Fly fly fly to heaven
We have a new friend. We met him at the mission, where he has earned the nickname John the Baptist because he brings (drags) people from the wilderness (streets) to Cross & Crown all of the time. He takes care of them. I've been teasing him about the new tattoo he has on his hand. It's basically artwork of the inside of his hand inked onto his skin - metatarsal bones, tendons, muscles. He had brought the tattoo artist to the mission one week - a nice guy who told me he has been in the biz 20 years and is part of the group suing or fighting the courts or legislature to lower the exhorbitant insurance requirement for operating tattoo parlors.
But now the artist has "boogied." Sometime over the weekend, the artist had seen John come back from the ATM, and when John went into the bathroom without his wallet or fresh pack of cigs, well, temptation overpowered the artist. When John came out, the wallet was cashless, the cigs and the artist were splitso.
After he told us that story, he commented on the necklace Lydia wore. It's one of those prayer box necklaces. (As I typed this, I am remembering that the first one that her daddy had bought her was stolen when our house was burglarized a couple years back. So we had replaced it.) But this necklace is faulty. The hinge does not keep the prayer box closed so it springs open often.
So, I popped off to John the Baptist that Lydia's prayers keep falling out and we have to keep praying them and putting them back in. (What sound theology I'm teaching my children!)
Oh No, he said. Those prayers go straight up to God. The angels carry them for you.
I'm grateful for his ready answer to my religious error.
Posted in: on Tuesday, April 17, 2007 at at 9:27 AM
