Ketchup.

My first job was flipping hamburgers at a Fuddruckers restaurant. Well, eventually I got around to being the guy who flipped the hamburgers; at first I was a cashier. But after a time, I became the guy who cooked all the meat for everyone who came in to have dinner on the nights I worked. I cooked hundreds of hamburgers to different levels of doneness with all sorts of garnishes. I did it fast and I did it well and I went home covered in a thin film of melted cow fat (the smell of which could never, ever come out of my work uniform) and I enjoyed it.

It was at my first job that I began to learn to speak Spanish. I would converse with the cooks, bussers and dishwashers at whatever level at which I could, each of us slowly learning bits of the other's language. Eventually, restaurant work would teach me enough Spanish that I could function in Spanish-speaking countries with minimal difficulty.

In the early stages of my informal Spanish eductation, I learned primarily from Mexicans. In doing so, I developed a strongly pronounced Mexican accent with my Spanish. It was heavy and entertaining enough that one of my coworkers began to address me only as "Mexicano," which quickly caught on. (Hispanics in restaurant work like to develop nicknames for most everyone who works with them; ten and a half years of foodservice work in many locations gives me license for this sweeping generality.)

The woman who gave me this nickname was named Gloria. She was very kind and she stayed at Fuddruckers for years after I left. She was normally very reserved and proper at work, unless Juanes was playing on the stereo in the prep area. That man's music had a remarkable effect on gloria...

The funny thing about working with Gloria (at a hamburger restaurant) was that she could not, for the life of her, pronounce the word "ketchup." A lot of Hispanics in the kitchen would just say something like "keh-chah," which is probably the most common pronunciation of "ketchup" in the world of Hispanic immigrants with limited English working in foodservice.

But Gloria didn't say keh-chah, or ketchup. She said "kep-chuh."

Kepchuh.

I like ketchup. Ketchup tastes pretty good. I like really good homemade ketchup, but even normal fakey ketchup is just fine. It makes food that's kind of lame taste a little saltier, a little sweeter, a little better. Really lame fries? Grab a little ketchup. Crappy dry meatloaf? Squirt o' ketchup, good to go. Severely overcooked hamburger? I'd like some ketchup for that.

Remember when they came out with ketchup in all those bright, disturbing, you're-about-to-poison-my-child colors? That was funny. Even funnier still was when Heinz, in a moment of hilarious self-deprecation, released their ketchup with all those cheeky phrases on the labels, one of which read "still available in red." Awesome. Probably my favorite food packaging ever.

Ketchup is good for taking familiar things of low quality and making them more palatable - ketchup has its place.

But there are things for which I would never, ever use ketchup.

Really good food - aside from being really good - is often also an expression of the taste or the understanding or the philosophy of the person who prepared it.

I currently work at a really, really nice restaurant. Our kitchen puts out some of the best food you can get in the Twin Cities. If you order dinner at the restaurant, the food you'll eventually have put in front of you is a reflection of a very specific style. You'll get top-quality ingredients from farmers and ranchers in the region (most of which come from within 200 miles of the restaurant) put together in a way that is reflective of an understanding of Midwestern cuisine with a deep appreciation for classic French and Italian influences. It's really, really good food.

Sometime's I'll put a guest's order in front of him or her and the guest will ask for some salt and pepper. I usually say "of course," retrieve salt and pepper, and give it to the guest. Then I'll walk away thinking that this person is silly. I walk away thinking that the guest is silly because the guests who ask for salt and pepper haven't tasted the food. They have no idea whether the food is adequately seasoned. They have no idea whether what they ordered measures up to the expectations they developed while reading the menu's description of the dish.

After I (almost) get over the silliness of asking for things with which to change the taste of one's food before one even knows what it tastes like, I think about how a guest might be used to a certain way of eating food, might not have very refined taste, or a number of other things that might be a reason to give the guest a break.

But what about ketchup? Keh-chah? Kep-chuh?

What if a guest asked me for ketchup upon receiving his or her meal?

At this point, I don't know that I'd immediately comply with the request. I think I might try to reason with the guest, cautioning them that the addition of ketchup would likely introduce flavors into the dish that weren't intended to be there (an argument that can also be made in many cases with regard to black pepper, by the way). Sir, are you sure? The duck breast on your plate (which has had the fat from its skin gently rendered, leaving the skin crisp as the meat has been turned over to heat it just to a perfect medium rare, at which point it is paired with an extreme reduction of duck stock blended with local grapes and placed on a plate with other seasonal accompaniments) may not benefit from the addition of ketchup. In related news, you may want to taste the food before you try to alter it in any way, you completely crazy person.

I feel like I'm professional enough to be a little gentler than that were this to actually happen at the restaurant, but that is not the point.

The point, which I may have weakened by tying it to food (about which many people have wildly different opinions) is this:

Some things don't need to be altered. Sometimes we might benefit from trying to understand what is in front of us instead of trying to change it.

I get an awful lot of ketchup at church. Like, a lot.

The ketchup doesn't come in a bottle, and isn't served alongside communion wafers and grape juice. I do usually ask an usher for salt and pepper before I've tasted the elements, though.

I often get a pretty staggering dose of ketchup during musical worship at church. The entire congregation joins together in song, pouring their hearts out while they drown in vinegar, high fructose corn syrup, and just a touch of onion powder. It adds such a savory depth to the whole thing. Plus you get all that lycopene. Good antioxidant properties, you know.

I was inspired to write about ketchup a few weeks ago while I was at church.

We were singing a couple of really old hymns, namely Amazing Grace and Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.

