My Polar Valentine

Father O'Really's Comments about Global Warming Meet with a Cold Reception

Standup Comedy Routine meets Sermon at Our Lady of the Tickled Funnybone

One Mississippi, Two Mississippi, Three Mississippi...

Fifty-Nine Mississippi, Sixty Mississippi!

And cut! Well done. You may be seated. (Of course, by rights, you never should have stood up in the first place, since the bulletin features no authorizing asterisk for that purpose beside this initial session of "Meet and Greet" -- but we'll put your error down to a laudable desire to enter into the interpersonal spirit of the event, rather than any desire on your part to make a mockery of these proceedings by deliberately asserting your selfish will in the face of established church etiquette.

Still, one does think rather carefully about these things before typing them up in a church bulletin, and I own I'm a trifle hurt when I reflect on the attitude of cavalier indifference that you guys sometimes seem to adopt toward these kind of things... (Excuse me, folks: I'll be okay in a minute....)

True, this is only one instance of probably unwitting disobedience on your part and, in itself, is no doubt highly excusable -- if not even praiseworthy under the circumstances. It's just that... Well, let's just remember that the primrose path of dalliance is situated on a very slippery slope, indeed, and that --

There it goes again! That self-same grating noise upon which I have previously remarked!

How's that deacon? You think it was just someone's stomach growling? A likely story.

First of all, the Internet is not quite the treasury of fact that we tend to take it for these days. Yes, there are thousands of sites about the origin of Valentine's Day (and every other topic under heaven), but a brief perusal of a half-dozen of them reveals that they're almost all copying their facts (sometimes quite literally so) from the same handful of oft-visited online sources, all apparently hoping (or more likely just assuming) that those original sources were correct in the first place.

Secondly, I'm suspicious of pages that say things like "all that is known" about the North African Saint Valentine is that he was a martyred saint. As one begins to learn more about the personage in question from other seemingly more credible web sites, it soon becomes apparent that what the author of the phrase meant to say was that the information provided on their page is all that he or she knows about the saint, and that they're employing the royal "we" in a pronominal bid to camouflage their own ignorance, or better yet to camouflage their own lazy unwillingness to do even the minimum amount of basic research that a page such as theirs cries out for.

There! I heard it again!

What? Who? Where?

Excuse me a minute folks, Deacon Sedgewick here is whispering in my ear. How's that, Sedgewick? Yes? Yes?

I see. Thank you, Deacon.

It turns out that Deacon Sedgewick here is a professional climatologist, and he begs leave to inform me that a sudden global warming emergency in these parts would probably manifest itself as a catastrophically high flood tide, and that the ice sheets themselves would have melted long before they reached our unusually balmy longitudes here in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States.


While I certainly hope that he's right, I'm going to ask Deacon Shipley to keep looking northward all the same. Maybe Deacon Sedgewick is a little too occupied with impressive theories to have found time to watch the relevant television in this matter, but I for one have seen "Absolute Zero" starring Jeff Fahey, and let me tell you, the luckless residents of Miami were thinking just like our friend Sedgewick here... not in MY neighborhood...

Until that huge iceberg docked at South Beach!

True, that climatological about-face was apparently caused by a totally unlooked-for shift in the Earth's magnetic polarity, but my point still stands.

(Okay, my point is tottering a little, but it's still basically upright! In fact, my point is -- Let's put it this way: I am still very far indeed from shouting: TIMBER!!!)

I'm sorry, but I just can't get the tagline of that movie out of my mind:

"No Warning. No Time. No Escape. Miami's Never Been So Cold."

That's funny, I would have thunk that the Varga twins would be bawling again by now, what with all this talk of calamity -- How's that, Mrs. Varga? I've put them to sleep by my what? My "interminable harangue"? Why, I never --

Mrs. V., may I remind you that I'm currently signed up to buy six packs of Do-si-do Girl Scout cookies from your daughter Emma, and I reserve the right to cancel my order anytime prior to delivery day!

Interminable harangue, indeed!

Er, but I forgive you of course: That's my job, isn't it? Ha ha. (mumble mumble mumble... Interminable? mumble... Harangue? ...mumble.)

Right. Back to my sermon. Now, what were we talking about?

I remember it was something almost inexcusably off-topic, since I obviously should be talking about Saint Valentine's day today.

