Category Archives: Religion

You gotta believe

So I see there’s this guy coming to Columbia to talk about how the Church can win back Americans lost in "soulless materialism." That sounds good. Then I see the guy is described as a "priest." But I see that in his picture that he doesn’t look like a priest.

Then I see that the Rev. James Allen is an Episcopalian, and retired at that. Oh. That explains the civvies. Okay. Anyway, maybe this is just my own prejudice as a Roman, but I’d just as soon see the Church wither away as save itself by the means he suggests.

Basically, it’s that same old depressing mantra you hear more and more these days: Here’s his way of putting it: "The emphasis on ‘right believing’ is what divides people, and it is only one theme of the Bible," opines the Rev. James Adams, founder of something called — and this is a heads-up in and of itself — "The Center for Progressive Christianity."

Well, maybe that’s so, if you’re speaking from your Cambridge, Mass., home. But down here among the great unwashed, among folks who’ve actually read the Bible (or, in my case, large swaths of it — remember, I am Catholic), it strikes a very dissonant chord.

Excuse me, but isn’t that what a religion is: A certain set of beliefs? If you don’t subscribe to those beliefs, you don’t subscribe to that religion. It’s a free country, and the door swings both ways. It’s up to you. If your goal is to be a megachurch, then you take the marketing approach and give the "customer" what he wants: Entertainment, gymnasiums, child care, coffee bars and the like.

But if you really want to discern and follow God’s truth, you’re going to have to be a grownup and accept a few "thou shalts" and "thou shalt nots" that you didn’t get to vote on. In other words, you’re going to have to be humble enough to submit to something greater than your own capricious will.

As for the Bible — yeah, there’s some parts in there about parting seas, and massacring one’s enemies, and a Lion’s den, and some songs of praise, and quite a bit of fornication here and there, but the fundamental heart of it is mostly about what we’re supposed to believe and do. In fact, it’s hard to imagine it being the continuing best-seller it is without those parts. Without the morals, it would pretty much be a collection of curious ancient literary antiquities like the Epic of Gilgamesh or some such.

He says that to be more welcoming, the Church needs to be a place of "open, free discussion where nobody has to be made wrong."

Now I find myself wondering: Would no one be wrong? How about somebody who decides that all that "love thy neighbor" and "judge not lest ye be judged" stuff was for the birds, and that it was OK to hit people over the head with a hammer if they didn’t agree? I wouldn’t want to have anything to do with such a Church, and I sort of doubt that Rev. Allen would, either.

How stupid is the press?

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A link that blog regular Herb provides in a recent comment asks the not-so-musical question, "Are reporters too stupid to get religion?"

The simple answer is, "Yes."

But that’s a little too simple. I should elaborate. Journalists pride themselves (many of them do, anyway; I certainly did during my news days) on being jacks of all trades and masters of none. At a dinner party, they can usually dazzle an uncritical listener with how much they know about many things — and it works as long as no one probes too deep. But there are several things that most reporters at most newspapers don’t know much at all about (and I hope you’re not including TV people as "reporters," as very few of them get anything):

