St. Antony’s Cave

            The other day my gastroenterologist called me up and asked me how my stomach was doing. About two weeks ago my GP called to check on me. The week before that I heard from my chiropractor and dentist. Can you believe that? Of course you can’t, because only salesmen make sales calls. Professionals don’t “reach out to you”; you do to them when you need them. Makes sense. Best use of their time, right? This is true for all the above but not pastors. For them the paradigm is upside-down.

The first two are real. The third is a term coined by me, but it means the same as the first two. My research assistant, Dr. Richard Strickert, Ph.D., showed me this. I brought up Dataism in Bible Class; he thought of the reductionism of a book he read some 50 years ago; and I thought of Edellism when he emailed me about it. Let’s get a view things clear: No one in the Bible Class knew what Dataism was, they thought I was saying Dadaism, the 20^th century avant-garde art movement which is a really funny place for nerdy, techy, math and science people to go. The second thing to make clear is, I won. This is the first time the Boomer beat the Millennials. Third, Dr. Strickert is NOT my research assistant. He has forgotten more math, science, and research that I have ever known or will know. The fact that he remembered reading something 50 years ago when I have trouble with 5 days ago shows who is assisting whom.

I always wanted to write something like “The Sunscreen Song” (1999) or better still Gordon Sinclair’s 1973 “The Americans.” However, I would be greeted with the platitudinous insult, “Okay Boomer.” Okay, then, I’ll let someone else do it.