Our Lady of Perpetual Probation

The Bleeding Hands of Fate

Bishop Benedetto called me, “We need your help again.”  I recognized his voice, that odd combination of saccharine vowels and cigarette rasp. The Bishop had called on me and my investigatory services on several previous occasions. The last case I worked for Bishop Benedetto resulted in my arrest and a rather severe beating. Benedetto secured my release, quietly-eventually, and the church paid me for my services, but never apologized, never publicly retracted the accusations. I’d sworn not to answer any more calls from the Bishop, but I needed the money. Desperation makes liars of us all.

“Are you there?” he said when I didn’t respond immediately. “Did you hear me? We need your help.”

“Yeah, I’m here,” I said resignedly. “But I don’t know that I should be. Not after the last time.”

“Yes, well, we wouldn’t call upon your services again, either, except for this. It’s terrible. He’s been dead for fifty years and they still can’t leave him alone. It’s a desecration. You must help. The church will pay you, of course, handsomely, but you must help us. Please. You must help. ”

I hated to hear him beg in that croaky voice. “Bishop, please, take another Valda tablet and tell me what’s going on.”

“Someone has stolen the hands of Padre Pio.”

“Is that someone I should know?”

“Someone you should know?” the Bishop huffed through the phone. “Pio of Pietrelcina, friar, priest, mystic, stigmatist, and the venerated patron saint of January blues…does that sound like someone you should know? His feast day is celebrated on the 23^rd of September with…”

“September 23^rd,” I interrupted, “that’s my birthday. Quite the coincidence. I’m touched. And you say someone has stolen his hands?” Bishop Benedetto sputtered and fumed at the other end of the phone line. I knew, of course, all about Padre Pio and his bloody stigmata. I just wanted to mess with the Bishop.

And, besides, I don’t really go in for that mystic stuff. Talk to birds and angels, to trees and bees, but don’t talk to me about all that supernatural phenomena: magic, astrology, blitzkrieg bops, psychic healing, UFOs, and black steam… Inspired artist and mad scientist imagination are too much for me. I am the Never Wizard. Give me silver halide brilliant enough to fade away and I’ll solve your case. But silver particle physics, and silver mysteries and the host of related uncertainties have no traction with my simple mind.

I let the Bishop sputter on for quite some time before taking the details of the case from him. The hands of the beatified and sainted Padre Pio were secretly amputated after his death in 1968. He had, in life, often told people that, "After my death I will do more. My real mission will begin after my death." And, if Bishop Benedetto is to be believed, this proved true. Though the rest of Pio’s body was interred in an undisclosed crypt, his stigmatized hands were spirited away and put into a special reliquary. A secret order of mystic priests carried the box in their protection, walking the earth, meeting the faithful, getting into all sorts of outlandish adventures, and using the hands to bring about miraculous cures and deliverance around the world. They travelled covertly, never advertising their work, never drawing attention to themselves or their sacred charge.

But someone had found them and, in the dead of night, killed them and stolen the hands of Padre Pio. Many religious factions have a long and sordid history of relic theft. It’s considered a necessary ethical abomination so they’ve devised all sorts of justifications. Never mind the tortured leaps of logic required. Furta Sacra is big business, even today. But don’t try telling that to the good Bishop Benedetto. “There is no way out of here without them,” rasped the Bishop.  “It will be dark soon. There is no way out.”

God knows, the master would not approve; the whole thing’s been mishandled, but I did what I could. According to Benedetto, the Secret Priests of the Bleeding Hands of Fate had been attacked and killed in an abandoned warehouse down by the docks. Of course they were! Where else would something like this have occurred? All the ancient goblins and warlords are drawn to abandoned warehouses down by the docks. Manos! Gods of primal darkness, the hands of fate doomed these men. But I would do what I could.

It is the transverberation of the soul; he is attacked from within by flaming seraphs that pierce his poison heart with fierce darts, and eave him wounded. But still he walks on, walks right out of this world. He feels the breath of God in a particle accelerator, the breath of life in quantum equations. He is alive once more, and gasping for breath, and then he is gone. Psychoanalyze the cross mind out of view of punctuated beauty. The pain is immediate, blood and mind tripped, ripping from here and how to distant time and place unbearable – the suicide of the world - drive an invisible spike through wrist and foot.

