Saints preserve us.

 

Hot, wet American summer.

Yeah, don't get excited by the title. It's just been really rainy. 

Saturday I was visiting friends a couple of hours away, and left at the perfect time to hit a torrential downpour. The forecast had warnings about this, but basically said it was a threat of scattered thunderstorms. 

Some scattered. 

I ran into it about twenty minutes into the drive, and it stayed with me until I basically hit the clubhouse turn. Flooding, sirens, flashing lights, huge gouts of water fountaining out from those crazy enough to drive in the right and left lanes and risk hydroplaning. A good time was had by all. (Note: No good time was had by any.) 

You think these August thunderstorms will last a couple of minutes and break up, right? Ha. Ha. He laughed hollowly.

Not my worst driving in the rain, though. I once had to speed eighty miles through the night in an endless Florida downpour to catch a flight. I was not as seasoned a driver then as I am now—had been driving for less than ten years at that point—and had never driven through such a prolonged hard-weather system. You know how you retain brief reels of events in your memory, like snapshots with audio? I had the radio on in the rental car to try to stay focused and calm, and I remember peering intently at road signs while Bob Seeger's "Katmandu" was playing. Wikipedia says, "The song was featured in the soundtracks of the 1985 film Mask, the 16th episode of Freaks and Geeks, the tenth episode of the eighth season of Supernatural, and in the 2009 documentary Journey to Everest." And in my drive from hell. I will always associate that song with that drive. 

This past weekend's drive was longer, but the rain was not as consistent. Still, with the massive shore traffic and the driving skills of others that have made the northeast famous, it was rosary time. 

In other driving memories, the only time I have totaled a car was hydroplaning in weather like that, driving to work. When it happened, I was alone on the highway in broad daylight. I was not surrounded by thousands of other cars in the darkness. 

I tried not to think about that. Instead I kept my focus on the lines and the car in front of me. 

You know how you settle in behind someone who knows what he's doing, going a proper speed? I did. In the darkness I memorized the shape of his taillights. I stuck with him. He was my new best friend. We would part somewhere up the road, and I would wish him well. But for now, he was the greatest guy in the world.   

The last twenty miles were almost anticlimactic, with the rain stopping. But boy, was I happy to see my house.  

So it was a heck of a drive, but by God’s grace I kept my head and made it home. Maybe that's an important lesson to remember for the less immediately dangerous but extremely nerve-racking months ahead. 

Last thoughts: 

1) None of these drives were my scariest. That one was caused by a light snow that was slick as ice. Literally wrecks all over the highway. My one-hour drive home took four of the craziest hours I have ever spent behind a wheel.

2) I was glad that the Beloved Mets' night game was on the West Coast and was only a couple of innings along when I got home. Because if I had been listening to the game later, when they blew a grand slam and lost, that might have caused me to crash. 

Gloria, in extremis.

“This life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness.”

My mom loved Christmas dearly, and she instilled that love in me. My dad really seemed to think anything out of the normal work routine was a waste of time and money. Dad had had no religious upbringing. Mom had had plenty, but when a death in the family plunged the survivors into chaos, with the real threat of crushing poverty, it seemed to have drained all hope in God out of her. 

So here I am on Christmas morning, praying for them both. In my darkest days, bouncing from thoughtless atheism to agnosticism or to flirting with paganism, I never stopped loving Christmas. It was like the net that God used to keep me from drifting away from Him entirely. 

Folks in the neighborhood going big on Christmas spirit.

At one point in my childhood Mom decided we should start going to church -- although not Dad, who was uninterested and worked seven days a week anyhow -- but I believe that her heart was never in it. Kids can tell. If Mom is just doing it because a friend thought it would be a good idea, or because Mom thinks it will keep the kids from growing up bad, but has no desire for the thing herself, kids know. If Mom doesn't really care, why should we? The experiment didn't last more than a few months. Then it was back to the bulk of my faith formation being episodes of Davey and Goliath (because there was little else for kids on Sunday morning in those days, young'uns).

But Mom sure did pray, and mostly because of us lousy kids. Rather than the Our Father or the Glory Be she prayed the "What did I do to deserve this, Lord?" And she wasn't saying it to be funny. 

