having been a man for a few years out of eternity, would be of the same mind. Going along to get along is what we call it in Texas, when no one is listening. Remember the Alamo? It’s the kind of phrase we use when putting an exclamation point on something. Damn hard to forget when half the buildings In the state are named after it, but then people can’t remember who to vote for unless someone is telling them who?

So, you see where I’m going with this. If Jesus sees we are trying just as hard as those black people in the south are trying to be able to vote without having their lives being threatened, we should be able to take some of the military funds and put them into something that’s not blowing up stuff but building things up. I figure we can keep spending on the military until there’s no money left and then start a recruiting campaign to get everyone that likes to eat regularly, to sign up until everyone is in the military; then they can’t complain because they’d be complaining about themselves, and humans don’t like complaining about themselves to themselves, that’s what spouses are for.”

“I can agree with you on that, but suppose we gave all the money to the churches if they stipulated, in writing, that they wouldn’t ask for anything further, ever again.?”

“You’d believe what they had to say?”

“Can’t see why not. They wouldn’t be blowing things up, and creating chaos around the world, they’d be saving souls and hopefully regenerate some of that spirit we had around here in the halls when I first come up some 40 years ago?”

“Don’t you know most of the problems we are having around the world have to do with religion. Religious wars are the oldest form of death by association. It started way back before their were Christians, nothing but just Jewish and Arabic peoples, well I guess they were more like Egyptians before they converted, but then It don’t matter none, most of them is dead now anyway.

I think the churches would rather stay separated from government but would take that money and then some. Add to it the millions if not billions they have already and buy an army with it, like in the old days, all that roundtable stuff. Couldn’t be positive though that they’d have the old King Arthur kind of spirit, where they just went after the bad guys.”

“Don’t you believe in God and all the wonderful things he’s done for us? And all we have to do is follow what he preached and everything will be right with the world.”

“You aren’t seeing that that is the problem. No one follows what they preach. I’m still not convinced the bible, take your pick, wasn’t written after a fraternity party in Jerusalem. Some kind of prank on the up-and-coming Christians of the time.But, even if people just followed the made-up stuff, I’d be more likely to believe what they say and not pay as much attention to what they do.”

“So, what you are telling me is you don’t believe in heaven, hell, or Jesus either?”

“I believe in the Constitution, Congress, and a few on the judicial bench, but I can’t believe in a president who believes Howdy Doody was a cow boy, and the Easter Bunny lays colored eggs. Sorry, but I’ve got to draw the line someplace.”

“Well brother, I’m sorry to tell you but the arc is leaving for the coast, and if you ain’t on it, you’d better have a cabin on top a mountain and like the view of water as far as you can see, because that’s all there is going to be. Amen.”

“All I can say is, it’s too bad we have to wait until we are dead to get on that metaphorical arc, if there really was an arc. Could have been just another one of those parables to get us ready for the ice caps melting and making the land of ten thousand lakes look like one big lake, with Huck and Jim hauling the last load of garbage out to sea; and an amen to you to!”

“How long we got to sit here anyway?”

“It’s a filibuster.”

“How much we got left then?”

“It’s only been 45 minutes.”

“Christ.”

“I thought we agreed to keep the church and god separate?”

“You agreed, I didn’t”