The Last Testament: A Memoir (38 page)

¹⁸
Yea, I could ramble on and on about prayer stats, but most likely even this brief discussion has already grown tedious and a little too “inside baseball” for most of you.

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If anyone wants to learn more, send me $4.99 and I will give thee a 10-pack of prayer cards.

²⁰
Each card has an exciting action picture of the prayer in front, and on the back, statistics for every year they’ve been praying; plus, all packs come with a string of chewable rosary beadgum.

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Collect all five billion!

CHAPTER 4

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So: do I answer thy prayers?

²
I will now answer that question, in two ways.

³
The first way is by assuring my flock that every single prayer of thine is
processed.

⁴
As an example: let us say that tonight thou wert to offer up a prayer; for argument’s sake, let us call it, “O L
ORD
we just got this puppy three months ago, and the kids love her, and it’s going to break their heart if it dies from this stomach thing the vet’s saying she has now, so please give her a break and let her poop it out or something. Amen.”

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Within a trillionth of a second of its utterance, that prayer—not only its words, but its emotions, context, and complete spiritual gestalt—is sitting in the inbox of one of my hard-working undercherubs in the Department of Entreaty.

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Then, within five to seven business days, it is fed into a device whose fathomless complexity would dwarf mankind’s power to comprehend it.

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To conceive of its like in thy three-dimensional universe is impossible; so I will simply call it the celestial equivalent, of what thy limited imaginations might most accurately envision, as a Dell Inspiron 580 Desktop.

⁸
(I cannot stress enough, that the actual machine
looks nothing like a Dell Inspiron 580 Desktop
; indeed it is invisible and transmaterial.

⁹
As I said, my analogy is merely a rhetorical device, made so that thou mayest fully grasp the salient point:

¹⁰
Our new iPads haven’t arrived yet.)

¹¹
This machine then quantitatively analyzes the prayer using no less than 143 different metrics; not just the obvious ones, like PPB, PCE, and VMG, but others, such as selflessness, eloquence, and ROOI (recognition of own insignificance).

¹²
The results are then plotted on a 143-dimensional chart; and each of these charts is folded into millions of other composite charts profiling specific demographics: evangelicals, for instance, or male thirtysomething suburban beseechers, or those who refused to give money to homeless people within the past six months.

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And this ever-fluctuating matrix of data is then broken down by a team of quantitative angelysts; who prepare a daily report based on their findings, seeking therein patterns, and trends, and numerical significance; and this report then, and
only
then, finds its way to my desk;

¹⁴
Where I immediately get around to skimming it over.

CHAPTER 5

¹
L
ine; but do I
answer
thy prayers?

²
Let me address that question the Jesus way: with a parable.

³
Every year, the president of the United States receiveth over ten million letters.

⁴
It is the full-time vocation of a small army of decreasingly idealistic apparatchiks to read and reply to these letters.

⁵
Some of these replies are to the effect of, “The president appreciates thy support.”

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And some are to the effect of, “The president appreciates thy concern.”

⁷
And some are forwarded to the Secret Service for further investigation.

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But each is duly answered on White House letterhead; and though each recipient knows in his heart his epistle never made it within eight security-clearance levels of the president, he is still somehow grateful to hear even a distant echo of his childhood belief that those in charge heed the will of the people.

⁹
But once in a great while, a letter will come across a flunky’s desk that happens to fold in perfectly with a policy item the president was already seeking to advance.

¹⁰
And through the usual bureaucratic mixture of accident and self-interest, that one letter will make its way to the Oval Office.

¹¹
The letter is genuine, but reads as though custom-written by the president to fulfill his purpose; for so numerous is the correspondence he receives that it is inevitable he receives one such letter; usually dozens, but he only needs the one.

¹²
And so phone calls are made; flights booked; hotel reservations secured;

¹³
And now it is the night of the State of the Union address; the president is speaking; he is laying out a broad vision of something; the language is grand but general;

¹⁴
Until, at a certain critical moment in the speech, he changes tone.

¹⁵
“This week, I received a letter from Mrs. Stephanie Henderson of Enid, Oklahoma.

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She is a hard-working American; a single mom who pays her taxes and plays by the rules; and she devotes her life to her three kids.

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Last month, Stephanie was laid off from her job at the lumber mill.

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Now, the good news is, a new mill is opening across town on June 1, and they’re hiring.

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The bad news is, Stephanie’s unemployment benefits run out at the end of April.

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Stephanie wrote, and I quote: ‘Mr. President, I can’t tell you how much passage of the Omnibus Extend Unemployment Benefits Through the Month of May Act would mean for my three kids.

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It would make all the difference between them living out the American dream, and drawing straws to see which one gets eaten by the other two.’

²²
Well, Stephanie is here with us tonight, and Steph, I am pleased to say that tomorrow, because of you, Congress is going to pass the OEUBTMMA—or as I like to call it, ‘The Stephanie Henderson Act’!

²³
Stand up, Stephanie!”

²⁴
And Stephanie bashfully stands, and waves, and basks in the applause of the nation’s lawmakers; for her it is, indeed, a dream come true; more than she ever imagined would happen that awful day two months ago when she was laid off, got drunk, went home, watched
Ellen
, screamed the kids down for dinner, wrote her first letter in over 15 years while ducking airborne Spaghetti-O’s, and drove drunk to the mailbox.

²⁵
For
her
, a prayer has been answered.

²⁶
I will leave it to thee to discern the relevance of this anecdote to the rest of this section.

²⁷
In the meantime, I offer my own simple prayer to the Men (and Women) Downstairs:

²⁸
Humanity, I pray that you find it in your hearts to purchase many copies of this book;

²⁹
Because that is a thing that I want.

³⁰
Amen.

EFFUSIONS

(“On My Favorite Things”)

CHAPTER 1

¹
F
avorite ice cream: butter pecan.

²
Favorite color: infra-red.

³
Favorite drink: Grey Goose extra-spicy Bloody Mary.

⁴
(I mean that not mirthfully; I love a good Bloody Mary; it is what primordial soup would have tasted like, had it existed.)

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Favorite animal: dog.

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Full credit to humanity on this one; it was ingenious of you to breed so many different varieties.

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For though I did make them as companions, at the time of Noah there were only two kinds: cocker spaniels (like Sparky and Pillow); and sphinxhounds, which had the heads of dogs but the bodies of lions, and were 65 feet high.

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That thou wert able, in but six generations, to breed them down to Chihuahuas speaks volumes to thy talents in animal husbandry.

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Favorite flowers: daffodils and lilacs.

¹⁰
(Yea, I am confident enough in my Godhood to say that.)

¹¹
Favorite plant: Venus flytrap. 50 billion insects have died in them, and not a
single one
saw it coming.

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Favorite continent: Antarctica; and evidently it is thine also, as thou keepest importing more and more of it to thy shores.

¹³
Favorite monster: Godzilla.

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Favorite rocket scientist: Goddard.

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Favorite mathematician: Gödel.

¹⁶
Favorite former name of the capital of Greenland: Godthåb.

¹⁷
Favorite method of sending packages: Guaranteed Overnight Delivery.

¹⁸
Favorite domain registrar: Go Daddy.

CHAPTER 2

¹
F
avorite universal law: the third law of thermodynamics.

²
Favorite subatomic particle: any flavor lepton tastes fine by me.

³
Favorite element: helium, because I love balloons, and because it makes thy voices sound so funny.