Religion — I have the impression (but no stats to back it up) that the press is slightly more secular than the public at large. I mean that in two ways: First, on a personal level — lots of journalists have never been to church or have quit going (for some reason, the profession seems to draw a lot of "fallen-away" Catholics) — but also professionally. There are still plenty of people of faith in newsrooms, but relatively few who take a sufficient interest in religions other than their own, to the extent that they could write authoritatively about them. You’ll find that’s also true of the general population, but in most fields, journalists make it their business to pick up a little something about everything around them, whether it touches them personally or not. Here’s where the professional tendency comes in. The secular notion that seeps through all of society — that religion is a private matter, with no place in the public sphere — is as prevalent in newsrooms as in the corridors of government. This dampens — in the area of religion — the natural tendency journalists usually have to pry into things that are "none of their business." Most every paper has one or two people who are an exception to this rule — who take a keen interest in religion as religion, beyond their own personal beliefs. Those are the people who are specifically assigned to cover the subject. The problem, and the blundering, tends to come in when you have folks from other beats jumping in to help out on a religion story. While you can take, say, a political reporter and have him go cover a crime story and rely on him to know what to do, that’s just not as true with the religion beat. And given the unpredictable ebb and flow of news, there are always going to be people covering things outside their usual areas.
The Military — There are about as few veterans in newsrooms as you find in most white-collar workplaces where most of the people are under the age of 50. Most journalists, unless they have had personal experience or have worked hard to learn about the military sphere of life, know less about it than they do about other lines of work they have never done personally. For instance, almost no journalists have ever been lawyers, cops or politicians. But they interact with those people a LOT more than they do with people in military service. There just aren’t as many opportunities to hang with the military as there are with, say, cops. Therefore, less learning occurs.
Weapons of any kind — It might seem like this might fall under "military," but the problem extends far beyond that sphere. All reporters at some time end up doing a basic crime story. And that’s where they are likely to embarrass themselves seriously. How bad is it? I have during my career as an editor run across many a malaprop such as, "Police say the suspect fired at the clerk with a shotgun, but the bullet missed him." And I’ve seen things just as bad as that get into the paper — meaning that several people failed to realize that shotguns don’t fire "bullets."
Money — Math tends not to be journalists’ strong suit. They were good at writing in school, not numbers, and to many people who think nothing of whipping together from scratch a 1,000-word news story requiring multiple sources in a couple of hours, figuring out a percentage change is seen as heavy lifting. This gets worse when the number involve money. Journalists tend to be less interested in money than the average person; its mystique doesn’t grab them, and they don’t grasp it. Most reporters are bright enough to have made a lot more money doing something else. But that didn’t interest them enough.
Science/Medicine — You see a lot of "health news" in newspapers these days. What you don’t see is a lot of reporting that represents a sense of perspective or in-depth knowledge on these issues. This is improving somewhat, but most journalists are a long way from having the kind of easy familiarity with the sciences, including medical science, that they do with crime, punishment and politics. One reason, among many, would be that they generally don’t interact with physicians or physicists any more than they do with the military.

Anyone who IS conversant with in any of those areas can pretty well write his or her own ticket. Business writers — if they’re any good — are in high demand. Religion writers are in demand, but a little less so, as few papers have more than one or two religion writers, and they have entire staffs devoted to business. Supply and demand.

Few mid-sized papers have anyone devoted to military affairs. But when they do, if that person gets any good at it, once again you have a high-demand commodity. For instance, I was Dave Moniz‘s editor when we started the military beat back in the early ’90s. It was terra incognita for Dave, but he worked hard to develop expertise, and to break down the natural suspicion and even hostility with which most military people regard representatives of the press (I grew up in the military, so I know all about this alienation, and fully understand why it’s there). Anyway, Dave had only done that a handful of years before he went to USAToday to cover the same beat. You’ll see his byline on their front page from time to time.

Our Papist plot exposed!

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Saints preserve us, the heathen Prods have found us out! But we shouldn’t get over-excited; it’s probably too late for them to stop us.

You probably saw the enormous headline on page A4 of the paper today, "Alito would bring Catholic majority." He would join John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy. Or Alito maybe you didn’t, benighted, ill-read heathen that you are. If you didn’t, never mind. Go back to your reality TV.

But for those who keep up with such things, what this means is that, if Samuel Alito is confirmed, the court would consist of five Catholics, two Jews and two Protestants.

Which sounds about right to me, so I don’t get what all the fuss is about.

Or maybe I do. Maybe, just maybe, those "experts" quoted in the story, who said things such as "Catholicism is a wide tent in terms of political and legal positions," don’t know what they’re on about.

I love the way the secular press (which is loaded with lapsed Catholics, by the way) is always citing statistics that show that everyday Catholics don’t really believe all that stuff that the hierarchy tries to stuff our heads with. This story, from Knight Ridder’s Washington Bureau, was no exception. Note the following:

For example, only 20 percent of active Catholics who attend church
weekly said abortion is morally acceptable. But that percentage rose to
34 percent among those who attend nearly every week or monthly and to
54 percent among lapsed Catholics who rarely attend church.

Boy, I guess it’s all over for the teaching authority of the Church, huh? Imagine that — a slight majority of people who have turned their backs on the church don’t agree with an important Catholic belief. Will wonders never cease?

