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Chapter 1: The Beginning, see

  “The watchman said, The morning cometh, and also the night: if ye will inquire, inquire ye: return, come.” Isaiah 21:12

  Once upon a time, sisters and daughters, on the pretty planet of Timnalauren, there was a cool cat named Luke the Hun--with a white rawhide Stetson, and a Hawaiian shirt, and Bermuda shorts, and some real high-quality football shoes which he wore just for hacking around. But this was not just any ordinary Hun. Oh no, sons and brothers, make no mistake. This was the eldest son of that famous Hun general Chief Otis--the baddest brass-knuckle brawler in living memory.

  Tracing his lineage backwards, Luke was descended from a long line of leaders, back through Chief Otis, who was the son of deadly Chief Owen, who was the son of overly assertive King Komenachenao, who was himself the half-son of the temperamental General Strike-- whose armies were given both to long marches and furious assaults, but also extended periods of inactivity (and even moping.) After that point the pedigree became a little cloudy, as the Huns were a nation wanton and warlike, a people fearless and fierce, and were hence more interested in scar-wrapping and scar-ruing than in family reunions, more given to causing catastrophe, cataclysm and chaos than to tracing endless genealogies. But Luke would have been at least kin or cousin to most of the great Hun champions, all the way back to that faded founder of the Hun dynasty, the mysterious and mythical Chief Derelict, about whom legends were told and songs were sung--about conquering armies, conquering princesses, and drankin’ lossa hooch.

  Obviously, coming from such noble birth, big things were expected of Luke. “Sorry to disappoint you” had become one of his favorite phrases.

  Not that Luke had always been a disappointment: his own accomplishments were age-appropriate. As a teenager he had captained Hun High to the regional football championship twice, as a highly-touted, highly-scouted, opponents-always-routed option quarterback. He had fought admirably in the summer border wars, demonstrating proficiency with the sword, the club, and the elbows. He had always had high grades at Hun State when he was completing his Certificate in Applied Battle Tactics--though some concern had been aroused when Luke had preferred intellectual courses such as “Mapping and Logistics” and “The History of War” over the meatier courses--Mauling 300, Intimidation 400, Slaughter 404, Scimitar Seminar, and Creative Gettin’Em. What really raised eyebrows though, was Luke’s decision to forgo the select invitation to do a Master’s Degree in General Studies at Hun State, and to transfer instead to Iowa State1 for a BA in Fine Arts and a Master’s in Agricultural Science.

  “Er, we love you anyway?” Chief Otis had ventured bravely. Luke’s mother, captured Czech princess Cissysue2, had not needed to say a word, but gave him a secret smile and was proud inside. That was the happiest moment of Luke’s life, as he thought back on it, knowing for one brief time that someone accepted and loved him despite the better angels of his nature.

  But now Luke was sitting in the swamp, sixty leagues south of Hun-Country, playing blues guitar by moonlight. It was one of those warm late-spring nights with a cool breeze, which almost feel like fall. So you can look at life as though summer is coming, and everything is opening up, or you can just as easily trick yourself that the hard rains of November and the hard ice of winter will be closing in on you soon. It’s up to you. Feeling bleak to begin with, Luke chose the latter. So now there he was, playing some mournful, scornful, strength-failing, soul-wailing, note-bending, heart-rending, all-or-nothing Blues. “Feelin’ it”, as the saying goes. All-or-nothing in the sense that sometimes that kind of intense blues heals you, gets it out in the open, and you feel like yourself again, but sometimes that kind of blues destroys you and you sink deeper into the pain and depression and never get free... But then, Luke had never been one to do anything halfway. Life is short and we only have so long to plumb the depths and scale the heights, so we’d best be gettin’ to it, was his opinion.

  “If anyone asks me, I prefer being happy,” Luke had once said to a friend, “but sorrow is part of being human. So if I have to, I’ll take that too. And make the most of it.” That was a few weeks before his mother had died. He wasn’t as keen on sorrow now that it was no longer theoretical!

  Several more months had passed since then, and Luke still wasn’t over the loss. Chieftress Cissysue had been the one person in Hun-Country to whom he had felt closest. Not because he was a mama’s boy exactly, but because there was goodness in her, whereas all the other Huns were full only of callousness and violence. Luke knew he shared that hereditary temperament too, and he would have been fully capable of leading the Huns in battle, and fulfilling his role in the ‘great Hun scheme of things’. “But it’s just not right,” something inside had been telling him--his mother’s voice, or his own. Luke would stand on that. He had always been one to fight for a principle. (Or a peanut butter cookie.)