I have found that there's a real problem with praying in extremis only, having done a lot of that myself, and it's that the heart in those times cannot bear anything but instant relief from the terrible situation that brings on the prayer. But as that relief is usually not forthcoming immediately, despair rapidly follows. Whereas those in a greater habit of devotion are usually able to muster patience and hope in darkness. My mom had a million wonderful attributes, but the ability to find hope in dire situations was not one of them. 

I'm a Catholic now, and I do try maintain some discipline of faith, but it's always going to be a little like speaking a second language to me. My main language is that of fear and pessimism -- the language of my people. But Christmas I knew of as a word of hope in a long book of terror and darkness.  

I really love this banner. I don't know if it's really old or just made
to look old, but it's beautiful. 

I wish you a very happy Christmas and a blessed new year. Keep the light shining -- darkness cannot defeat it, but it sure as hell is always going to try. 

The Hand that writes.

I was asked about writing a religious novel -- not one with religious themes, but a straight-up story where faith is crucial to the plot. And I have to say, while I would love to write a Ben Hur or The Robe or a story set in the modern day where a character's faith is central to the plot and miracles occur, I don't think I'm qualified to write such a thing. I'll tell you why. 

It's not because I don't have faith. I believe in God, I believe in Christ. But I also can't speak for them. A writer of this kind of work generally wants to show the miraculous, if subtle, work of God in action in the characters, and I think that'd be presumptuous of me. I'd be a terrible scriptwriter for the Almighty. 

Little Sally is dying! But her father comes to You and prays! Okay, now here's the scene where You heal Little Sally.

Sally [dies]

What? 

Well, it happens. We know it does and we're sorry it does. God is sorry it does. Dickens was sorry it did when he killed off Little Nell. (Oops, spoiler alert!) It's a fallen world and all too often the very best, most sincere prayers have to be answered with a no. (See also: Gethsemane.) Am I as a writer supposed to decide when God would make that decision? Am I to mislead readers into thinking that's how it works? I get sore enough when I read a historical novel where figures of the past are made to dance to the author's pipes rather than act as the real men and women would. One best-selling novel I refused to finish because I thought it did such a poor job with famous men of the past. If we can't get, say, Wellington right on the page, how are we going to get the incomprehensible God?

This I suppose is why Catholic writers like Evelyn Waugh and Flannery O'Connor and Walker Percy didn't write stories where God reaches in and produces desired outcomes. And yet they are (or some are--looking at you, Evelyn) infused with Christian life in one level or other. However, I don't think I'm up to writing those kinds of books, either. 

Faith is the most important thing in my life, and it surely can be found in one form or other in my writing. I just don't think I can make it the utter focus of a book without falling into error. And if I should lead my readers into error, kindly put a millstone around my neck and drop me in the Hudson. I aim to entertain, not lead others in bad directions. 

Why trespasses?

Friend and correspondent Mr. Philbin weighs in on Sunday's blog entry concerning the enduring popularity of the Olde Englishe thys and thines ("and you forgot Art," he adds, "as in who ART in Heaven"). He writes:

"Fred: You gave us the KJV translation, but I notice it asks for forgiveness of our debts as we forgive our debtors. BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT PEOPLE SAY. They say 'forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass.' So if that didn't come from the KJV translation, why is it so ingrained in us?"

To which I say, Well, you dirty dog, Philbin! You ... that's actually a darned good question. 

And thank Heaven it is one dealt with online by someone more knowledgeable than I am. 

Richard Beck on the Experimental Theology blog addressed this in a short item ten years ago,  The source of the popular version of the Lord's Prayer, which includes that King James Version thees and thys, is the Anglican (i.e. Episcopalian) church's Book of Common Prayer, the compilation of prayers and rites going back to 1549. The translation of debts as trespasses, Beck notes, came from the 1526 William Tyndale translation of the Bible, a translation that predated the original King James Version by 85 years. 

No doubt Tyndale had a great influence on the KJV editors, but they did not use his same translation of the word for Aramaic words for debt and debtors. 

As for the Book of Common Prayer, that was a step I should not have let out when I addressed this topic. It is impossible to overstate the importance on that book on our culture, especially the 1662 edition that held sway for more than three hundred years. That's where we get the version of the Lord's Prayer people in America know best to this day (although God is said to be "Who art in heaven" not "Which art in heaven" as in that book). 