That’s all right. Once we get our majority on the court, it won’t take us long to get the Inquisition started back, and we’ll soon sort out those backsliders.

But seriously, folks … the more important thing to consider here is that, as near as I can tell, Samuel Alito is a man of considerable integrity, and he said he believes fervently in the rule of law. So do I. I also believe in playing by the rules, and in not forcing my beliefs upon others. That’s why you haven’t seen any anti-abortion editorials in The State. I don’t have a consensus for that position on my board, and that’s that. (What I write in my columns and on my blog are another matter, of course.)

However … it just so happens that in addition to believing that abortion is morally wrong (something I believed before I was Catholic, by the way), I believe Roe v. Wade is very bad law. There simply is no such thing as a constitutional right to privacy, Griswold or no Griswold.

Frankly, I’m quite proud of Mr. Alito that he made it through his hearings without using the code phrase "settled law." He said he respects precedent, as do I. But I don’t worship it. I have but one God.

And thanks be to God, the Supreme Court doesn’t worship it, either. If it did, we would still be ruled by Plessy v. Ferguson, which was "settled law" for 58 years.

Did I miss anything?

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In spite of all the hype — something that usually puts me off and makes me choose to spend my time in other ways — I had intended to watch "The Book of Daniel" Friday night, and completely forgot.

What I want to know is, did I miss anything? I sort of suspect not. I see that The New York Times pretty much panned it. The reviewer was unbothered by the overdone dysfunctionality (and it’s really ridiculous, when you read a one-or-two-paragraph synopsis) of the characters or perceived mockery Daniel of faith, but basically thought it just wasn’t very well done:

The real mark against "The Book of Daniel" is not any antipathy it
might show toward the family or sympathy for the devil. The real
objection is that it’s just not very good.

Only one thing had made me want to watch it. In the promo I saw on the boob tube, the title character is having a chat with Jesus, and complains, "Aren’t you supposed to comfort me?," to which an amused Christ replies, "Where did you read that?"

I liked the understanding that seemed to show of the concept that Christian faith is supposed to challenge us, not make us feel comfortable with ourselves.

Of course, I strongly suspect that was the best bit in the show — although I’ll wait until I have a chance to see it before assuming that’s true. That’s often the way with promos and previews. In fact, that was the case with the movie I watched on DVD Friday night instead of watching "Daniel."

That was "The Island," and the line that pulled me in — and unfortunately, by implication pretty much gave away the plot — was when Steve Buscemi said to Scarlett Johansson, "Well, excuse me, Miss I’m-So-Smart-I-Can’t-Wait-to-Go-to-the-Island." (At least, I think that’s what he said. I’ll check the DVD when I get home and correct as needed.)

Mr. Buscemi was good as always, and all things considered, it wasn’t a bad bit of escapist entertainment, once you accept that it’s little more than an updated version of "Logan’s Run" with higher production values.

But since I missed "Daniel" while watching it, help me out: What did y’all think of it?

The dark beast of American politics

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I was particularly struck by this passage in Cal Thomas’ column on today’s op-ed page:

If Harriet Miers is “pro-life” and if she believes, as has been reported, that aborting a pre-born child is the taking of an innocent human life, why should she not be expected to favor overturning Roe v. Wade if the opportunity presents itself? Not to do so would be hypocritical.

I’ve got to disagree with Mr. Thomas’ rather narrow view on this matter. If she is confirmed, she should not help overturn Roe v. Wade because she has personal, religious objections to abortion.

No, she should help overturn Roe v. Wade because it was a bad decision, based upon faulty reasoning. Moreover, I would like to see the court overturn it because it has perverted not only the constitutional processes created by the Framers for selecting judges, but it has distorted our entire political world to a painfully destructive degree.

The ruling was based upon the fanciful creation, in the earlier Griswold v. Connecticut, of a right to privacy. It seems there was this penumbra — a shadow that had been lurking in the Constitution for almost two centuries without anyone noticing it. And yet this half-shadow was so sharply defined, it turns out, that it overrode whatever the political will of the people of the various states might be with regard to first birth control, then abortion.