Oh, yes, I was mentioning how the seeming factual treasure trove of online information is often an illusion thanks to the common webmaster practice of liberally borrowing supposed facts from the same handful of high-traffic and seemingly authoritative sites that deal with a particular subject. I remind you guys, however, that Web pages can rank high in search results for a host of reasons, none of which has anything directly to do with the veracity or the reliability of the information that they provide.

So there.

Let's see: We now return you to your regularly scheduled sermon, already in progress:


Then, of course, there's the secular slant on Valentine's Day as proposed by our old orthographically challenged friend Geoffrey Chaucer back in the 14th century:

No sign of ice sheets? Excellent. That's what I like to hear.

Anyway, the point is that Valentine's Day is about love, right? And not huggy huggy kissy love either, I cry you mercy, but prayerful humble love!

Aye, don't give me any of that huggy huggy kissy business -- bah humbug!

Then again, one mustn't exaggerate. Clearly Chaucer was thinking of more than just fowls when he poetically underscored the communal aspect of the day.

Still, rest assured that when push comes to theological shove, true love (if I may so phrase it) is "agapaic" in nature, and "reeketh not of the sin-stained dust of human clay."

Hmm. I assure you that the last half of that last sentence was an actual biblical quote -- although I seem to have mangled it rather badly, I'm afraid. For starters, I'm not entirely certain that human clay CAN manifest itself as dust, sin-stained or otherwise. Hmm... But you get the idea: Basically, today's sermon for dummies is: "Love Good, Sex Bad" (followed by a huge asterisk, of course, denoting the many subtle caveats that inevitably cry out for clarification after the bald-faced pronouncement of such a breathtaking generalization).

Oh, great, NOW everybody wakes up -- including the Varga twins themselves, I shouldn't wonder. Good morning, Emma and Sanji! Congratulations, you got through the whole sermon without being swallowed up by an ice shelf -- from Greenland or anywhere else!

Incidentally, that's my sermon for next week: "Love Good, Sex Bad" (followed by a GINORMOUS asterisk, of course!)

Of course, you will need to show I.D.s at the door for this particular (ahem!) "harangue." As for the kids, guess what, guys: You've got a vacation next week! Whoo-hooo! That's right, take the day off: Go do some fishing or pick some blackberries or something. And then return to your homes around 12:30 so you can see your newly chastened parents once again treading what we preachers like to call "the straight-and-narrow," yes?

Oops, not so fast, gang: You don't get off THAT easily. I need to "pray at you," so to speak, before you go.

Let's see... Oh, I know:

Dear Power, in which many of us believe -- some more strongly than others, of course -- indeed, some more specifically than others -- as, for instance, I myself believe merely in your abstract though hopefully beneficent existence, as of a force, an impetus, a Will, though I firmly side with the Agnostics who find ritual excesses on your behalf in intellectual bad taste in so far as they seem to hubristically presuppose knowledge of which human beings are not yet privy, and perhaps can never know given the well-documented roadblocks to veracity that our very senses place in our way -- as, for instance, most people make lousy proofreaders because they -- like everyone -- are programmed to see what they expect to see, not what is really there. Hence the writing of the phrase "Springtime in in Paris" becomes "Springtime in Paris" to them, for they heedeth not the duplicate preposition --

But this is not the time for me to lecture you, of all people (of all things, entities, forces, whatever) on the seemingly purposeful fallibility of human sense organs. (Nay, can we even CALL it "fallibility" when the small errors thus created are necessary, or at least suspiciously beneficial, for inspiring us with a larger truth?)

But forgive me for rambling -- always assuming, of course, that forgiveness is an attribute that you possess -- which itself is admittedly a contested proposition, at least in THIS church.

Well! Notwithstanding these outrageously disproportionate preliminaries, my real point is this, God. (I may call you "God," mayn't I, if only as a convenient shorthand, for time's sake, as it were?)

Valentine's Day means love -- TRUE love -- and we should all go forth and love each other... well... truly.

Amen.

Right. Off you go.

You, too, Varga twins: And cheer up -- It could be YEARS before the Greenland Ice Shelf swallows up this church, much less this whole town of ours! You're good to go, probably for decades to come!

What? Mrs. Varga, I'm TRYING to cheer them up, for goodness' sake!