The Heelers Diaries

the fantasy world of ireland's greatest living poet

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Location: Kilcullen (Phone 087 7790766), County Kildare, Ireland

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

ontological proofs for the existence of hamsters

Afternoon at the Chateau de Healy.
I am sitting in the front room.
MC Hamster is clattering around on her wheel.
MC Hamster!
Good name, eh?
Purchased on Monday as a gift for my nephews.
It is highly doubtful she'll ever leave the chateau.
And lo!
The door bursts open.
In walks one of my uncles.
It is the inimitable Uncle Scutch.
He espies Ireland's greatest living poet and approaches.
"You don't really believe in the real presence of Jesus in communion, do you?" he challenges.
I kid you not gentle travellers of the internet.
This is the sort of life I lead.
This is the sort of thing people burst into rooms to say to me.
Without even a preliminary hello.
"I do believe it," I said.
"Hmmm," mused the Uncle. "I didn't want to say this. But listen. Jesus was a man. Maybe the most perfect man that ever lived. Maybe even the holy spirit made him perfect. But he was just a man."
"If you think he might have been the most perfect man that ever lived," I replied, "why do you refuse to accept what he said about himself?"
The Uncle flung himself into an armchair.
For the next hour he subjected my faith to the most fiendishly intense scrutiny imaginable.
If you could have seen him, you might have thought he was having a whale of a time.
I'm telling you folks, Thomas Aquinas never had to put with this crap.
All in all, I'd rather be playing with the hamster.
At the end of our discussion, the Uncle raised himself and bid me a cheery goodbye.
He vanished as quickly as he came.
I sat there brooding.
I know I can only make the act of faith for myself.
I know also the truth doesn't depend on me proving what a clever fellow I am in any intellectual argument.
The truth is always true.
More.
The truth is as accessible to an old woman mumbling in a country church as it is to the greatest genius of the age. (Ahem.)
The truth is... democratic.
But it is not elected.
The Israelites once wondered: "How should we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?"
They were talking about the land of Egypt.
God alone knows what they would have made of the zoo that is the Republic of Ireland.

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