I swung my flashlight back and forth across the empty expanse. Teenagers and hoods, derelicts and vagrants sometimes used these buildings but, unlike movie screen detectives, I never carried a firearm. Never needed a handgun. I didn’t see any criminals skulking about, with or without cloaks and hoodies. But there, in a heap, just as the Bishop had said, were the bodies of the Secret Priests of the Bleeding Hands of Fate, their corpses still dressed in cassocks of black wool and crimson silk left in a heap. The police hadn’t responded yet. No crime scene barricades, no human shaped tape outlines on the floor. How had Benedetto known? What was I getting myself into?

And there in the darkness of the warehouse with the sound of waves on the wharves beyond, I began to smell a miraculous fragrance. Was I beginning to hallucinate the healing powers of the supposed saint? Was I being handed a hex? Heading into hysteria? Headaches and heart guilt, unconscious at the altar, I did not believe. But that is when I heard the approaching police sirens and saw the flashing cherry lights through the warehouse windows. “Damn!” The Bishop had set me up again.

The cops outside set up with their high powered search lights, the brilliant lights of the long-deceased. They thought I was trapped. But I am clever. I am quick. A hatchway in the floor lead down to the cold water below. I had only a few moments to make my escape. I opened the trap door, then pulled one of the dead priests and propped his body over the hatch so it would shut with him on top of it as I closed it. I knew they’d find it before too long, but every second counts when you’re on the run from the police and from the momentous consequence of a solar eclipse. I dropped down into the water and swam for an hour or more before crawling up on an empty beach on the south side of town. From there I caught a bus back home. 

In my office apartment I shrugged off my wet clothes and listened to the messages on my answering machine. “Where are you?” it was the Bishop again. God, how I hated him and his dying luck hoaxes and his lying duck voice. “I thought you were going to handle this thing quietly! Now the police are involved and asking questions. Where are you? Call me!” I deleted the message and took a long hot shower.

Books I Didn’t Write

Here are eight books that I did not write / have not (yet) written:

#1–I Love Everyone -A high energy, conversational approach to meeting new people and making friends.

#2–Your Friend, Algebra–1,001 practical and fun applications of high school level algebra.

#3–The Saurian Call–Steamy dinosaur themed erotica.

#4–Over One Billion Reasons–A defense of, and apology for McDonald’s.

#5–Greisbach Hypothesis Is Best Hypothesis-written expressly to irritate my friend, Joel.

#6–The Big Book of Christian Internet Memes–Click and Share if you feel guilty about Jesus.

#7–The Ezekiel Diet–SPOILERS! It’s mostly dense bread baked over dung.

#8–The Life of Saint Helveticus: Volume 2 – Baptism through Fire-The second of a five volume work on the life of Saint Helveticus, covering the years between 1673 -1873. 

And here is one book that I did write: Muted Hosannas-a collection of poetry and photography. 

The Apocryphal Satirical Gospel of Saint Helveticus

It is only the most courageous of governors who are now taking a historically unprecedented stand against the television mind control of the President.  They are bravely looking into the flashing colored lights of that that devil face and shouting, “Fight on!” Even so, we remember less than 60 % of their number (and even fewer of their names.)  The humanist wire service rarely shows them except with their martyr mouths wide open. 

“Well, we’re right,” they insist in uncomplimentary poses.  “This is getting out of hand.”  But they are doing it, troubling themselves with the affairs of men and women when they should be closing the gates.  Dark and sinister spiritual attacks are being waged against us.  The creation of a world government appears to be unstoppable.  They have realized their vast majority and are exploiting it for their own gain, but they have no real power, only cute slogans.  Still they are shaking the world.

Listen to the quick, hard boot-heels of soldiers in the hall, clanking down the dim corridors.  These extraordinary measures have their government.  They stiffen.  They shriek.  They insert the keys into their secret surveillance equipment.  The sweat turns cold on my face to even consider it.  The very same angel of wars and contests will come down to the earth, a suggestion of this is found in the apocryphal satirical gospel of St. Helveticus.  The known number of stars in the 11^th and 12^th legions is unknown, but human beings may yet have a chance against death.

Liberals are little more than 32% of all atomic particles.  The so-called sexy spiritual is marked for eternal punishment.  The garish yellow and black stripes of the punishment are meted out, but taught nowhere.  This will be an advantage to major economic and political powers.  And here at last is the devil, with his abortifacients and laser gender reidentification procedures.  This is a problem for the good to solve, but the slant will always be toward the evil and the fatal.

The public remarks, recordings, and performances of the President should be taken as evidence of this evil.  He is the antithetical AntiChrist and the media is his worshipper.  The gospel will not get a second chance.  He has not been honest in any of his penny edition pronouncements.  He is over 100 years old, and as blasphemous and as vile as ever.