The Book of Common Prayer is also where we get the marriage rites seen in all the movies ("Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this congregation, to join together this Man and this Woman in holy Matrimony; which is an honourable estate, instituted of God in the time of man's innocency...") as well as the graveside rite ("Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear brother here departed, we therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ" as dirt is shoveled on). You'd think everyone in the movies who dies or gets married, who is not specially designated something else, is an Episcopalian, although only about one percent of American adults identify as such. 

Okay, Mr. Philbin, you got me on that one; I hope you enjoyed your trespass on this blog. Now hit the road before I'm led unto the temptation to smack ya one!

Missing thee.

It's never going to stop being strange to me, how in American churches we spend 99% of the Mass speaking like twentieth-century humans, and then the Lord's Prayer comes up and we're back in the 1600s. "Hallowed be Thy name...."

I think about this from time to time, mainly because I wonder:

1) How did "thee" and "thy" and "thine" and "thou" get shoved aside by "you" and "your" and "yours" and, uh, "you"? You was once the plural form of thee. Nowadays if we want to do a plural version of you we're forced to say youse, you lot, y'all, all y'all, and even sillier things, depending on where you are. (Contrary to popular belief, even the Amish don't use thee, thou, and thy when speaking English.)

2) Why have we stuck with the old construction on the Our Father (and some other ancient prayers like the Hail Mary), but not elsewhere in Mass? I don't know of any churches that use "thee" and "thy" except in the Lord's Prayer, and more modern ones have broken the tradition. Not Catholics! 

3) Is it dumb to keep theeing and thying when we don't speak that way normally? 

Courtesy of BibleInfo

Okay, so, first: What happened to thee? Merriam-Webster asked that musical question, "Why Did We Stop Using 'Thou'?" To quote from their piece:

Formerly we used thou as the second person singular pronoun (which simply means that we would use thou to address another single person). Thee was used in the objective or oblique case (when referring to the object of a verb or preposition), and thou was used in the nominative (when indicating the subject of a verb).

The thing is, one couldn't go saying to the king, "Hey! Thou king!" For some reason the privilege of office -- maybe to stress that one was not just talking to the king, but to everyone in his army sworn to defend him as well -- required the plural. Ah, but as Old English became nuttin' but a cheese and Middle English took over, the democratization of the language brought You to the masses: 

Initially you was used to refer to a person of high social standing (such as royalty, who would be addressed as “your majesty”) but soon came to be used as well when speaking with a social equal.

While dabbling with the Society for Creative Anachronism in college, I learned the classic insult: "I do not bite my thumb at you, m'lord, I bite my thumb at thee." Thee's fightin' words! 

Aside from insults, thou was mostly used for either servants or the socially intimate, but that faded over time as well. 

Okay, so why do we still use the form for the Lord's Prayer? Tradition! 

In the original King James Version, in Matthew 6:9, when Jesus is preaching the Sermon on the Mount, it's rendered in English this way:

After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

In Luke 11:1, the prayer is slightly different: 

And he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth. Give us day by day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.

The King James translation was not the first translation of the Bible into English, but it was the premiere English-language Bible available between 1611 and 1769, so its impact had staying power. It was the Bible brought to the American Colonies. Further, when Benjamin Blayney created a revised translation for the Oxford University Press in 1769, he retained the thees and thous. In many houses, if there was any book at all, it was the KJV; if anyone heard any book read aloud anywhere, it was in church. So that's one way to nail down a particular manner of speech, even if the language is changing rapidly outside, by having the language reflected in the most crucial point of culture. 

As modern versions have arisen, using the current idioms such as you and yours, we have found that the thees and thys are so stuck in us culturally that it's hard to change. Even the US Conference of Catholic Bishops uses an updated text, and yet it's almost certain any American Catholic you know will go for the thees and thys. Heck, even people who know nothing of the Bible but have some cultural awareness of the faith will be theeing and thying when they think of the Our Father. 

So: Are we being dumb by using thy for the Our Father? If anything, is it an insult to call God by the singular pronoun, when we wouldn't have done that to Old English kings?