  Unfortunately, it was difficult this time. For years Luke had enjoyed the luxury of getting to put off the future while idling at college, learning things at the library, playing cards in the dorm, leading his team on the football field. (Iowa State had improved and gone to bowl games with Luke at QB, but they never improved quite enough to beat Nebraska--you have to take the good with the bad, remember.) But now, with his degree in hand and his father talking retirement, it was time to face that age-old crisis of morality and mortality: “What do I want to do with my life?” Careful now. So he sat still in sadness and pondered for a few seconds, and then he ripped into a Stevie Ray Vaughn tune, coz it was too hard to think about stuff, but the Blues came natural.

  This last riff brought a response, however. Luke jumped when he suddenly heard a low voice from low-down on his left say angrily, “There’s a cracker3 makin’ a racket, and I’m a-reachin’ for my gun.”4

  With the hair standing up on the back of his neck, Luke looked around quickly with sharp eyes and a sharp knife drawn instinctively from his belt (even pacifist Huns are never totally disarmed.) But he didn’t see who was talking, so now he felt sad and tense.

  “Cat: down here,” said the voice. Luke looked down, and there in the water sat the largest, ripest bullfrog he ever did see, albeit with a scarf and a slouch-hat. “Howdy cracker,’ said the Frog, with an amalgamated accent, Southerner and Eastern European, “I am Solomon Glory, and this here is my lubly swamp.”

  Luke was startled to meet a talking frog. Sure, he’d met other talking animals on the pretty planet of Timnalauren, but it was still one of those things you never quite got used to.5 He recovered himself quickly and remembered his manners. “And a lovelier swamp I’ve never seen,” Luke praised in a flatter fashion, putting his blade away and offering his handshake, pointlessly: “Luke the Hun.”

  “Great. Nice to meet you. Now begone. My swamp; you loud. Wake up my wife soon if yer not careful, and then we’ll both be sorry!” the frog kidded.

  Luke looked crestfallen, and offered his apologies. “Sorry. I picked the swamp coz it seemed like the most abandoned and out of the way place to suffer. But wow, even here I’ve made a mess of things and gotten on people’s nerves--well, frog’s nerves. Ask me how bad I feel now.” Luke picked up his guitar and started to shuffle off dejectedly, (but he got his feet wet shufflin’, so then he decided to walk right.)

  “Cat, come back. I’s sorry. You stay, we talk, K? I didn’t realize you were depressed, I thought you were just loud and drunk. Maybe I can help give you some swell advice, now. Did I mention I have a PhD in Psychiatry from Johns Hopkins?”

  Luke was impressed by both the achievement and the coincidence. “Wow,” he said, “Wow.” Then he thought it over for a minute. He listened to the bugs singing, and felt the cool breeze on his back, and smelled the moist night-pleasant swamp air, and he decided that it was a good lonely night, and one can learn a lot about oneself, just by thinking on a good lonely night. But then again, sometimes also on a good lonely night it can be nice to have a friend there to make the night less lonely. Especially since this Frog was an expert-expert! “Wel
l Dr. Glory, I suppose it would be unwise to pass up the chance to consult with a learned professional such as y’self. Please, fix me up,” turning his palms up submissively, expecting to be immediately healed.

  The Frog smiled a confident smile, accepted the challenge and began his psychologizin’. “Now then, you crazy cracker,” he began in his best bedside manner, “tell me whati-sup.”

  “Well Doc, it all started when I was a little child...”

  “That’s where we all start. But cut to the chase, k? I ain’t gettin’ paid by the hour on this case.”

  “True. Okay, it’s like this Doc: I’ve got the Blues, coz life seems kind of meaningless right now. I mean, what are we all here for? For what should I be looking? What’s the meaning of life?”

  ‘Wow. Heavy trip man,” Solomon said, in a style that fluctuated between sardonic and sarcastic. “Y’know, I’m not sure a feller can answer that for another feller: it’s something you kind of have to work out for yourself.”

  “Thanks Doc, that’s real helpful,” Luke said in a not-really-meaning-it manner, scowling a bit and looking suspicious.

