Archive for December, 2014

Even with the Funny Hat

Thursday, December 18th, 2014

Like a lot of ex-Catholics I’ve been watching the things that Pope Francis has been saying with something like awe. Not “awe” like the Church expects us to give to God, but “awe” as in I can’t believe the head of the Catholic Church is actually sane, compassionate, and intelligent. The latter of those is the only one I’m sure applied to the previous Pope.

I could cite some of the things that Francis has said, but there’s too many to put in a single post and I’d hate to try and cherry-pick.

God, too, is impressed. He’s admitted before to giving a little help to the Cardinals in making the right choice, but because of the free will that he’s given to us humans, even he couldn’t be sure how things would turn out. After all, politics has changed more than one soul once they’ve made it into office.

And the Rain, Rain, Rain, Came Down, Down, Down

Friday, December 12th, 2014

There’s been a lot of talk this week about Noah’s ark, with the worst storm in a decade bearing down on the west coast. According to The Bible, God gave us the rainbow as his promise that he would never flood the whole world again, but I’ve noticed that most of the time, when it rains, we don’t get a rainbow. So I asked God what that means for his promise.

He said that he gets moody sometimes.

I was about to start on some follow-up questions when lightning struck a nearby tree and a large branch cracked free. I decided some questions are best not pursued.

Eggnog Latte or Bust

Friday, December 5th, 2014

Ginger snaps are available all the year long. So is ginger ale, and ginger beer, and candied ginger. Yet somehow gingerbread is reserved mostly for the Christmas season. And then there’s eggnog. Eggs are available all the year round. So are vanilla and sugar and nutmeg. So why is it that eggnog, as a product, is only available in the run-up to the end of the year?

We’ve made great strides, albeit at a notable cost to the environment, at bringing in fruits and vegetables from around the world so they can be in stores for much of the year, seasons be damned, but there’s still these things that we reserve for no apparent reason to “the season.”

I’ve asked God to do something about it, but I think that may have backfired on me. It seems that every year the eggnog season gets shorter. This year Starbucks tried to eliminate it completely, or at least their version of it, but it seems that I’m not the only one that complains at its lack.

If we could just harness our culture’s addiction to flavored coffee toward solving the lack of world peace and other cultural problems I think we could even do without God altogether.