Ask this question:  Is the world leading our religious leaders to prefer mere modern physics over faithful interpretation?  The Communist Manifesto is still being mentioned in our public schools.  It has neither been dislodged nor discredited by the educrats who rule this nation.

The third angel pronounces doom from the stone bridge.

The elite group is already planning to create an open door for our enemies, and their “holy mother”.  They have grown up strong in the darkness.  They have grown up as cannibals.  Go through that door slowly into this strange loneliness.  The global government recognizes that it is being threatened.  When that kingdom falls, what future will it have to offer you?

I smell death.  I hear traitorous bees and their peculiar hum of insolence.  Hoist the flag.  Review the history.  See how they have turned their backs on a cowardly messiah and become the worshipper of the AntiChrist in leather and spandex costumes.  They forfeit their chance for eternal life. 

“It’s later than you thing,” Dr. Tarrec says to me as we come to the bridge.  He wipes his face and sighs.  “We can cross it, but either we or it will be destroyed.  The AntiChrist’s archers loose their arrows and the world cheers.  They are the incorrigibles of the Tribulation Period.”

There are too many possible errors in this unscientific thinking.  While he is living all quantum theories will be made inelegant and powerless – but the liberal media will not report it for they have become faithful worshippers of that tyrant at the end of days.

Saint Henry Bemis

Good Saint Henry Bemis, you were tormented in this life, cruelly oppressed by those who despise books and letters of all kinds, pray for us now; obtain for us the grace and favor we seek.  Please secure for us that which is the very best thing of all, time enough to read. Amen.

Pray for Us, Saint Helveticus

St. Helveticus was born in Spiez, Switzerland on the shores of Lake Thun, in the year 1627.  He was a tall, thin man with extraordinarily small feet.  After completing his education and several years of teaching at the University of Helmstedt in Germany, he returned to his native Spiez to continue his studies privately. Although he had, while still at university, perfected a number of alchemical processes, his intensely private nature made it difficult for him to lecture or to demonstrate his work to his students or fellow professors. His formula for a reverse transmutation of elements (turning Gold into baser elements like Lead) was described, but without any specific details, by many who were in attendance for his final lecture.

After returning to the place of his birth, he secluded himself within his laboratory inside the walls of Spiez Castle.  There he developed many more alchemical formulas - few of which have survived to this day.  The journals containing his work were mostly destroyed in a fire in 1873.  Hagiographers have poured over the remaining scraps of his writings and have scoured the libraries of Switzerland, hoping to find something more.  Though usually eclipsed by another, more famous, Swiss alchemist – Paracelsus – Saint Helvitcus continues to inspire.

Come, effervescence.
Come, bubbling mystery.
Come, hidden secrets;
enlighten your humble student.

Teach me the formula by which you can be known.
Teach me the changes I must make.

-From the fragments of St. Helveticus’ journal

From the Preface to Dr. Tarrec’s Alchemical Commentary on the Apocalypse of St. John the Seer

Often, when to the various audiences to which I am called upon to speak I announce alchemy as the subject of my commentary upon the Apocalypse, a word of apology is necessary for selecting a subject so outgrown and alien to the spirit of this rational and scientific (at least so-called) age of technology. I do not seek to revive the wild theories and chimerical hopes of that alchemy that is so often portrayed in pulp horror novels and films.

Those early and wild dreams of ancient alchemist have been subsumed into the blindly self-confident facts of known chemical science. Contemporary chemists who focus solely upon the physical actions and interactions of the various elements have all but forgotten their esoteric roots.  Alchemy is often called the forerunner of chemistry, but it is much more than that. Contained within the forgotten secrets of alchemists like Simon Magus, St. Helveticus, Zosimus the Egyptian, St. Albedo, and Isaac Newton are the keys to understanding the realm of the spirit.  It is through their study of the elements that we can finally come to an understanding of even the most obtuse and obscure theological writings. And this is why I have written this Alchemical Commentary on the Apocalypse.

But no science comes to us like Minerva leaping from the brain of Jupiter, "adult and full armed," possibly because Jupiters are so rare, and the bold surgery of Vulcan so seldom invoked. The passage from alchemy to chemistry was replete with the expected missteps and failures of fallible humanity, but it proceeded logically, and linearly, step by step towards a more complete understanding.  One filled the world with vast hopes but unsatisfied longings; the other has crowned the race with benefactions. Yet with the results of the labors and discoveries of the chemists we have nearly forgotten those hopes and longings, and we, as a species, remain unsatisfied. We have been content with the sparkly baubles produced for us by chemical engineers; we ooh and ah over trivial concoctions like Rayon, Teflon, and Prozac.  We believe the lie that science can provide “better things for better living through chemistry.” 

