Welcome, welcome.

Our brains are quivering meaty bundles

that the story scrambles like eggs in a Denny's toilet.

Smack a brain with a meter stick.

Poke it with a needle or keep it awake for 40 hours and it starts misbehaving.

Our meaty bundles are unreliable and to this I say good.

I for one reject my brain. I wish to drown it. I wish to pummel it. Get out of me. I do not need you.

For what good is intelligence and control of bodily functions in the face of the story's demands.

If the story wants, we will drool, goo, fall, and flail.

If the story needs, we will slop, drop, sloop, and poop.

There is no need for brains here. For the story fills our heads with righteousness.

The story must be told.

Pastor Andrew, if you wouldn't mind, I would like you to come up here and read this psalm.

I do it myself, but I like to deny my brain privileges.

I want to make it testy, tempted, and teased, so that maybe it will treat me right.

Come on up here.

The Cooper family loved their Uncle Jeff because his arms did what they wanted, whether he was holding a baby or a carton of eggs, his arms might drop, spill, crash, smack,

or sometimes do a goofy little dance. And Jeff had no choice, for he was a coward to the story's whims.

At a funeral, Jeff's arms smacked a body, pulled it from the coffin in an imprompt to tango,

and when the ushers came to escort him away, his arms shook their hands, hugged their suit-coated chests,

then stroked their loving faces, though Jeff himself was screaming. At the hospital, where my nephew was born,

Jeff's arms picked up the baby, then opened a window and chucked the baby outside. Everyone was

...