Better Late Than Never

Yeah.. sorry I'm late. Ya know how it is.. Leaving Las Vegas and I missed the plane. It was only about 45 minutes till the next one but after losing most of the 3rd Church's Send Sister Jo-mo On Her Yearly Retreat Before She Kills Everybody Fund money (a tax deductible charitable organization btw), on slots and roulette in less than 48 hours.. well I was a bit down. I thought: Hell.. I'm gonna go back feeling as shitty as I did before I left. And I'm sure I'm still gonna need to write a goddamn sermon. I mean fuck me with a stick of lit TNT if someone actually wrote a sermon for this week... Etc.. etc.. bitchfest.. etc..
I was also (and still am actually) a bit hung-over.
Anyway.. I was in pretty sad shape and moped around the Vegas airport losing even more money.
Then I get on the plane. An airbus actually. Could it get any worse I thought. Of course it could.
I had the window seat of a 3 seater. And already sitting in the two seats next to me are these two kids. Kids! Not more than 6 years old. A boy and a girl. Alone on this plane. Sitting there like a couple of Animanics.. except I think they'd been drinking.
Never mind Jake it's Chinatown. I think to myself. And I shuffled past em into my seat.. I can feel them eyeballing me. It was creepy. So we're on the tarmac for about 20 minutes and I'm getting uncomfortable. I keep expecting them to do something strange. But they don't and we pretty much take off with out incident.
So I decide to start writing the sermon. I pulled out my lucky (ha!) 3rd Church pen. But before I could slip into any kind of holy reverie the boy began to babble.
"Where ya goin? What cha writin? You alone? I'm with my sister…"
At first I ignored him. But he was a spunky & persistent little SOB.. So I put down my pen. And we talked.
Their names were Paula and Peter. And they were both 6 and a half years old. They were twins though Paula was the older by minuets. Peter had entered Paula in some kinda Cinderella pageant contest thing that goes on in Vegas. She had come in third (outa 20 tots) in the preliminaries. Seemed pretty good to me but I believe Paula was a bit miffed at brother Peter for involving her in the first place. Anyway.. she didn't say much at first.
Of course they wanted to know about me. And so I told em. For the first time ever I talked about Nebulisim while in "the flesh" so to speak. (Well of course there was the incident with Mo.. but that was all by circumstance.) Anyway.. I told em all about the church.. about the faceless congregation. And our new organ.
And they were fascinated.
They were fiery and inquisitive. They both began shooting questions and observations at me. It seemed they saw everything in life as a spiritual metaphor. TV shows and characters ("The character is the same but actors keep changing") food ("angelfood.. devilsfood?"), switchboards ("suppose when you die your soul goes through a heavenly switchboard and if you're put on hold that is purgatory and.."),, psychotic episodes ("If Dr Jekyll is a saint and Mr. Hyde a sinner how can they be judged?")
They had these wide eyes and these great big open minds.. and they let me run rampant through em. And it felt good!!
And then of course I knew that this was what it was all about.
The money gambled away.. the drunken sex with strange men.. the 28 gallons of booze I consumed.. it was all just something to do. It was just a reason to miss the plane. Something to fret over and dwell upon until the twins came along.
I felt.. I don't know.. I guess for lack of a better word I felt.. clean.
We exchanged email addresses and I gave them the church's Web address. Hmm.. ya know they could be here now even. I kinda hope so. It's nice to know a new generation of Nebulists might be taking root out there in cyberspace. Not to mention that little prick Peter swiped my lucky 3rd Church pen!!
So now get off your knees but stay on your toes people!!
And I'll see ya next week!

 

the word was delivered at:
¶ 7:35 AM