I'm not so sure, actually. We testify that there is "One God, the Father, the Almighty," who although the first of the Holy Trinity, is one God, not a pantheon. In that case, since His Son taught us the prayer to address His Father, it makes sense to not only use but insist on the singular pronoun for the Lord's Prayer. On the other hand, a prayer that addresses the entire Trinity would need to have the plural pronoun. The most prominent one of those is the Glory Be, or Gloria Patri, which names Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but uses no pronouns. 

I've decided not to argue with anyone either way about this. People have gotten awfully weird about pronouns lately. 

Yes, we should use the updated language used in the very authorized Bible upon which our English-speaking church relies. But tradition is more important than ever in this era, an era that wants dearly to take every possible tradition, everything from longer ago than the nineties, burn it, and take a dump on the ashes. 

In England, the country that gave us the great King James Version of the Bible, Christians are a minority for the first time in 1500-odd years. What follows when a nation turns from faith in Christ is never good. At this juncture, we'd better hold on to all the great traditions we have. 

Back in the tube.

Long-suffering readers may recall that back in February 2020 I had a spinal issue that put me in the hospital for a couple of nights. At that time the Chinese Death Virus was just a rumor for the most part, but a month later we were all wearing masks and gloves and desperate for toilet paper. 

What with COVID and all, I didn't go to see the pain specialist in person again until last month, for a follow-up. I wanted to know if he thought it would be safe for me to get off the medication I was on for nerve pain, the antidepressant Cymbalta (duloxetine), which seemed to be useless for my mood but great on nerve pain. Also great on making me have to nap. I don't think I've made it through more than five days without a nap since he put me on it. But, if you recall the harrowing details of my hospital trip, you can understand why I've been scared to stop taking it. 

He suggested I get an MRI and see what my lower back looked like now. 

So Saturday morning, I was back in the tube. 

This time it was at a local radiological clinic rather than a hospital, and the staff was great. I wondered if I would feel once again like I was being buried alive, but I guess I'm getting to be an old hand at this. I got no music, no peephole to the outside world, but I just closed my eyes and lay still as the tech moved me into the machine, and stayed like that for the next twenty minutes. Of course my ear started to itch as soon as I was inside. With nothing else to do, I started praying, and my first prayer was Lord, please stop this ear from itching. And it did, soon enough. 

Some people find the noises scary in the MRI, but I almost found them soothing. The vibrations felt nice on my back. I almost fell asleep. Then again, I'm currently a napaholic, and I've also had a long history of falling asleep in the dentist's chair during procedures. 

I thanked the tech when it was over and went about my day. I'll be seeing the doc on Thursday for the results, and I hope maybe he can give me a jab with the steroid needle and take me off the pills. I love to sleep as much as anyone, but this daily one-to-two-nap schedule is cramping my lifestyle. 

It's not an active lifestyle -- closer to inert -- but it could be much better. Wish me luck!

Funeral in the time of COVID.

The obit said it would be a Mass, but it actually wasn't. I wonder if the family or the pastor decided against an actual Mass, knowing how popular the deceased was and how they would have to turn away mourners if the ceremony was to be held in the church, in compliance with state edicts on how many people may be inside a church, as Chinese Death Virus ravages the nation.

I'm not sure I can honor myself by calling the deceased a friend. I certainly admired him, and saw him many times. I was never part of his close circle, though. And he now has the singular distinction of being the only person I knew personally to die from COVID -- at least so far. The last time I saw him, in January, he seemed healthy enough, for an older guy with preexisting conditions, but the next I heard he was in the ICU, and he died on Ash Wednesday. 

So the funeral ceremony was held outdoors, in fog, beneath heavy skies. The hearse pulled up; the casket wheeled under a small tent near the cemetery grounds. But even this was all for show; the deceased was going to be cremated at a later date; the casket would be put back in the hearse and taken away. 

The ceremony began. A laptop was set up so some mourners could see the livestream. There was a reading, a brief homily, a eulogy, and a blessing, and it was all over in half an hour. The family made an announcement that there would be a reception... later, at some unknown date, when the Chinese Death Virus was no longer ruining everything in the world. 

