Holier Than Thou
The preacher got his latte and sat down at a two-person table in the corner. He took that first stupid sip and set the cup back down, because Starbucks did not make an exception in his case: it was too hot.
He took off the little plastic lid to help the cooling process along and looked around the room full of sinners. They sat and stood, some tapping the keys on laptops—university types—and some tapping toes in line waiting on that inept student of Coffee who leaned over the counter struggling with the simple phonics of “mocha” and “macchiato.” This fool ordered a “small” something-or-other, and the busybusybusies behind him smirked at the foreigner.
The preacher drew forth the legal tablet and the Lamp-Unto-Thy-Feet. It was Friday morning, and if he wanted to spend a Saturday of golf with a clean conscious he had to finish his next sermon. He flipped to a clean page in the tablet and an even purer page in his Bible and thought.
Like it did every week, his eyes opened a little wider and the idea rode down on a sunbeam…or maybe it was in the smell of the coffee…and filled him with inspiration.
He reached into his bag once more, but withdrew no sword from the sheath.
He approached the counter from the pick-up side, and repeated “excuse me” until a young woman in a stained apron stood still long enough to hear his prayer. “Do you have a pen I could borrow?” She turned her head back and forth with speed that could have only come from an employee discount. She snatched a pen from a coworker at the cash register and thrust it at him. Before he could thank her, she was already screaming about a Venti-Chai-Latte-Soy-for-Robby.
He returned to his seat and clicked the pen—a surprisingly good one—a couple of times.
This week his congregation was being treated to a sermon on honesty, which, looking around at these lawyer and academic types, was something the world had forgotten. He flipped from verse to verse in the Light-Unto-Thy-Path and added to his case the ones that best proved his point. He worked, fervently, with the words spilling out of the borrowed pen as though God himself were speaking and he was merely dictating.
“My lips will not speak wickedness, and my tongue will utter no deceit.” Yes, it was all there, and anybody with Heaven on the brain would be like this honest man.
He smiled in the right places and looked concerned where concerned looks were needed to enforce his points, and he felt quite pleased in that, within 30 minutes, he had composed a soul-touching, pew-filling, eye-opening sermon. Not a man, woman or child was going to leave his church on Sunday without understanding the value of living an honest, Christian life. And with that though, he clicked closed the wonderfully balanced and comfortable pen with a tip that was neither too thin nor too thick. He put it in his shirt pocket and picked up his bag and his purchase, which he had forgotten to drink, that grand was his moment of Holy and Creative enlightenment.
He took a sip on the way towards the door. Goddamn it. It was cold.
