Cads

Cads

       by the Rev. Lee Douglas James Brown-Reimer                 

"Each of us must make a choice about his personal orientation since we were created by God to fulfill a purpose in this world. In 1,500 years it will all be over anyway so why make such a fuss about what men and women do in the privacy of their own hotel rooms."  (The Right Reverend Johnny Bakstrom Jr. B.Sc., B.Div. to the Twenty-Seventh Annual National American Bowling Convention, Severn Valley Convention Centre, Boston, MASS. April 01, 1996)   

Nesbit wished he'd taken communion Sunday when he'd decided against it at the last moment. He chaffered now in his guilt and felt a modicum of shame. Not enough of shame, however, filtered in for him to hurry anywhere to make up for it. No need to attend church unless one felt the need for it in the very sould of one's beeing, he thought, distractedly. Any way one cut it, he said aloud at the mirror, shaving, one must decide for or against church going in the end.

       He had been a religious man for many, many years, faithful to the communion, to the tithe, to the charitable codes, and to the various requirements that the Catholic institution posited for its members.

       A robin sat at his window now regaling him with song and telling of a sweetheart lost in the South and never more to be found. It told also of brotherly love and the ruin such passion brought to the hapless individual.

       "Do not love your brothers," he cheeped with insistence and flew away.

       "For goodness sakes," Nesbit said to the walls. "Do we have to bring in gay sex each and every time we speka with anyone? For the love of Pete!" He turned from the window and put on his jacket. He would walk as far as the warf and back again for his constitutional. He took it rain or shine, and usually lit his pipe for the hour out of doors. Birds immediately spoke to him, a dog followed for a short distance, nearly at his heels, a duck quacked in the ally beside the tobacconist's, and further down the street near the haberdasher's gunfire erupted but it was from a television in a house with an opened window. He got to the dock and turned and went back home where he entered his garage and backed out his car. He would travel for a while. A day or maybe more.

       I will return by Suynday, is that if what I want, he thought. If not, I will not attemd church again until the need for it returns to me and then I will re-decide. He came home Monday, a day after Sunday, and that solved the immediate problem. This week he had not attended church and when next Sunday came round he again traveled and did not attend. He became that way a non-attending churchgoer who seldom ever again in his whole life stuck his head inside a holy building. He lost all interest in churches, in church history, in travels to see holy lands, in historical Mesopotamia, in Muslimo-Christian relations, in biblical allusions, in the story of the three wise men, in the innocence of lambs, and in all things religious or iconographic.

       Now, on April 2, 1986, on a clear day with the birds beginning to chant once again he left for a rendezvous with Satan. Satan met him and proclaimed him his own. Nesbit resisted the black-dressed man and told him that if he persisted he would begin going to church again. The devil backed down and left him. Nesbit went to the chocolate shop close by to catch his breath and decide what to do and then went home to sleep. His dog Nester barked at him unaccountably. The canary lay on its back in the cage with its legs up. The tap in the kitchen ran at almost full volume. The radio would not work and he had eventually to buy a new one. The appliances all quit that summer and by fall he had a houseful of new toasters, tvs, gadgets, exercise equipment and lights. Then he died. The church buried him in a cemetery near the tobacconist's.

       After he passed his friends and relatives remembered him at his wake.

       "He was a handsome man," a female acquaintance remarked. "He stood six foot two in his stocking feet." She nodded and looked about but no one else seemed interested in his stature so she gave it up.

       "I never saw him get irate," the priest from the Catholic Church said. Everyone agreed and nodded and all began to speak at once. He seemed, as far as the general opinion went, to have been a saint and one whose personality demanded respect. He once had been bitten by a dog and no one had heard a curse word. A bird had on one occasion shat on his corned beef sandwich in the park as he ate it and he refrained from loud revererance. Kids might walk across his grass in spring and he spoke not a word in anger. Neither had he ever done much to impress the opposite sex that he was a cad or a villain. All agreed that he was someone worth burying and they did that.     