So congratulations to the Chinese Communist Party, for taking yet another head through its malfeasance and wickedness. And God bless the family, the wife, the kids, the grandkids, who are deprived of a beloved man, and have to give him such a diminished farewell. 

And God, please restore our nation to sanity before it's too late. Unless it already is. 

Wait for it.

Lent is a time of testing and trial and waiting, but Easter is the great celebration at the end. Well, it may be a celebration spiritually, but physically, we're still enduring testing and trial, and most of all we're still waiting.

I had high hopes in the president's earlier wish that things would be normalized by Easter, but my wife was less optimistic, and also correct. This is bad for the churches, of course, and businesses that rely on a boost from Easter. I think I feel worse for all the families for whom the holiday is a time to get together and do fun things like brunches, Easter egg hunts, and run screaming from men in scary bunny suits. Traditions!

We would have gone to the vigil last night, although I was beat by the end of the day and would have had to slug down an enormous mug of coffee. It's worth it. Even our medium-size parish is home to majesty at the Easter Vigil. The church is dark, the pews are full, the candle light works slowly up from the back as the announcement is sung that Christ is the light that has broken the darkness, and soon the whole place bursts into light singing hallelujah. I love it -- even though it plays heckin' heck with the dogs' schedule and makes me stay up past my bedtime.

Instead we will watch Mass online today. Although sometimes it feels like I'm isolated, I know we all are; the priest will be almost completely alone, maybe with a lector present.

Oh, well. Lord give us patience, and let's pray as hard as we can that we can get back to our lives, and that this damn Chinese coronavirus will be gone for good long before Christmas. Amen!

Swedish death cleaning prayer.

For the last couple of years, since the publication of Margareta Magnusson's book on the theme, we have been hearing about the idea of performing Swedish death cleaning on our domiciles. The idea is not to clean everything within an inch of its life (remind me to tell you of the time I broke a toilet) but to get rid of everything unnecessary so as not to burden our descendants with our crap when we reach our Date with Destiny.

I must interject that I think it only became a thing because we love Swedish stuff -- skiing! pacifism to the brink of annihilation! socialism that supposedly works! cheap furniture! -- and if it were called German Death Cleaning, or North Korean Death Cleaning, or perhaps Cambodian Death Cleaning, it, uh, probably wouldn't have caught on.

"Gentle" and "Death" go so well together

Family Handyman has a concise series of tips about the means to perform this particular Swedish action. And I admit that the idea has its appeal. I would love to bring up a dumpster and just get rid of a mountain of things I don't need. On the other hand, it seems to play right into the anti-humanism of the modern intelligentsia, seeking for us to make ourselves as invisible as possible as we wait for the end, eating our kale and praying to Gaia.

But we cannot pray to Gaia for our eternal souls, as Gaia is just a planet and has no mind, no authority, no life beyond its temporal existence. Therefore we need to come up with our own Swedish death cleaning prayer, to say at eventide, as we prepare to sleep -- and prepare as well for the Big Sleep.

Here's what came to my mind, anyway, based on the 18th-century prayer:

Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep
If I should die before I wake
All this crap I'll have to take
My cases stacked with books unread
Will still be here when I am dead
The junk that all my walls does haunt
Like some damn nineties restaurant
The vinyl, tapes, CDs, and more
That did my precious music store
A load of clothes, especially pants
That fit me once, but now, no chance
Each bill and paper safely filed
And old computers sit here piled
Hammers, drivers, nails, and wrench
Left scattered on my cellar bench
Attic, basement, full of junk
Attest I'm no Franciscan monk
Kitchen stuff once much regarded
Used one time and not discarded
The bathroom has things undesired
Bad aftershave and meds expired
Don't ask about the cars below
The garage is just a horror show
Every room has too much crap
Now I'm scared to have this nap
Since I can't take the stuff, I fear
Oh Lord, you'd better leave me here.

Not a bad idea.

The quality of mercy.

Happy Easter to our Orthodox brethren!

Meanwhile, on the Roman side of things, today is Divine Mercy Sunday, which is a very helpful day indeed.

Celebrated the first Sunday after Easter Sunday since AD 2000, this day is a chance for Catholics to really set things right. For some, it is a glorious example of the boundless mercy of God, as revealed by Jesus to St. Faustina. For others, it's a makeup exam after flunking Lent.

