Jack Pelham

When faced with a reality in which your spirit was created by God and will have to give an account for what you’ve done when your life is over, these are your choices, as it appears to me:

1. Embrace the situation and sincerely do your best to please God, learning as you go.
2. Reject the reality, and live however you want, either:
   1. Forthrightly denouncing the reality in full (as an atheist might),
   2. Being sloppy about some of the details of what God wants, and pretending that sloppiness is OK, or
   3. Deliberately twisting some of the details into something you like better, and pretending you’re devoted to God as you do it. (Think about it: #2 is also an example of this #3.)

The not knowing is so untenable for his untrained mind
That he has learned to unleash his brain
And send it scurrying off into the weeds
To retrieve whatever it may for a narrative
By which to explain the situation.

There is the concept, however rare, that one might like to invest his efforts in the common good, without concern for how he might grow rich from it—whether in money, or in the acclaim of those he esteems.

He looks with disdain on the Churchers,
Recoiling at the sick hypocrisy he sees.
And he wants nothing to do with it—

With the Churching, that is.

Let’s pretend that it’s all
Somebody else’s fault,
And not our own.

And we can point our fingers at them
And feel happier than we would
If we were dealing with ourselves.

And they’ll get mad, of course—
Because they are like us—
And then we’ll get mad—
Because we are like us, too.

And life will be better that way
Than if we were to be honest and
Rational and responsible for ourselves.

There will not come a day
When diet and exercise
Are not important—
Though there will come
A thousand upon which
They do not feel important.

And one wonders how such a gauge
Could be so often off.

When you really think about it,
The greater part of the constant turmoil
In this human species can be
Readily explained by asking
The same developmental question
About every human specimen:

I got invited to a huge anniversary party
And most everybody came
And seemed to have a good time—
But me, that is—

That’s because the marriage they were
Celebrating is in terrible shape,
And I’m not the sort to pretend it isn’t.

So even though they drive that party
Right by my window on this day every year,
I do not enjoy it in the least.

And they don’t enjoy hearing me say why.

One of the biggest political lies—
Rarely spoken aloud, yet believed
With the force of shouting—
Is that America has a one-party problem.

It is difficult not to assume
That if only he could
Present his case better,
They would listen.

But after some time,
The notion falls flat,
And he’s left with the realization
That they would also be silent
If God himself were making the case.