Since then, the shadow has extended — like the darkness coming out of Mordor to overcome Tolkien’s Middle Earth — to cover every aspect of our politics today. It’s not just THE subtext of practically every question asked of judicial nominees, it’s THE unresolved conflict in the nation’s political subconscious.

Just as confirmation hearings have become all about abortion, presidential campaigns have become — among the bitterest partisans — mostly about abortion. That one issue, the emotional center of which underlies so many others (assisted suicide, stem cells, removal of feeding tubes, etc.), has become perhaps the chief determinant of whether people identify themselves as Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative. You can be for the war in Iraq (or against it) whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat, but it’s awfully hard, if not impossible, to get nominated if you’re not on your party’s side on abortion.

And which side they have chosen determines whether they think Roe v. Wade should be overturned or not. But you know, you would think both sides would want to see it gone. The partisans are spoiling for a fight, so why not have a real fight, according to the rules of American politics? This is about the deepest values each of us hold, and as citizens we should be allowed to decide the issue’s outcome by electing lawmakers who reflect our values — lawmakers who are not prohibited by the courts from making this most political of decisions.

And then we can go back to choosing justices based upon their knowledge of and faithfulness to the law, rather than playing these bitter guessing games, doing anything and everything we can to try to divine how they will rule on this one thing.

I know the partisans aren’t sick of the current state of affairs the way I am, but I don’t see why they’re not. From where I sit, it appears that this issue is eating them away, from the inside out. And it’s doing the same thing to the country.

How would Jesus vote? Would he vote at all?

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I see my latest posting has, much to my surprise, provoked a theological discussion. OK, I’ll jump in, and regret it later.

I just wish both sides would stop trying to enlist Jesus for their party platforms.

Jesus was pretty much indifferent to government, and for good reason. If he had been walking the Earth as a man today, he might have been more interested in politics than he was. In our representative democracy, we expect government to reflect our values, and then we fight over what those values should be. There is therefore room in the political arena for the kinds of things Jesus spoke of. But as a first-century Jew, the government he knew was about raw, exploitative power (the same thing libertarians think it’s about today, but they’re delusional), and it had no intention of bowing to the values of Judea or any other part of the empire. The Roman system was a plunder economy. There was no chance that any taxes one paid would ever be used to benefit you and your community. Yet despite that, he said go ahead and pay your taxes. He was sort of saying, if that’s Caesar’s trip, go along with it so he’ll leave you alone. But give God his due, which is something else altogether.

As for capitalism — well, I’ve always been struck by the way his parables seemed to uphold capitalist values. And that still challenges me, because he was totally against anyone being acquisitive. If you have two coats, give one away — that doesn’t sound like an affirmation of a consumer society to me. And yet the servant who buried his master’s money to keep it safe was castigated because he didn’t go out and risk it in an effort to make a profit. The servants who played the market were the good guys in the parable, but the one who refused to be a capitalist was the bad guy. (Of course, maybe his master wouldn’t have been so mad at him if he hadn’t indulged in all that Marxist rhetoric, calling the master an exploiter of the workers and such. That was sort of imprudent of him.)

So really, whether you think Jesus would have been for or against an activist government, or pro or con on capitalism, you can find something in the Gospels to support (or undermine) your conclusion. This might make Jesus seem contradictory, to the modern mind. But the thing was (I believe), he just didn’t care about the kinds of things we argue about in the public sphere today. If some Simon Zealot from either end of today’s political spectrum could sit down and try to enlist Him in the cause, I think he’d shrug and change the conversation to what HE deems to be important.

This is why, as a Catholic, I can’t root for either side in the political wars. I don’t think Jesus would, either. He would care about certain issues, standing up for justice and mercy, but he wouldn’t join a side. Both parties hold positions that are inimical to all that Rabbi Jesus taught.

A painful process

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I sometimes have a strange reaction to catastrophic news events. For instance, on 9/11, I didn’t experience the typical sadness, or fear, or any of that. I felt anger, but it was also mixed with an excited sort of anticipation. Don’t get me wrong; if I could go back and risk my life to save any one of the innocent Americans who died that day I would. But I couldn’t. I could only look to the future, and in some ways I believed the future would be better than the obnoxious status quo.

