Total Recall

Don’t stop me if you’ve heard this one …

There was a woman who claimed to talk with God — not to Him, but with Him. The tale was well-told around town, in which there was also a priest.

The priest one day after Mass asked to speak with the woman and when they’d settled into chairs he said, ‘I’m told you speak with God.’

‘Yes, Father,’ said the woman. ‘We’re told to do so by the Holy Church.’

‘Yes,’ said the priest. ‘And He also speaks with you?’

‘Yes, Father,’ she said. ‘We’re told of times like that, too.’

‘I’d like you to do something for me,’ said the priest.

‘Certainly, Father.’

‘The next time you talk with God, and He talks with you, I want you to ask him a question for me, then give me a call — no matter what time.’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘What wd you like me to ask Him?’

‘Ask Him what sins I confessed that week.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Sins,’ said the man. ‘Ask Him what I confessed. Then call and tell me what he said.’

‘Alright, Father.’

Several weeks passed and to be entirely truthful about it the priest began to think less about what he’d asked until it wasn’t generally at the fore of his thoughts.

Then early one morning the phone rang.

Early.

‘Hzzh,’ he said into the phone.

‘Father, it’s me,’ said a voice.

The priest sat up in bed.

‘Yes of course,’ he said.

‘Talked with God, again.’

‘Certainly; what’d he say?’

‘I asked him what you said.’

‘Yes, yes — of course. And … ?’

‘About what sins you confessed.’

‘And?’

‘He doesn’t remember.’

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent

Coyotes and Christians

I am not saying Christians are like coyotes. [For that, some could cut caustically to coyotes are like Christians — tricksters, roaming in the dark, feeding on the dead … ] Simply noticed — somewhat in passing, as it’s said, having attained, apparently … achieved? … some kind of state where nearly anything I hear,

Read More »

And Did Dostoevsky Say ‘Beauty Will Save’

Short answer: he did not. Neither did Prince Myshkin, that we know of. Likely both believed it. Beauty — in the person of Christ — will do so. And clearly D wrote of M in The Idiot to explore art and beauty and ugliness and salvation. But did he say it, and did he believe that

Read More »

What I Recalled Watching Netflix

[Television is educational.]   One Saying the same stuff over and over looks like you have different things to say. Two If you’re ever in a below-average film or streaming series, and you beat the tar out of a guy, in a house, and you gaze down in both some shock as also a certain

Read More »

Seeking the King

A line everywhere misattributed to Chesterton reads thus: The young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God. This line is not from the great [several senses of the word] man who recently celebrated his 150th birthday, but the mid-century most unmodern novelist Bruce Marshall. The words — which do

Read More »

Random

Why Not Two Cupcakes?

Something we know well and another I know little. Remember … re-member … before we begin Dallas Willard on knowing — namely … named-ly … not intellectual apprehension but interactive relationship. Each and both come from the same aim: good and right and lovely when well and harmful on all counts when not, as is

Read More »

The Amazing Amazingness of Amazing Stuff

Amazing. Did it creep up on you as well? This overuse of the word “amazing” just sort of … appeared. Amazing. Here I was just a moment ago trying to read about the Dodgers, and Don Mattingly wanting more instant replay — they’d lost recently to the Brewers on a questionable call to end the

Read More »

It’s Alright, I Am A Jerk

Don’t drive angry. And don’t drive ignorant. That’s the lesson of the Bill Murray movie, eponymous to the name of yesterday’s Punxsutawney festivities. The movie is now 20 years old, and still has an 8.1 ranking at IMDB from nearly a quarter million users. Watching the movie is a ritual now, like “Elf” or “A Christmas

Read More »

For M

The great story is the search by the lover for the beloved. I love M. I am in love with M. [angry as well; in love and in pain, simul.] To love as Christ loves. (ask, seek, knock). God pursues. Christ stands. Spirit groans. I am he. I seek her even if she will not

Read More »

Related

Chiclet Chick Lit

In virtue of two females in the house reading it I have discovered a new (to me) genre and given it a new (to all) name, which title appears as the title of this post. Hermione is patron saint of females pre-sexual still satiated when tittering gleefully over Nancy Drew and Ned Nickerson, with New

Read More »

Pas De Duh

Is ballet a sport? The question is asinine in at least two ways. Of course it is, whether one is asking does it qualify as one or simply based on the assumptions implicit in the question itself. To put it as stupidly, would a Ferrari fit in my garage? Is Rivendell a better deal than

Read More »

Pieta

I don’t think next year will be so different from this year. Which after all was not so different from the one before. But I think you can be different from last year and I can. Which after all may be true for you as it was also for me.

Read More »