My name is Christian Todd Richardson, a preacher from Northern Alberta, Canada, near them tar sands, you understand, and I’m only hard on sinners. Those who have been saved skate until they’re once again out sinning and doing invidious abuses against God’s very brightest and most sacrosanct ideals. But guess what, folks?! I’m the most mercurially redeemed of all the very worst of the sinners, and I know this because my wife remains extremely engaged and angelic during our dinner debates about germ warfare and school zoning and the like, the kids running around the table legs like rampaging warthogs, shimmering gold cosmic dusts enshrouding her, all peach and unthreatening Walt Disney mystery. The living cost of God is living in the lap of God and eating of the Flesh of his Son. The mystery of the crucifixion is why anyone would stand there and watch it happen under that hot sun. They say that the great Hollywood studio mogul Louis B. Mayer used to beg and plead and snivel in order to make business deals and that for him everything was a business deal. I can buy it. That is what supplication before God has got to look like, folks, begging for eternal pulverizing light…in your face like its time to get the books from the blue shirts…just like little Joan of Arc in her armour and boy’s haircut showed us…dying awfully, admittedly. Supplication is less about asking for something than it is about having your spiritual, inside face squashed to sensorial satisfaction like a wriggling grape of wrath. Civilization is cratering and the earth, sirs and mesdames, is atremble—has been since the Protestants and the 16th-century religious wars that turned Europe into an upturned trough and led to rebellions in the British Isles. God doesn’t care until in his enveloping divinity he does so, spurred by whatever reason or drive. There is an old parable about how when the rescue boats come, that is the Sanctified Divinity saying hi. One time I was lost in nature, the situation becoming increasingly dire, and a white horse with a grey saddle just came along out of nowhere. The horse told me to get on and, oh, Lord of Lords, you know I did. The thing about being much more terrified than anybody ever gets terrified normally is that you’re expecting for sure to die and just hope the physical sensations don’t persist too long. God and His Godchild the Christ approve. Can I have an amen from the viewers at home?! Be there in the terror and the flavourful waking nightmare to feel the full fury of the Divine Light. Say to the Lord: Wow, what the heck?! I had to prepare for Destiny by getting back up when the population density of demons dropped me as though it were hot. Calgary, city of snivelling, craft brew wraiths and careerist ingrates. I had to walk at death like Edgar Allan Poe, wanting to have a stern word with it on the wharf. I had to get lost in the barrens. A redeemed Christian is like a worn keepsake, hold it close and it will make no mistake, floating on the lake next to an ice skate. Place your Christian on the mantle and stare it down until it is bedtime. The Master Race was the Aztecs and nobody’s ever going to be forgiven for the cessation of their plentitude and civilizing, least of all the Green Bay Packers. Right? Wrong? Indifferent? Legendary Packers coach Vince Lombardi was an aggressive anti-segregationist during the Civil Rights Era. People shoot people and people is people. You love them all the more for being dopey and scattered. They say that the Ancient Babylonians called intelligent design or simulated reality something that roughly translates as “Cosmos,” and it has something to do with perspective and pictorial distortion, the not knowing where you are or why you are being the whole reason that you are here. When I was in the seminary they made fun of me for having argyle socks that ran up to my wrinkly knees. I showed them and went and became a preacher and Himalayan adventurer. The Lord works in mysterious ways. Gimme that amen I know you got in you. Alright, that about sums up that...