I actually believed that all of the partisan divisions in our country that so sickened me, and which are the bane of my daily working life, would be muted by an overwhelming sense of national unity. And I was right; that happened — for about five days. It wasn’t exactly WWII all over again. Instead, the president asked us to do nothing but take our tax cuts and go enjoy ourselves while the all-volunteer military did our fighting for us. We could watch it on TV if we were interested, but we didn’t really have to be interested. So we turned away from each other, and naturally, politics as usual returned with alacrity.

So on Thursday, we once again experienced death and destruction — not here in the United States, not technically, but about as good as — and once again (after I learned that people I knew who were in London were safe) my mind turned to what would happen next. This time, I was a little more subdued in my optimism, but I saw reason for optimism nonetheless. You’ll see some of that optimism expressed in today’s editorial, which I wrote. (Yes, I wrote it. I haven’t written many editorials the last few years, but Nina Brook’s departure has forced me to take up honest toil again.)

Seeing President Bush, my hero Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac standing together, reading of the unanimous UN Security Council resolution expressing solidarity against terrorism, and other signs Unity tell me that we’ve got another chance at forming a solid coalition of civilized nations to oppose this atavistic, nihilistic madness we call terrorism. And that would be a very good thing. (By the way, I couldn’t tell for sure from the wire caption whether this picture was taken before or after the bombings. I suspect it was before — Mr. Blair looked a lot more grim in subsequent photos. But even if so, the unity the photo session was meant to convey on combatting poverty and disease was mirrored by the unity these leaders and the rest expressed even more vehemently after the bombings, so it illustrates much the same thing.)

Last night, to a class I’m taking at Beth Shalom synagogue about Jewish beliefs concerning the Messiah (yes, I’m Catholic, but I’m very aware that the founder of my religion was a Jew, and I have a hunger to learn what I can about the faith that was his, and without which ours would not exist), Rabbi Hesh Epstein said, "The bombings that took place today in London are part of a process — a painful process" of the world becoming a better place. Specifically, he was talking about our moving closer to the coming of the Mashiach. We Catholics would speak instead of the return of the Messiah, but the end result is much the same.

Echoing author Thomas Cahill, the rabbi said, "This is what Judaism gave the world — the idea that we were headed somewhere" — a linear view of history that bothered to count the passing years, as opposed to seeing life as a series of endless, hopeless cycles. And that "somewhere" is a much better world than the one we currently live in. This, I would add, is a notion that has been appropriated by many who don’t wait for the Messiah — humanists, communists, economic developers and pretty much anyone who believes in progress of any kind.

What happened in London Thursday was horrible beyond words, which may be one reason why I’m not dealing with it directly. But since it’s done and there’s no undoing it, I look forward, and I believe we have another chance to band together across borders to make this a world that simply doesn’t produce terror bombers. That, of course, was why the G-8 leaders were meeting in Scotland — to talk about African poverty, AIDS, global warming and other quality of life (and life-and-death) issues. The bombings emphasized something else we need to work on, and I hope we don’t blow this opportunity, the way we (and by "we" I mean people all over the world) have largely done with the last one. (I wonder whether Tony Blair can show us how it’s done — pull a nation together and keep it together, while strengthening and maintaining strong alliances. If anyone can, he can.)

We must mourn the dead. And as Rabbi Epstein said, the prayer that Jews are most familiar with having to do with the Messiah has to do with death. It’s the Kaddish. But it’s more than just a prayer of mourning; it’s an evocation of the time when God’s justice will be established on Earth. "Sometimes we see death, when there really is redemption," said the rabbi.

Oh, I hope so. And pray so. There has to be a way through this "painful process," to a better end for all.

"This world was made to be a paradise," said the rabbi. "Don’t ever give up hope."

Suburban panhandling

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It had been a long day, because it was Friday, and as I’ve said before, Fridays are always long days. I was driving with the windows of my ’89 Ford Ranger down, because the air conditioning hasn’t worked for awhile.

Stopping at the Li’l Cricket convenience store near my home, I just didn’t feel like rolling the windows up and locking up — even though my briefcase and, worse, my laptop were on the floor of the truck. I looked around and saw no suspicious characters. I knew I was going straight in and out — there was no queue — and that I could keep an eye on the vehicle pretty much every second I was in there. And who would be looking for anything of value in my battered, grimy pickup?

