What the hell?!

Do you believe in hell? I don’t mean the hell you just went through spending the holiday with your creepy relatives. I mean the “real” one, with the fires and demons. It’s a pretty ridiculous notion, isn’t it? That’s what Bishop Carlton D. Pearson realized while watching the news one day back in the 1990s. It was a report on children starving during the Rwandan genocide. Supposedly, they were consigned to hell because they hadn’t accepted Christ as their savior before dying. The idea struck Pearson as abhorrent — it had to be that God loves all mankind so everyone is already saved. And from that day on, he no longer believed in hell.

He subscribed to the doctrine of universal salvation, which covered Muslims and gays too. He lobbied Congress to pass protections for gays. Well, none of this sat well with the higher ups at his church, which declared him a heretic and said anyone following him “put at risk the eternal destiny of their souls.” Yikes! We don’t need that sh*t!

His congregation dwindled from thousands to bupkis. He went from being a big macher to small potatoes. He died last Sunday in Tulsa at age 70. His agent often asked him if he regretted taking the positions that cost him so much. “Don’t you think you should have just shut up?” But Pearson never looked back. Bullshit is bullshit.

He is survived by his mom, five siblings, and a daughter, none of whom is at all worried about going to hell.

Rest in peace, Bishop.

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I loved 11D in the puzzle today. The clue was “Get ready in a hurry,” and the answer was SCRAMBLE THE JETS. It inspired me to make up these riddles:

What do eggs and jets have in common?

A. They can both be scrambled.

B. They are both NFL teams, except for the eggs.

What can be scrambled but never with onions?

Ans: Jets

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The MILLION MOM MARCH was in the puzzle clued as an anti-gun group, but it triggered a rant by egs about different “moms,” Moms for Liberty. You heard of these folks? Who could be against liberty? Here’s what Wikipedia says:

Moms for Liberty advocates against school curricula that mention LGBT rights, race and ethnicity, critical race theory, and discrimination. They have also campaigned to ban books that address gender and sexuality from school libraries. Founded in January 2021, the group began by campaigning against COVID-19 protections in schools, including mask and vaccine mandates. Moms for Liberty is influential within the Republican Party.

A newsletter of theirs from an Indiana chapter highlighted a quote by Hitler which they at first tried to “explain” but then apologized for. (Don’t you hate it when you get caught and have to pretend to be decent?) And one of their pastors in the Philly chapter in charge of outreach was revealed to be a registered sex offender. He spent 3 years in prison for sexual abuse of a 14-year-old boy, sort of a special form of outreach. Yeah, let’s put these folks in charge of the library books.

It has 285 chapters in 45 states and over 115,000 members. God Bless America.

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43A is “Japanese zither,” and the answer is KOTO. Ever hear one?

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Hey, CHER popped by too, at 54D: “Singer whose likeness was the highest-selling doll of 1976, surpassing Barbie.” Anybody remember those dolls? They were only available for a few years and are collectors’ items now. You can snare one of these for about $200.

This poem from today’s Writer’s Almanac is by Jon Loomis and is called “At the Lake House.”

Wind and the sound of wind—
across the bay a chainsaw revs
and stalls. I’ve come here to write,

but instead I’ve been thinking
about my father, who, in his last year,
after his surgery, told my mother

he wasn’t sorry—that he’d cried
when the other woman left him,
that his time with her

had made him happier than anything
he’d ever done. And my mother,
who cooked and cleaned for him

all those years, cared for him
after his heart attack, could not
understand why he liked the other

woman more than her,
but he did. And she told me
that after he died she never went

to visit his grave—not once.
You think you know them,
these creatures robed

in your parents’ skins. Well,
you don’t. Any more than you know
what the pines want from the wind,

if the lake’s content with this pale
smear of sunset, if the loon calls
for its mate, or for another.

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Michigan 30, Ohio State 24. Hail to the Victors!

Good night, everybody. Thanks for popping in.