  Solomon Glory the Frog picked up the ‘what’s-that-advice-all-about’ tone in Luke’s body language, and hastily snapped, “Hold on son, I’m not done advisin’. I was gone to tell ya: I may not be the best person to come to your aid. I’m a psychiatrist after all. I deal with the nut-jobs,” (remembering to maintain his professional decorum) “And you’re completely sane, with normal questions about life. It’s good to have questions. Dat’s da best way to find answers. ‘If a man will begin with certainties, he will end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he will end in certainties.’6 You’re just askin’ the big important questions is all. Now who knows better to deal with big important questions than someone big and important? Me, I’m small and insignificant” (as he hopped to an adjacent lily pad to call attention to his short little legs, and so prove his point.)

  “Who then?” Luke asked directly, cutting to the chase as he had been instructed.

  S.G. the Frog smiled that sardonic smile again, and suggested with humility and even a little reverence, “Well, I can’t think of anyone bigger or more important than God. Can you?”

  Luke was taken aback, coz that’s not the stuff one expects from psychiatrists, who usually think they have all the answers themselves7 “God, huh?” in a not-ready-to-deal-with-that way. Fact of the matter was, Luke hadn’t given that option a lot of thought. There weren’t any churches in Hun-Country anymore anyway. He had known that his mother treasured a faith quietly (the only way she was allowed), and he vaguely remembered hearing childhood stories about Jesus, but bold arrogant warrior Luke had never found the courage or the curiosity to seek and learn more about it, and the later, more liberal Luke had just never found the time, what with his studies, and football season, and whatnot.

  “Who else would know the answers you seek?” FrogSolomon persisted. “Who better to talk to?”

  “Talk to God? How can I?” asked Luke, for whom prayer was an unfamiliar concept. “I don’t even know him. I don’t even know if God exists.”

  Solomon Glory gave a weird-lookin’ frog smile, and nodded knowingly: “Ah, but you are talking to me, and you don’t really know me, either! (Best way to get to know somebody is to start talking to them maybe. Ya think?) And you didn’t even know that I existed either...until you heard my voice.” As Luke digested that, Dr. G turned it into a gentle recommendation: “Just give it a try, son. Can’t hurt to try! But if you’re still not sure how to begin, maybe another friend of mine can help--he’s a preacherman that lives a few miles south of here. If you look for him, I’m pretty sure you’ll find him. Or he’ll find you...” The Frog reflected on that and added, “Like Master, like servant, in that respect.”

  Intrigued by S.G.’s strange bursts of spirituality, but not sure just how to respond, Luke got his guitar slung and picked himself up, and prepared to journey on. “Mighty thanks Doc. I think maybe you’ve helped me. At the very least, I feel like I have something I can try. A starting point perhaps.”

  “That’s the best place to start,” the Frog replied, somewhat tongue-in-cheek-and-out-of-it-and-back-in-cheek-again-Buzz-Mmm.

  Luke nodded, and turned to go, but then he had to stop and ask one more question, though he wasn’t sure if it was a big and important one: “To be honest, Doctor, I was startled that a psychiatrist would refer me to God. Because some people…”

  “Some people think God himself is all in the head? A figment? Man’s creation?”

  Luke hated to offend a frog of faith, but “Yeah… So what do you say to those people?”

  “What do I say to them?” Luke noticed the start of the smallest frog smile, as Solomon quipped, “Usually? I say, ‘Come back the same time next week.’”

  Luke smiled too, and in the moment of rapport he figured the frog would forgive another remark: “Hey Doc, meaning no disrespect, but what are you doing out here anyway? You, a talking frog, with a PhD no less, out here in the middle of a lonely old swamp. It’s at least a little unusual.”

  The frog-doctor chuckled. “True, but never underestimate the incidence of depression in a damp and dreary swamp. Great for bidness. Besides, my rarity just means I have the monopoly on local psychiatric care, and can charge exorbitant rates!” He laughed when he saw Luke start to get worried about a bill. “Truth is, I could probably run a more lucrative practice in the city. But it ain’t always important to be rich and famous. It means far more to be happy, and to be home, and to be loved. Speakin’ of which, I should be getting back to my pretty frog-wife Martika. Y’all will excuse me.”

  Luke smiled. “Of course. Hop on, brother, and have a swell evenin’. Thanks for the super-duper advice,” Luke said courteously. Then the Frog hopped away into the slime, and Luke gave a wave in the night and started star-rolling.