All-Temperture-Cheer?

I'm in the mood for a fable: a fairy tale, a twisted little story with a Moral ... something gothic and faintly disturbing, and probably not really all that fit for consumption by children. (Who would agree that a story of wolves eating little kids is a great Happy Kiddie Story anyway? Little Red Riding Hood)

~~~

Once upon a time there was father. Let's call him Pops. He had gotten married young and promptly fathered two kiddies: me, and then my brother. Pops was a young man once, but he's now in the midst of his Middle Ages. That means he's "getting old." Of note, Pops recently Got Jesus again.

Now, Pops had Jesus for a long, long time, a long time ago -- for all of his kids' upbringing, in fact. My brother and I were raised in the "Church of Christ" -- from birth until ... well, I'll get to that. Pops even served as a deacon (wiki/Deacon), which was a Very Big Deal, and the entire family regularly attended church three times a week: Sunday mornings and evenings, and on Wednesday nights. We did a lot of other church-related stuff as well, including VBS (Vacation Bible School) (wiki/VBS) and summer church camps. We were Good Little Christians.

But that was a Long Time Ago.

Because Pops philandered, once, twice, three dozen times a' ladies ... fucking the wife of his first cousin, among other women ... and the Dear Ole Church tossed out the whole family -- Pops, Moms, me, and my younger brother. I was 21 or 22 at the time, my brother only two years younger. The disfellowshipping (like excommuniation, but for Protestants) of Tricky Dicky (a/k/a Pops) lead to the falling away of the whole family: my mother the "wronged woman," my brother, me. It's never clear to me why these groups turn out their neediest members. God Works in Mysterious Ways. Amen.

After much drama and consternation, and the dissolution of his marriage to my mother and the Cousin-in-Law's divorce from her husband, he eventually married The-Wife-o-the-Cousin, making her progeny both my step-siblings *and* my cousins ... but whatever -- we were a Southern family, now "families" -- plural -- and this is Southern gothic at its finest. It's just not Southern if it's not fucked up.

However, this is just context for a larger fable at play in this bizarro sphere. After all that hair-pulling-and-jumping-about, after the "disfellowship" (defined) and the drama, both Pops and the Concubine (fomerly known as Cousin-in-Law-now-Wife) swore off "all things church." And with good reason, after all -- in a trying, difficult time, the church abandoned them for "sinning." {As if any sin named in the Good Book is more or less "sinful" than the other (oh, except that most inhumane of sins, blasphemy (wiki/Blasphemy), but that's a level of ridiculousness I'm not prepared to address in this post).} And years -- nay, decades -- passed without the need for GodJesusHolySpirit hullabaloo.

Pops built a huge house up in the country for him and the Concubine, and then he coaxed his increasingly decrepit mother to move into a very large house that he built (with her cash) across the street from him. (They live rurally, and she'd lived in an increasingly dangerous part of the inner city.) While her house was being built, my grandmother lived with  Pops and the Concubine in their 8,000 square foot chateau. For a couple of years.

Somewhere along the way, things got Difficult. Because my grandmother wasn't a big fan of the Concubine, who can be a little "simple" (I'm trying to be polite) and harpyish, and ultimately the Concubine returned the antipathy. Which became acrimony. And then the two women stopped talking to each other. They accused each other of "stealing momentos" from each other on the day my grandmother finally moved into her house across the street.

More years passed. The two women did not speak; they lived across the street but holidays came and went, and they never exchanged any time together, a spoken word, or even a look. As my grandmother's health deteriorated, Pops would go across the street once, twice, three times a day to deliver food and make sure my grandmother took her medicines. If my grandmother needed to go to the doctor and Pops could not take her, he asked a friend to do it, since the Concubine certainly wouldn't/couldn't. (Ah, the grown-up joys of maturity and mature behaviour.)

But time was Moving On, and Pops and the Concubine got older, too. Mysteriously, the Concubine decided she once again Needed Jesus. So she started going to church again. (After all, nothing provides the opportunity to gossip and Style-and-Profile quite like doing it for Jesus. She had retired by now, so she no longer had a place to wear her ridiculous high-heeled shoes and tease up her hair and wear flashy jewelry.) But somehow, Jesus didn't help her heal the rift with my grandmother. Or the rift the Concubine has with her own son. (Her son *also* Has Jesus, in case you were curious.) And church is Hard Work when you have a spouse but you can't drag him/her along, too -- that just Looks Bad -- so she managed to talk Pops into going back to it, too. (He had said he had no interest: "been there, done that" were his exact words.)

But age and a lack of education can do things to a man. Living with a shrew must surely be hellish as well, so I guess the man caved.

And then my grandmother died.

And now the death rites approach. Moms, the former daughter-in-law (her marriage to my dad lasted 21 years and spawned two grandkids) is explicity prohitbited from attending, even though my grandmother was still fond of her ... certainly enough to be on Speaking Terms. While the Concubine, whom my grandmother wouldn't have stopped to squat and piss upon, will be present for the event. (Ah, Jesus is no good for healing divorce rifts either, apparently.)

So the Moral of this story should be nicely evident now: Jesus is not a universl tool. Unless your universal tool needs to be a Cherry Picker. (Cherry Picking is when one notices and uses just the bits of a story or process one wants to pay attention to, and ignores the bits that one does not like.) Jesus Makes Cherry Picking Easy! For that, he's PERFECT. He's exactly what you need to beat your atheist daughter over the head about "Jesus is the Reason for the Season" (Warning: Religious Propaganda) {when he actually ISN'T if you know a single damned  thing about history (here and here and here and here)}, but he's NOT good at all at assisting in the forgiveness of past hurts with an ex-wife, with a mother-in-law, or a son.

Jesus is *not* All Temperature Cheer (1980 Cheer Commercial). He's Lukewarm and Limp. Use only as directed. (Which maybe explains the unique misery that "Christmas holiday silliness" actually is. But that's for another post.)