And we have disparaged the wizardry of alchemy; we have neglected prophets of the chemystical realm. We, in our petulant ignorance, are prone to look back upon this nebulous science with disdain as the product of an age that had full confidence in magic and sorcery, that could accept without hesitation the elusive nature of matter and yet find no difficulty in the belief in the resistless power of occult forces. But it is we that are in error.  Let us repent of that attitude and learn see the hopes and aspirations of these hermits of science, those ancient dreamers, as the true pathway to God.

Saint Nicotine, Hear Our Prayers

Within the hooded cloak of smoky night
the ritual is performed.
It’s not magic; it’s evil, kid.

The handlers have me.
They’ve mapped my routine,
and plotted a compass course,
sent subliminal messages to serial killers
                haunting mysteries in the dark.

For they reasoned (however unsoundly), saying to themselves,

"Short and sorrowful is our life, and there is no remedy
when a man comes to his inevitable end…”

Meanwhile I’ve found the radioactive stones,
the combustible stones,
reacting and igniting to the heat of human flesh
that they left for me,
arranged on the shoreline in non-Euclidian patterns.

They glow and call to me
like an octopus in the mountains,
like a forgotten Roman god.

And I will answer.
I will have to answer,
I cannot refuse.

Let us test him with insult and torture,

that we may find out how gentle he is,

I will put a penny in the fuse box.
And when the connection has been made
I will think about the future that they have designed.

Mother Mary of the Coconut Shell

I made this little piece several years ago.  The virgin stands inside a coconut shell the inside of which has been textured and painted gold.

Artificial Saints - Saint Albedo

Not much is known about the life of St. Albedo.  The where and when of his birth have been lost to shadows of history – a fitting fate for one remembered for his desire that others should see only Christ in his life.  He has been adopted as the patron saint of mirror makers.

The Prayer of St. Albedo

Almighty God, light of the world, who has illuminated the world through the glory of your son, Jesus, shine forth and allow me to be a pure reflection of your effulgence so that others may be brought from darkness to light, through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Saint Gabriel of the NRA

Saint Gabriel Possenti (also known as Saint Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows) is a relatively obscure saint.  He was born in 1838 and died of tuberculosis in 1862 at the age of 24.  And he might have remained in that relative obscurity, all but forgotten outside of Italy, if it weren’t for the St. Gabriel Possenti Society in America.  The St. Gabriel Possenti Society is working to have Saint Gabriel Possenti declared the Patron Saint of Handgunners.

According to one apocryphal story (that even the biographer who recorded it admitted was invented to “enliven” the story of good Gabriel’s life…) Gabriel single handedly defended the village of Isola, Italy from a band of twenty murdering, raping terrorists who were intent on pillaging and burning the village.  Gabriel wrested a handgun from one of the gang members and demonstrated his incredible skill with the weapon and compelled them to leave.

It’s a great story, right?  Sure – it’s a great story.  In it Gabriel is heroic and unflinching in the face of overwhelming odds.  He doesn’t blink, but instead he uses cold and calculated marksmanship to protect the helpless villagers with the power of a precisely aimed handgun.  The only problem is that IT ISN’T TRUE. 

And this is the same heroic story that the NRA and 2^nd Amendment advocates continue to tell us: that handguns will protect us from murderers, rapists, and gangs of terrorists. 

But it’s still not true.  

Saint Antimony of Egypt

Saint Antimony of Egypt, also known as Saint Antimony the Great, Antimony of the Desert, and Antimony the Monk-Killer was a Christian saint from Egypt and prominent leader among the Desert Alchemists.    The biography of Antimony’s life, written by Father Arsen, helped to spread the concept of anti-monasticism.  He is often credited as the father of all monk killers, but this is due, largely, to his excessively toxic reputation. 

Saint Antimony is often appealed to against fires, particularly house fires. In the past, many such conflagrations were referred to as “Saint Antimony’s Fire.”

O Father Antimony, by prayer you would extinguish the fires of the universe. Wherefore, intercede with Christ our God to save our souls from the lake of fire.

  

Pray For Us, Saint Frankenstein

Dear Saint Frankenstein,
you who were always and continually
forced to be the stranger
and the wanderer upon the ice,
the unwelcomed, unwanted
who never even had a name
except that of your vainglorious father,

help us in this, our hour of need,
as we face the infliction of injustice
and ingratitude.

Help us to turn from terror and hate
to the joy of Christ’s loving embrace.

Good Saint Frankenstein, pray for us.