A Sunbeam For Him

How Low Can You Go?

I believe I mentioned something about this a few months back, but in case you missed that undeniable masterpiece, I'm in the midst of a comprehensive campaign to straighten up my act. It's a good project to undertake in general (regardless how arduous, massive or hopelessly impossible it may seem) but to be honest I'm doing it mostly because I don't want my ‘ass'-end to ‘de'scend into the deep end of the Devil's Spa & Lava Hot Springs. I mean just because I'm funny as hell, doesn't mean I want to go there (even if it were just to pop in and visit an old friend or colleague). Eternity is a pretty difficult concept to get your head around (physicists estimate that it's roughly the equivalent of sitting on a squeaky loveseat waiting for the Jazz to win the NBA Championship with your mother-in-law seated on your lap. Plus she's a chain smoker now, who frequently spills her coffee and insists on apologizing profusely with a lethal case of "eternity breath.") Such being the case, I don't know how well I'd handle being on fire for that long.

I do struggle with patience though - take the drive-thru at Arby's for example. I call the place "eternity practice." If there's even ‘one' other car in line, I go inside so I can see what the hell's going on. Otherwise I imagine two sickly, goth creeps looped out of their minds on mushrooms, just mumblydickin' around with the doors locked. Zombified and given to alternating fits of paranoia and uncontrollable laughter - acting on whatever stray notion that might take root in their vegetated gourds. Maybe lighting their farts on the grill, or warming up my beef in their arm pits as they stare at me from the dark window where they used to take your money. Then when your order is finally ready, they have guilt written all over their acne festooned faces. You can just tell that if you happened to say anything remotely funny, like "Horsey Sauce" they'd giggle themselves into puddles of their own precipitation. Please understand that this is not any kind of reflection on Arbys, I love the food - it's just that they have a slow drive thru and I'm a little insane.

While we're on the topic of H.E. double hockey sticks, I have to say that I'm still a little miffed at the Vatican for just up and erasing Limbo from existence. To get you up to speed, Limbo "used" to be the place (somewhere between Heaven and Hell) where babies would go if they happened to die before they were baptized. I can understand why the Vat would want to play it down. I mean it does seem like a silly place with a sillier name, but for Heaven's sake, it's been around for 1700 years or so – you don't just cancel it like a crappy sit-com. Millions of people think this place is as real as Heaven, a place where countless babies are waiting for something, Catholic to happen. To those people it'd have to be about the same as suddenly finding out that there's no such thing as ‘Canada.'

Y'see the whole Limbo elimination happened about the same time they decided to get rid of Pluto. Which made me a little paranoid, like it's all part of this internet conspiracy to get rid of encyclopedias. Y'see as far as Funk n' Wagnall are concerned, Limbo and Pluto are still existing just fine. The last I checked there is some chance that Pluto might be reinstated into the solar system, but for the time being it's up in the air. Get it, "up in the air?" Oh no – I've got Jay Lenosis. Before you know it I'll be able to shave off the beard that I wear in order to fool people into believing that I have a chin.

(Bear with me I'm gonna try something. For the rest of this bit picture Jay.) "As for Limbo it's pretty much Lost In Space." (By now he's holding up a milk carton with a picture of a Latino dancing low under a stick, with a caption above reading: "Have You Seen Me?" the band chimes in with the Limbo song) "I know what you're thinking - How low can I go? (rimshot) What I wanna know is what's happened to all the babies, I mean come on? I guess if there's a silver lining here - at least they avoid getting groped by their Priest. (groans and hisses from the audience) Oh yea, I'm way outta line, yeah, ewww yeah – Just so y'know, Harvard conducted a study, didya hear about this? Turns out that Catholic Priests are only the ‘second' leading cause of unlawful groping, the first leading cause . .? Snookie!!! Y'believe that Kev? You're not Kev - where's Kev?"

I guess I might have caused a bit of a stir a few months back when I went public with my intentions to take out my temple endowments. I can certainly understand your discomfiture, considering the irreverent way I write and the kind of person I've been, roughly since . . . birth. I'm sure some of you thought it was a joke and even after four years of regular church attendance and a spot in the Elders Quorum presidency I still get the funny feeling that I'm thought of as some kind of interloper, maybe a Catholic spy? Everybody smiles and claps me on the shoulder and everything, but I can't seem to shake this sense of being the grasshopper that goofed off all summer while the ants were canning peaches and doing their home-teaching.

I'm sure it might strike some as hypocritical to paint my wagon white and try to blend in with the saints, but I should hope that my friends would know that I've always been a good egg, however ‘pickled' it might've been. I ‘have' been down a few roads - drinking, partying, carrying on and I'm not going to tell you that I didn't have a good time and so forth, but it never made me the kind of happy that I'm finally getting to be these days, and it never left me at peace. (The sort of inner calm where if, for some reason you were to meet up face-to-face with God or Jesus, your first instinct wouldn't be to ‘run for it.') Don't get me wrong, repentance was no fun. For me it was a lot like going to the dentist for the first time after 50 years of eating cotton candy. It's very embarrassing and painful – but that's how it should be. I was a pretty naughty boy and nothing really worthwhile comes easy. And by no means should you consider me to be some holier-than-thou phony-ass now, because it's not like that at all. But it ‘is' like I can talk to God now, and just like Bill Murray said in Caddyshack. "I got that going for me – which is nice."

It's sad when you realize just how badly you've been played by the devil and trust me, that dude doesn't want anything for you that doesn't suck like hell. Don't trade a cheap thrill now for what God can hook you up with if you keep your mitts out of the cookie jar. Seriously, if we could have a glimpse of what that's gonna be like, dude you'd take that beer money and pay your tithing. And for those of you who are thinking, "that's swell Boneman, good for you - but I ain't cut-out for that happy crap." Listen to me, or – readeth me, whatever - this isn't some mystical deal that you can't relate to. If you've ever ‘cried' in a movie, then you've got some idea of what it's going to feel like to have that burden lifted and to know you're good with God. It's a game changer in the only game that counts and just to know that he's in your corner gives you the power to kick "old scratch" to the curb and to have some real, honest to goodness joy in your life.

You've got every bit as much right to it as Mr. Holier-than-Thou neighbor guy who looks down his nose at your beer. It ain't his business to judge you, and if he does then he's inviting judgment up in his. That's how Jesus rolls. That's scripture. Think about it, who did He seek out? Dudes like us, who have ‘good' in us, but maybe we think that's not enough, so maybe we have a beer to quiet and numb the yearning. Not that this is any kind of sound rationale – it's quite the opposite. Still it's a fool who uses the Word of Wisdom as a moral template to judge others by. Indeed it's not at all cool to become "Holier-than-Thou," but there is absolutely nothing cooler than becoming Holy. This much I will testify to upon my life - I have never found a more fascinating, rich and invigorating subject of study than the one religion that was born in the U.S.A.