Finding Jesus by the Weekend

Although we weren't solid, church-going boys, the Vlaming brothers both occasionally attended Sunday school at the Colonial Church of Edina.  Not that we went willingly.  On Sunday mornings we'd rise early, not to ready ourselves for the House of the Lord but, rather, to catch the 8:30 AM rerruns of TOM & JERRY cartoons -- the old ones, you know.  The one's that won Academy Awards.  Even as kids, we had to wonder why on earth they didn't show these great old 'toons on Saturday morning when other cartoons were running.  But Sunday is where they landed and we would rise bright and early, ready to watch.  Trouble was, Sunday also was the sabbath and while our parents weren't regular church-goers by any stretch, every once in a while they got it in their heads to get us dressed up in our little suit jackets and clip-on ties and go to church. 

Not that we weren't total heathens. The Vlaming family attended church often enough to come away with a fair amount of Sunday school teachings imprinted on our brains.  The 23rd Psalm, the Burning Bush, Noah's Ark and other fanatastical tales in the Good Book.  One thing my young mind couldn't get a grasp on was the third part of the Holy Trinity.  The Holy Ghost?  I knew who Jesus was, God was a gimme -- paintings of the two were plentiful enough but when trying to imagine the Holy Ghost all I could envision was Charlie Brown's costume in his Halloween special.  The other thing that befuddled me was the fact no ever seemed to refer to Joseph as Jesus' dad.  I had a bountful imagination but as a kid the word 'virgin' meant nothing to me, and therefore "virgin birth" was equally hard to grasp.  As a result I always thought of God as Jesus' sorta-grandpa.  A silver-haired, bearded guardian angel (who, considering how the story turned out, wasn't much of a guardian).  

I later learned I had it all wrong. 

(No) Joke On The Pier

Jonathan and I were standing on the Santa Monica Pier in Los Angeles on a cloudy day.  We'd walked all the way out to the end, past the amusement park rides to the fish gut, bait-stained planks and rails where local anglers were casting their lines into the dark green water thirty feet below us.

A homeless guy approached us and asked for a dollar in exchange for a joke.  We agreed and the man told his joke and we gave him his dollar.  It was later when I asked Jonathan what the joke was, ashamed to admit that, as the man reeled it off, I'd been steeling myself for some attack on his part.  I had been so intent on figuring just how high and hard I'd have to hoist the guy to throw him over the railing into the Pacific Ocean that I hadn't heard a word of the joke he was trading for a buck.

So what was the joke exactly?  Jonathan couldn't tell me -- he had been too occupied with how it was he could throw the man over the railing in the event he attacked us.

We're brothers all right.