How does it work? Well, at my parish there will be a celebration this afternoon featuring veneration of the famous picture of Jesus and the Sacred Heart (the Divine Mercy Image), with Reconciliation (Confession to you old-timers), exposition and benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, and recitation of the Divine Mercy Chaplet.

I'll just pop down to the neighborhood chapel.

The Chaplet of the Divine Mercy is particularly potent, as Jesus has promised mercy even to hardened sinners who pray it. A chaplet sounds like an olde-tyme cape, or a little teeny church, or a short British gentleman, but it is defined as a "part of a rosary featuring five decades." And as a wreath worn around the head. And "a small molding carved with small decorative forms." English is weird.

Anyway, sounds like a good deal, right? It's even better than that. Because we don't just pray for ourselves, but for every human being on the planet. In the rosary, in place of the 50 Hail Marys, we pray, "For the sake of His sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world." That means all of us palookas, every one. And we need it.

Of course I have a commitment I must attend to during our parish ceremony, so I'm going to miss it. It's a pity, because that mercy sounds like something I could definitely use. For the times I've been cross and angry and yelling at my dogs or at people (the dogs, at least, usually don't deserve it), for the times I have gotten mad at parishioners driving the wrong way in the church parking lot (it's not that hard, folks!), for the times I have asked St. Celestinia, patron of asteroids, to send just a couple of wee little meteorites down on the heads of mine enemies, for these things and others I could use me some mercy. It doesn't even have to be totally divine; just, like, 80 proof divine would be great.

And I could use some divine education. Imagine how embarrassed I was to find out there's no St. Celestinia! No wonder I got no meteorites.

Psalt of the earth.

A few years back I was looking through the old Psalter at Lent in the hopes that exposing myself to more of the Bible I should become upright, upstanding, even outstanding in my goodness. Nothing ever seems to do it for me, though. I'm going to have to keep praying that Jesus drags me over the finish line.

Still, it can't hurt. As a side benefit, the Bible is the cornerstone of Western civilization, and anyone who wants to understand Western Civ should have more than a passing acquaintance with the book.

Since part of a psalm is read every Sunday, it seemed like a helpful part of the Old Testament upon which to focus. Read a few psalms a day and you're through all 150 before you know it!

Well, it proved to be a tougher assignment than I expected. I have the attention span of a 12-year-old, so sticking through some of the longer psalms is work. Theology is hard!

The psalms are heartbreaking in some cases, fearful, trembling, or joyful in others. They reflect the honest and strongest emotions of a people who know God knows exactly what they’re thinking. Many of the early Davidic ones reflect the various perils he encountered, so there’s a lot of similarities among them---my enemies are after me, they really suck, why won’t you help, I trust you Lord.

I can’t help feeling grateful that I was born when I was and not some time in the distant past, before air conditioning, cheeseburgers, and modern dentistry. If your man Fred had been a writer in the time of King David, the psalms might have been a much different and probably lousy affair. Here is my attempt at a psalm (Psalm 13½):

For the leader. A psalm of David. (By Fred! Woo!)

How long, LORD?
Have you totally blanked me out?
I’m in big heaping piles of trouble here.
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I go on whining and whining
Like a sniveling kid whose balloon broke
And he lost the top off his ice cream cone
And he didn’t get to go to the circus
Dude?
Sorry: MR. DUDE Sir?
How long will my enemy keep beating on me?
He kicks my hienie
He slaps my face
He calls me Herbert
He knees me in the groin
Which was great on Jerusalem’s Funniest Home Videos
But didn’t win the 10,000 shekels.
Help, LORD!
I’m in trouble here!
I am not kidding, even!
Don’t let my enemy get away with this!
He’s a real jerk!
But I trust in your mercy.
Everyone around me doesn’t care,
But you still care.
No matter how much I whine
And lie
And cheat
And sin
And---um, could you forget about the last few verses?
Grant my heart joy in your salvation,
And I will sing of your mercy,
Because no one needs it more than I do,
Except my enemy
Who is a jerk.
Thanks, God!
(Sorry about the “Dude” stuff.)

And then David would probably have separated me from my neck.

"Zing! Like butter."