take me out

 

Calvin and Hobbes is a type of religious experience in which either you get it or you don't. If you get it, Hobbes is as real as Calvin, and it's just you and Calvin and Hobbes, because nobody else inside the strip gets it. The artist Bill Watterson is as clever and imaginative as whoever wrote the Gospel according to Mark. The strip reminds me of the Messianic Secret in Mark, where the only ones who get it are the demons and crazies, and finally the Roman centurion, but always us readers. My father, who died soon thirty-one years ago when the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip was in its eighth year, used to tell me with some exasperation that Calvin and Hobbes made no sense. Until then, I'd not realized that he was more of a literalist than I. 

Neither, frankly, does the Gospel of Jesus Christ make sense, you either get it, or you take what someone called "a leap of faith" and just accept it and let it be so, or you read and do something else. Maybe the sports pages, or watch soccer on TV Sunday mornings.  

My mother grew up in East Hill Baptist Church, Pensacola, just two blocks from home on East Strong Street. As a child, I went there myself many, many Times with my grandfather Gentry, my siblings, and Gentry first cousins. Mama remembered Br. Abney, preacher there when she was growing up, whose preaching always worked its way around from his Bible passage for the day to the evils of drinking alcohol, or dancing, or playing cards; or, a favorite, failing to keep holy the Sabbath Day by going out to the local baseball game on Sunday afternoon. 

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Where was I going with this? I have no idea, so I'll stop and shut it down, maybe press "Publish," maybe not. Maybe later go back and press "Revert to draft" as I did with yesterday's blogpost, which was not a good mix of my sadness reliving the death of a former student, versus Israel's "unintentional" killing of seven members of a charity organization feeding people whom Israel does not want fed. I took it down, if I ever put it back up, it'll be surreptitious. 

Today then, Watterson, Mark, East Hill Baptist Church, and take me out to the ballgame.

RSF&PTL

T88&c