Good morning, y’all. We caught some thunderstorms that kind of snuck up on us today. Pretty loud, lots of wind and buckets of rain, for about half and hour. Kind of like how I remember Summer back in my youth. Quick rain storms and then the steam rising off of the streets for an hour or so. In an acknowledgement to the heat and humidity, we turned on the air conditioner for the first time this year. The only question is whether it will now run continuously through October, or if we’ll still get some cooler days. I’m betting on the A.C.
More difficult than the decision to bow down to the cooling Gods, was the decision as to which church to attend this Sunday. I decided to vote my pocketbook, as I always do. I felt like I needed to support the Right Reverend Dale E. Bread and to attend the service at the “Little Church In The Valley”. I didn’t doubt Bubba Hoakum’s account of the details from last Sunday’s service, in fact Mulva and her sources had rounded out the details even further. At issue was whether the Right Reverend would be able to continue his rehabilitation and continue on as the pastor of the smaller congregation.
The Elders had their hands full keeping up with the mushrooming growth of the Reverend Helen Handbasket’s congregation. To begin a new pastor search now for the faithful who had chosen the original church over the Crystal Palace would divert resources away from the juggernaut being built in Blairsville. If the Right Reverend Dale E. Bread could be persuaded to “keep his hands in his pockets”, then the “traditionalists” could continue their worship in the little church that Bubba Hoakum’s great granddaddy founded so long ago. Otherwise, the Elders might decide to just to close the little church, forcing the “traditionalists” to come to town. The other option available to the congregation was a “Foot Washing” Baptist church a mile or so away, but, it’s just not the same. Once you’ve seen someone “tap dance for Jesus”, while holding a six foot timber rattler above his head, conventional services just aren’t the same.
Well, I set the Big Green Egg up to slow cook two pork shoulders and my DVR to record the services from Blairsville on Channel 99. I figured the pork shoulders would be falling off of the bone by the time I got back from the services at the “Little Church In The Valley”, and then watched the DVR replay of the services from the Crystal Palace. As I write that down it occurs to me I spend a lot of time on the ecclesiastical. No where near as much as Mulva mind you, but an awful lot for a heathen. I have to admit being fascinated with the personalities. I don’t know where else you could watch people so closely and psychoanalyze their inner most feelings. Prison maybe, but if you watch someone too closely in prison it leads to bad things. Getting involved with an unusual personality at church will just be viewed as being “service minded”. Makes it sound like you’re caring, and not just curious.
Anyhow, I got to church in plenty of time to catch any opening fisticuffs. Who knew if Alva Bread, the Right Reverend Dale E. Bread’s wife, or Anita Goodman, the Right Reverend’s current main squeeze, might both be wearing identical jewelry gifted to them by the Right Reverend. By the way, there is a lesson there for the “players” among you. Don’t buy gifts that are BOGO. Act like you’ve got good sense, even if you don’t have a lot of money. The same gift in a different color is still the same gift! The Right Reverend was relying way too much on divine intervention to assume that his wife and his girlfriend were not going to run into each other at some point wearing the same gift. Now we were going to see if the fallout was going to cost the Right Reverend his job.
Well if you’ve never seen two folks whose heads were frozen in place for an hour, let me tell you it’s eery. Alva and Anita stared straight ahead for the whole service. Never left, never right, never even blinked that I could tell. They turned and exited the service via different aisles at the end of the service like two Stepford wives. Truth be told, the service was kind of a let down to the anticipated cat fight. The sermon was about Adam and Eve and the serpent and how the Lord cursed the serpent for his part in the fall of Adam and Eve. The quote from Genesis 3:15, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel”, seemed to hold great meaning for the Right Reverend.
I figured I could talk it over with him later, perhaps over a pulled pork sandwich. I headed back to TackyToo to see how my pork shoulders and the Reverend Helen Handbasket were doing. More later.