OBEY ME

March 4th, the only day of the year that's a command. I've decided that from now on, I shall celebrate this day by being really bossy.

I just glanced back through my blog entries for previous March 4ths, and they seem to revolve around the general theme of irrational thoughts I have thought of. In 2007 I was complaining about how I seem to have expected that British rain would not make me wet because it was not very strong. In 2008 I discussed the possibility that I had stigmata. And in the interests of continuing this tradition of chronicling silly things I have thought of on March 4th, I will tell a story that I was initially thinking was much too embarrassing to tell.

You know how sometimes you see T-shirts or bumper stickers or whatever that say to do something more? Like, I don’t know, Walk More if the car is owned by an environmentalist, or – or, I know, like that Improv Everywhere scene they did about Look Up More. You know what I’m talking about? Well, every time I see a bumper sticker for St. Thomas More, that’s what I think they’re saying. St. Thomas More. Like More St. Thomas! The world has a dearth of St. Thomas lovin’!

I have had more and more sympathy with St. Thomas as I’ve gotten older and older. If I went out to get pizza and beer, and then I came back to see my friends who were in hiding because they had been affiliated with a recently-executed political criminal type, and they were like OUR RECENTLY EXECUTED FRIEND JUST VISITED US AND HE IS BACK FROM THE DEAD, I would also not be inclined to believe them. I would probably say “Yeah, okay, guys,” and discreetly conceal the beer from them because I would think that whatever they were on, it would probably be better not to mix it with alcohol. I get the point Jesus was making about faith, but all the same I can’t help feeling that St. Thomas’s reaction was the only sane one for a person to have – and furthermore, I don’t think it’s nice for Jesus to be singling out St. Thomas and fussing at him, because none of the other disciples were taking anything on faith; they just happened to be there when Jesus showed up the first time.

I think Jesus may have had some other problem with Thomas. Maybe he was mad that Thomas didn’t come to dinner with the rest of the disciples the night Jesus was there; and sure, Jesus knew that Thomas probably just needed a break from spending tons and tons of time with all the disciples, and he knew it was unreasonable to be mad at Thomas for not being there when made his grand entrance, but he still felt kind of hurt even though it was irrational and he knew it was. So he came up with this business about blessed be those who have not seen and have believed?

(Oh my God, look at this Caravaggio picture – this makes me like Thomas even more. It’s a picture of him feeling Jesus’s wounds, and his facial expression is priceless. He’s like SHIT MAN I AM PRODDING YOUR RIGHT LUNG!)

But I like Thomas in general. I like it how Jesus is like “Y’all know where I’m going,” and Thomas is like, “Um, no, we don’t, dude.” And I like it how Jesus wants to go back to Judaea to see Lazarus all dead, even though the Jews tried to stone him there one time, and the other disciples are all We don’t want to, it is frightening, and Thomas is all, Come on, guys, act like proper disciples! Let’s DO THIS. And that’s all I can remember about Thomas. However, that is a lot of good qualities. Thomas asks questions when it is appropriate to ask questions, and he is not a wimp or an idiot like a lot of the disciples seem to be. (Oo, and I just looked him up on Wikipedia, and Wikipedia says Thomas was a total badass preacher going farther than ANYONE ELSE WENT. Everyone talks about Peter, but did he go to Persia and China? No. No, he did not.)

All this to say that when I see a bumper sticker that says “St. Thomas More”, I imagine that the owner of the car is promoting intelligent, critical, question-asking, but still enthusiastic, Christianity, essentially saying “Ask questions! You can do that and still become a saint! Liiiiiiiiiike Thomas!” Which I support! Hurrah for critical Christians! And then I think that if they made one bumper sticker like that, they must have made a bunch which means a bunch of people have them, and I start thinking how cool it would be if I could track down all the people who have that bumper sticker and we could get together and have meetings where we would moan about other Catholics who were making us look bad like THE POPE, and talk about how much we like Stephen Colbert, out there representing for smart Catholics, and have fun Bible study where they would tell me interesting facts like how the genealogy in the beginning of Matthew is implying that Mary was sexually suspect.

As you can imagine it is always rather a letdown when I look again and realize that’s not the point the bumper sticker is making.