The Gospel of Richard of Lubbock, Part the First

The fact of the matter—as a matter of fact—is always another story. And each story is a proliferating weed. Thus, hindsight is inevitably and necessarily wrong. Or rather, there is no hindsight. No looking back. Even if with all your heart, you have shut your eyes to peak away from the future, your memory remains a figment of it. This is the ridiculous and fertile germ that infects this grandly apocryphal Gospel of St. Richard of Lubbock.

These lines and the scenes they describe are naught but the bronchial paths of Wisdom’s Lung. “We are not to find wisdom, rather we are inhaled by it.” So said Richard, as he sipped his soup.

Richard Renders Judgment Against the Ministers of the Tiny Gospel:

Men trained to be happy—most wearing hats and looking old—lined the streets of Texas. Everywhere saying nothing, but handing out “the Word.” Many were very thirsty—some of them actually melting. These men stood with crooked arms sprawled and hands holding tiny tomes, infesting the sidewalks like clammy and smiling brambles. Each poor soul who passed through this sweating gauntlet was stuck with some kind of Bible…some kind of very tiny Bible. Its cover was the color of an overripe lime (just the kind of green fruit you might expect from this kind of foliage), and Gold print indicated that each contained The New Testament, as well as Psalms and Proverbs (each book measured exactly 1.75”x.25”x .15”). Richard who has recited this account for all to hear then proclaimed, “given the size of these books one cannot believe that they contain Psalms and Proverbs, rather than just Psalm and Proverb! The New Testament is not printed in these bibles…unless it is a new New Testament that expresses its wisdom with far fewer and shorter words than the original!”…(to be continued)