Carpe Diem: 2017.07.01 YESH WE CAN

Hi, I’m Jim’s personal Lord and Savior (well, he might not put it quite that way). I live with him here is his condo in the room where he used to have the ‘indwelling’ of the Holy Spirit. But HS was always late with the rent so Jim threw him and his smelly pair-of-cleats out, and I’m in. Don ‘t feel sorry for HS; he’s a ghost, so nothing much affects him anyway (sometimes he’s a bird, so he can live in a tree).

My name is Yeshua ben Yusef, but you can call me Yesh. Still, most people prefer to call me Jesus (except Jim, who calls me “The Galilee Kid”) because people can’t say Yesh without somebody saying gesundheit back to them. So that’s me, the guy with the mother who was (and still is) a virgin. Yeah, I know, I haven’t quite figured it out either. Christ! (my other Greek name), that technically makes me a bastard. But if you think I feel bad about that, what about my father—no, the one down here, the carpenter—the word on the streets of Nazareth was that he was cuckholded by an angel. Mom, how could you!

            Well, that’s probably more than you want to know about me and my family. But, hey, maybe not. That’s why I’m taking this opportunity to plug my landlord’s, forthcoming book. Now don’t get confused, because Jim has almost as many names as I do. For example, this book is written by Sebastian Gerard, the nom de plume he uses for his “non-professional” works. It’s titled The Babo Gospels: Essays and Parables on Faith and Reason, and he is the Babo in the title, a name he has his grandchildren call him (I think he must owe some bad people a lot of money).

Anyway, I’m in the book a lot, so, call me a guy with a divinity complex, I’m happy to recommend it. Here’s how Jim/Sebastian/Babo describes his book.

It is sure to be banned in the Vatican, Jerusalem, Mecca, Lhasa, Benares, Salt Lake City and in the holy cities of other faiths around the world. So, save yourself a useless pilgrimage to one of those places and pre-order your copy, signed if you wish or dare, directly from UrbisMedia. Just send an email to [email protected] expressing your desire for metaphysical revelation and adventure, and we will put you on the notification list.

The product of a lifetime of religious indoctrination, theology courses, needless guilt, sin, forgiveness (maybe), reading, travel, arguments, apostasy, agnosticism, and downright fascination about the human proclivity to believe in a reality that putatively exists beyond our god-given (see what I mean) five senses are able to perceive—these “gospels” would, in the Middle Ages, probably have earned its author a toasty auto da fe by the Spanish Inquisition, or a more merciful swift decapitation by a Muslim’s scimitar in some Allah-forsaken desert town. (OMG, or execution by an English teacher for such a run-on sentence).

What I believe about belief, and what I know about knowledge, and why they don’t always meet up at the corner of Truth and Beauty is what this book is about. Yes, it’s personal. But then what is more personal than religion—born of fear and mediated by indoctrination at a tender and credulous age that there is indeed a right path between good and evil to the promised land of eternal salvation—it just always happens to be the faith fate has ordained we are born into. If I had been born in Nepal I’d be walking around in saffron robes spinning a prayer wheel (or annoying people who do). But, no, this book has a predominantly western, Christian slant. So it might be annoying to believers of the faiths that flow from some guy named Abe who God nearly got to kill his kid. (Note: killing your own son for some religious purpose is a big hang-up with God the Father.) Well, you get the idea. Buy the book, or risk the fires of eternal damnation. (Just a thought.)

Yeah, you can pre-order Jim’s book.  Paperback. Approximately 500Pp. $18.50 (free domestic shipping by Cherubim angels)

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