.         

   Cads

       by the Rev. Lee Douglas James Brown-Reimer                 

"Each of us must make a choice about his personal orientation since we were created by God to fulfill a purpose in this world. In 1,500 years it will all be over anyway so why make such a fuss about what men and women do in the privacy of their own hotel rooms."  (The Right Reverend Johnny Bakstrom Jr. B.Sc., B.Div. to the Twenty-Seventh Annual National American Bowling Convention, Severn Valley Convention Centre, Boston, MASS. April 01, 1996)   

Nesbit wished he'd taken communion Sunday when he'd decided against it at the last moment. He chaffered now in his guilt and felt a modicum of shame. Not enough of shame, however, filtered in for him to hurry anywhere to make up for it. No need to attend church unless one felt the need for it in the very sould of one's beeing, he thought, distractedly. Any way one cut it, he said aloud at the mirror, shaving, one must decide for or against church going in the end.

       He had been a religious man for many, many years, faithful to the communion, to the tithe, to the charitable codes, and to the various requirements that the Catholic institution posited for its members.

       A robin sat at his window now regaling him with song and telling of a sweetheart lost in the south and never more to be found. It told also of brotherly love and the ruin such passion brought to the hapless individual.

       "Do not love your brothers," he cheeped with insistence and flew away.

       "For goodness sakes," Nesbit said to the walls. "Do we have to bring in gay sex each and every time we speka with anyone? For the love of Pete!" He turned from the window and put on his jacket. He would walk as far as the warf and back again for his constitutional. He took it rain or shine, and usually lit his pipe for the hour out of doors. Birds immediately spoke to him, a dog followed for a short distance, nearly at his heels, a duck quacked in the ally beside the tobacconist's, and further down the street near the haberdasher's gunfire erupted but it was from a television in a house with an opened window. He got to the dock and turned and went back home where he entered his garage and backed out his car. He would travel for a while. A day or maybe more.

       I will return by Suynday, is that if what I want, he thought. If not, I will not attemd church again until the need for it returns to me and then I will re-decide. He came home Monday, a day after Sunday, and that solved the immediate problem. This week he had not attended church and when next Sunday came round he again traveled and did not attend. He became that way a non-attending churchgoer who seldom ever again in his whole life stuck his head inside a holy building. He lost all interest in churches, in church history, in travels to see holy lands, in Mesopotamia, in Muslimo-Christian relations, in biblical allusions, in the story of the three wise men, in the innocence of lambs, and in all things religious or iconographic.

       Now, on April 2, 1986, on a clear day with the birds beginning to chant once again he left for a rendezvous with Satan. Satan met him and proclaimed him his own. Nesbit resisted the black-dressed man and told him that if he persisted he would begin going to church again. The devil backed down and left him. Nesbit went to the chocolate shop close by to catch his breath and decide what to do and then went home to sleep. His dog Nester barked at him unaccountably. The canary lay on its back in the cage with its legs up. The tap in the kitchen ran at almost full volume. The radio would not work and he had eventually to buy a new one. The appliances all quit that summer and by fall he had a houseful of new toasters, tvs, gadgets, exercise equipment and lights. Then he died. The church buried him in a cemetery near the tobacconist's.

       After he died his friends and relatives remembered him at his wake.

       "He was a handsome man," a female acquaintance remarked. "He stood six foot two in his stocking feet." She nodded and looked about but no one else seemed interested in his stature so she gave it up.

       "I never saw him get irate," the priest from the Catholic Church said. Everyone agreed and nodded and all began to speak at once. He seemed, as far as the general opinion went to have been a saint and one whose personality demanded respect. He once had been bitten by a dog and no one had heard a curse word. A bird once shat on his corned beef sandwich in the park as he ate it and he refrained from loud revererance. Kids might walk across his grass in spring and he spoke not a word in anger. Neither had he ever done much to impress the opposite sex that he was a cad or a villain. All agreed that he was someone worth burying and they did that.     

.