There’s no accounting for propriety. Piety either.
A priest, an alien and a humanoid walk into a bar… wait… wait… no… check that…. My bishop says there’s no way that’d ever happen.
Backstory –
For a long time now, Bishop has been a weekly IV Words e-blast subscriber. Since I only see names, email addresses and approximate IP geolocations, it’s never been clear as to which denomination Bishop adheres. And, frankly, I never cared. He liked my writing enough to follow the blog; that’s all I needed to know.
It was a little unexpected, though. After all, IV Words isn’t exactly the purest in terms of being on the right side of organized Christian religions’ views on what is allowable, or at least appropriate, for their members, let alone their leaders.
For example, IV Words is a strong proponent of women’s rights, especially the right to choose, and rights overall for everyone regardless of color, creed, gender identity or sexual orientation. Most Christian churches are not pro-choice, many don’t even allow women into their official hierarchies even if they do talk a good game and they simply cannot manage to wrap their understanding and empathy around LGBTQ+ members. As for language, well… let’s just say profanity is no stranger to these pages; the F-Bomb has been known to drop from these flying fingers on a semi-regular basis. And overall, from what I’ve experienced and seen, many religions are not big on progressive ideas.
I hear “church,” but my mind hears “conservative.”
Your religion says you shouldn’t
believe in aliens? No worries.
The IV Words universe is open to everyone.
I don’t mean to pick on Christian religions. Certainly other faiths and their adherents have their own issues. But we are talking about a “bishop,” here.
Anyway, yeah. It has been remarkable to have Bishop following this bullshit-calling, profanity-laden and strongly live-and-let-live blog.
At the same time, that “anything that doesn’t hurt someone else is just fine ’n’ dandy with me” philosophy means there’s nothing exclusive about IV Words, either.
You say you’re the Devil himself? By all means, c’mon in!
All are welcome in the IV Words universe.
That includes this Bishop, other bishops and cardinals. Not to mention Buddhists, Muslims, Taoists… whatever.
That said, I’m clearly not much on organized religion.
I often quip that I’m a recovering Catholic. I grew up in that faith, went to church every Sunday, catechism or CCD (Confraternity of Christian Doctrine) every Wednesday night, confession several times a year and the Stations of the Cross every Easter season.
The guilt-ridden angst that comes with indoctrination into a vision of God as one who sends people to hell for various infractions?
Check.
It was so ridiculous that the nuns who taught catechism had us calculate how many months or years we’d have to spend in purgatory for specific sins.
- You swore? That’s three months. The “F” word? Six. The Lord’s name in vain? That’ll getchya two years!
- Disobey the parents? Two months. No biggie.
- Kill someone? That’s gonna be at least three years.
- Impure thoughts. Lust? Oh jeez. That’s one of the seven deadlies. Thanks for playing, but you’ll be skipping over purgatory on your way straight to hell. Do not pass GO. Do not collect $200. Unless you go to confession…
Not. Even. Joking.
Does it bother anyone else that lust is worse than murder in Christian dogma?
But I digress….
Back to Bishop.
He’s ridden out a lot of the BS-calling, F-Bomb-dropping, hypocrisy-outing posts. No problem. He even gave some of the posts the thumbs up on social media a couple of times.
Until….
At 6:45 p.m. CST on May 27th, the blast containing a post titled “Aliens, Humanoids & UFOs,” went out. It’s about a story I wrote three decades ago regarding an alleged alien abduction, as well as the soon-to-be-released report to Congress from federal agencies regarding how much is known about the “phenomena.”
9:25 p.m. – Boom!
Unsubscribed. No more Bishop. Just like a UFO – GONE, a fast-fading trail of light the only indication that a life-form was ever there.
It seems reading about crooked politicians, young women who wear – gasp! – jeggings to school and at least one irritating son-of-a-bitch who pitches his banana peel onto the top of the dumpster at the local park every morning… none of that’s a problem. But suggest things might be bigger than this little ol’ spec in the universe that we call Earth, that there’s more out there than the Bible says the Christian God oversees/controls? That’s too far out.
Everyone’s got their limits, I guess. To twist a timeless cliché, there’s no accounting for propriety. Piety, either, for that matter.
Or – to be fair – who knows? Maybe Bishop was simply getting too many emails overall. Perhaps he didn’t have time for the weekly e-blast; people do get busy. Or he simply decided he didn’t like my writing style, after all.
Whatever the case, somewhere, out there, aliens are shaking their giant green heads in humored chagrin.
As for me? I am definitely going straight to hell.
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