The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Down at the Little Church in the Ravine they brought in a new minister, Rev. Baxter. He’s replaced Pastor Paul’s Bible thumping, fire and brimstone, Hell and damnation sermons with ‘prosperity preaching’. Forget worrying about the eternal furnace of Hell as punishment, imagine the temporal rewards of riches Right Now. “The Lord,” Rev. Baxter intones in unctuous, perfectly enunciated promises, “will reward you with fiscal manifestations for your belief in His good works. Ask,” he tells the flock, “and you will receive.”

This is good news in the pews. The South End, never really as worried about punishment after death as the one they live daily, was more than ready to receive money, not manna, from Heaven. That bunk about the meek inheriting the earth stuff Pastor Paul occasionally mentioned paled in comparison to the high wattage of an eternity of blistering boiling retribution. Brother Baxter promised the earth and heaven too and forget about being meek and modest. Ask for the moon. Ask for more! You deserved it and when you got it, that was proof of your worth, that was the Keys to the Kingdom, hallelujah!!

“Have faith in the generosity of the Lord,” Rev. Baxter admonished with his wide gold tooth smile and his expensive watch sparkling occasionally beneath the sleeve of his purple robes, proof itself of the truth in his words. “He will bless you until the end of your days. He will make you rich. There is no shame in wealth, only evidence of your devotion and the Lord’s beneficence.”

Well, he is the minister, the congregation reminded skeptics who quoted that chestnut about a rich man squeezing through the eye of a needle trying to get into Heaven or whatever the hell it said, better to be poor and miserable, old time mumbo jumbo, suffer and ye shall receive. Maybe it was time to try Rev. Baxter’s version, they argued. Try the caviar of optimism instead of the gruel of pessimism and self- denial.

Christmas, it looks like, has come to the South End to stay and God, if Brother B. is correct, is going to be a whole lot better than Santa. Folks at the Chapel are making their lists and checking it twice. Amen to that.

I want to clear the air of some serious misconceptions about my plea for donations to buy a jet that can reach my followers in the extreme corners of the earth spreading the Word of Skeeter, doing Good Works. Some of the yammering critics, no doubt liberal elitists driving around in fancy Teslas and Lexuses, have spread the faux news that I have three jets already. Believe me as ye believe IN me, I haven’t got three jets. I have a pickup truck about 8 years old with two bullet holes in the passenger door panel that aren’t actually bullet holes, they just look like bullet holes. You spread the Holy Word of the Church of the Profane, trust me, heathens will come out of the woods to attack old Rev. Skeeter. The truth would set them free, but some folks, not you folks of course, some folks just don’t want to be free.

Just another reason to help me purchase that luxury jetliner. You’d need a surface to air missile to attack the Reverend then! And if that ever happens, I’ll just step it up another notch and see about one of those Space X reusable rockets Elon Musk is building. Closer to Heaven! Closer to Heaven!

So no, I do not have 3 jets. Sorry to disappoint my detractors. I don’t even have 3 trucks. And if you help me with this turbo prop jet, I promise I’ll donate my truck to a worthy cause, how’s that? The Lord helps those who help themselves, we prosperity pastors like to say. We like to say it a whole lot. Almost a mantra if we were Buddhists or something goofy like that. But of course we’re not. We’re simple preachers, trying to spread the News in this era of Faux News, and hoping to show, by example, how the Lord showers his blessings on the Deserving. And you need to know, the donations you give will return to you a hundred fold. I know, it sounds counter-intuitive, but Faith will guide you and keep you. Blessings, my flock!