Well, I was in and out quickly, but when I got out regretted immediately having left things unlocked, because there was a rootless-looking little guy sitting on the curb just a few feet away. He hadn’t been there before. As I opened the door awkwardly holding my purchases, he spoke up, "Sir…"

OK, here we go.

He started into the familiar story of how he had his momma in the car — waving vaguely over toward a van a short distance away, and if I could just help them out, they could get home. He had been from store to store, and …

"Here, I can give you a couple of bucks." I struggled to get the two ones out of my wallet while the gallon of milk dangled from one hand. I had the two ones, and two twenties.

He was quiet for a moment as I rummaged for the money, and I had a second to take him in. He was about five-three or -four, and couldn’t have weighed more than 125. Grubby jeans, grubby T-shirt, grubby ball cap. Sparse stubble on chin and upper lip. Hard living had made his age hard to guess, but it was between 18 and 30.

Once he saw the bills, the silence ended: "Oh, sir. Can’t you help us get home?" He was taking on a whining tone. "I’m a Christian. I’ll mail it back to you, I swear."

"That’s all I can do for you. You’ll have to get the rest from someone else." There was no way I was giving this guy the rest of my cash for the week, when I was 95 percent sure he was scamming me. Only the 5 percent uncertainty had induced me to come up with the ones. Besides, I’ve always had this attitude — it’s not entirely logical, but it’s mine — that if someone is so down-and-out, or so degraded in personal pride, as to beg, I’ll hand over something, even if I don’t believe the story at all.

But that was it. This was the first time a beggar had turned his nose up at what I had offered him since a guy in New York had all but chewed me out for giving him a dollar. But that was New York, and with this guy, what sympathy I had was floating out to sea pretty fast.

"But sir. My babies… I’m a Christian. I swear…" His chin was trembling. Nobody wants to see a man cry, even a sad little man.

My voice got colder. "That’s all I’m prepared to do for you tonight." I got in, closed the door, and told him through the open window, "Good luck." I was doing the right thing, I was sure, though of course it didn’t feel like it. As Huck Finn said,

But that’s always the way; it don’t make no difference whether you do right or wrong, a person’s conscience ain’t got no sense, and just goes for him anyway. If I had a yaller dog that didn’t know no more than a person’s conscience does I would pison him.

But my pangs didn’t last long. I hadn’t started the engine when the shifty little guy scooted by in front of my truck in a double-time march. I thought he had spotted another likely mark. But he kept going until he got to the passenger side of a red subcompact, and jumped in. The driver was a burly young man with a crew cut. They were backing out before I had completed the same maneuver. You’d have thought they were on their way to a fire.

It crossed my mind that he had seen the two twenties and they planned to follow me. It was becoming clear that these were guys who would do something desperate for 40 bucks. The little feathermerchant I could handle, but the big guy was something else. I was rolling slowly out of the parking lot and considering my options when I saw them tear out in the opposite direction.

Yeah, he’s a real Christian, I thought. And what did that have to do with anything? Was his religious affiliation relevant to the situation? Seems like he was counting on me to be a Christian (or a Jew, or anybody who believes we should act justly and love mercy), and a gullible one at that. On reflection, it seemed his plea was both a compliment and an insult to Christianity. He was perhaps assuming that no Christian would fail to be charitable. At the same time, there had been an ugly tinge of "Look at me; I’m one of the good and decent people, like you. I’m not one of them; you can trust me." Unfortunately, he was right to assume there are those who think that way and see themselves as Christians.

As I drove off it struck me to take a look around the cab of the truck. All right, the laptop and briefcase were still there. And as I looked, my eyes fell on the cross dangling from my rear-view mirror. My daughter had woven it out of a palm frond on Palm Sunday a couple of years back, I had tied it up there with thread, and it was there yet. "But I’m a Christian, sir…" So that was it; that’s why I was chosen as a mark, and why he took that approach.

I decided that next time, I’d take the time to lock up, however tired I was. I might not be lucky again. As for the little con artist, I felt pretty sure I’d never see him again. By now, he was up at the Circle K, pulling the routine on somebody else. Maybe somebody with a fish symbol on his bumper.

bradwarthen.com

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