The thing is, we weren't really singing these old hymns. We were singing the infuriating "updated" versions of these hymns. The ones where somebody decided "these hymns are so old and awesome that I'm going to stick a crappy bridge into it so that I may call it my own and release it on a record."

A lot of people are familiar with Amazing Grace. Some may not be familiar with the added bridge, which tragically cannot be burned with the fire of my anger:

My chains are gone, I've been set free

My God, my Savior has ransomed me

And like a flood, His mercy reigns

Unending love, amazing grace

The third line of the bridge is particularly infuriating. For one thing, floods don't reign over anything. Yes, one can stretch the meaning of the word "reign" to include something akin to what a flood does. But nobody in a church means that when they say "reign." Additionally, even if the word "reign" is applied to what a flood does, I don't think that draws a favorable comparison to God's mercy. This, however, is not the point. The point was made in short earlier and will continue to be made upon inspection of the crappy new bridge for Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing:

Come Thou Fount, come Thou King

Come Thou precious Prince of Peace

Hear your bride, to You we sing

Come Thou Fount of our blessing

My big problem with this one isn't a confusion of definitions; rather, it is just straight-up hackery. When choosing to "update" a centuries-old hymn which has been used in the church for ...centuries... somebody chose to rhyme the word "sing" with with the word ..."blessing." I hope it sounds stupid when you read it, 'cause you better believe I feel like a dingus when I'm standing in a room full of people singing it. It's just really shitty songwriting, which is less of a problem on its own than it is when used to augment a centuries-old hymn which needs no augmentation.

One of the parts of church I really enjoy is singing old hymns. I feel really, really good about singing the same song with which people have connected for decades, sometimes centuries. It gives me a pretty great feeling to join in that particular part of the tradition of Christian worship. It makes me think about all the good things that have persisted. It fills me with hope and, quite often, moves me to tears. It makes me think that I can understand some small part of the way in which people who have come before me have received God's message of love and hope and grace for all people.

And then we pour ketchup all over it.

Sometimes we might benefit from trying to understand what is in front of us instead of trying to change it.

Some things don't need to be altered.

Flashback.

You ever see a movie where a character sees, hears or touches something that sparks a vivid flashback? Something will fall on the ground in front of the actor, or someone will use a particular word or phrase, and there will be flashes of scenes from the character's past or from earlier in the film? It usually happens with something that seems insignificant that ends up being significant, and it's usually accompanied by sort of nondescript "flashback" sound effects that are never used to describe anything else. I assume that you've seen enough movies to know what I'm talking about.



Well, in real life, there are no sound effects.



I learned this by way of having a conversation with a little Colombian girl named Yiselis. This came on the evening of my last day as a short-term staff member at Proyecto Libertad, a missionary base located on Isla Tierrabomba off the coast of Colombia. I had just spent five weeks doing hard, hard work and hanging out with the locals, and I was sitting on the front porch of the base, looking out into the bay. The sun had just gone down, and I could begin to see stars coming out. The bay in front of the mission is big enough and lonely enough at night to be really good for people who like to stare into the expanse and wonder about their lives. Being such a person, I frequently spent extended periods of time doing this at night. It was my last night at the mission, so I was really into it at this point.



She came up by the porch and sat down and we talked for a moment. We quickly came to discuss the fact that I'd be leaving in the morning. She asked me if I was excited to return home. I told her I wasn't.



I told her I wasn't, but there wasn't any genuine sadness in my saying it. I was trying to manufacture the feeling because I thought that it was what I was supposed to feel. I was sitting on the porch about to leave a place I love, about to leave a bunch of people to whom I had become connected, and I couldn't muster an ounce of emotion.



Instead of sadness, my mind was occupied with a strange and steady contentment. I knew that my time at the mission, for the moment, had come and gone - and though I had no sense for what was to come next, other than that it was to take place in Minnesota, I knew it was right and that I needed to know no more about it.



But I told her I wasn't. She responded: Por que no?



Little kids are awesome. They have no sense of consideration or propriety in conversation. If you say something to a child and it doesn't make sense to her, it will be questioned or rejected, forcing you to examine it. You don't want to go home? Oh, that's stupid. Why not?



Porque me gusta estar en la isla.



I like to be on the island. Again, my response to her question was rejected: pero Dios te necesita en tu propio pais.



"But God needs you in your own country."



God needs me in my own country. ...aaaaaaaaaaand flashback!



At that point I flashed back a little over three years, without any cinematic flashback sound effects, to a moment in my life I will never, ever, ever forget.



I was sitting on top of the roof of an orphanage in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, right next to the border it shares with El Paso, Texas.

If you are close enough to the border, you can sit on top of the roof and see something striking. Juarez is a poor, poor, crime-ravaged border town. El Paso is not. In Juarez, there are not many lights. Sitting on the roof of the orphanage, you can see the sparseness of the lights in Juarez, and then you can clearly see the border - immediately on the other side of it is the rich, developed land, teeming with lights and with people that are about a thousand times more well-off than the people on the Juarez side. It'll make you think, not that some of us ever need any prompting to enter the world of maddening introspection...



I was sitting on the roof, and my good friend and former roommate Drew was sitting next to me.

Drew is a missionary. It's just who he is, and anyone who knows him could tell you that. I am not. I have a lot of experience with mission work, but I am not the same thing this guy is.

So we were sitting on the roof, staring into this beautiful and unsettling juxtaposition. This was right at the end of our short experience at the orphanage, and I was (surprise!) working on manufacturing some emotion, as it seemed appropriate. I was trying to really want to be a lifelong missionary like some of the people I saw around me. It seemed like what I was supposed to do, to get really inspired and selfless and devote my life to the service of others.

So Drew and I talked for a few minutes, staring at the border and all its lights. Eventually, I stopped trying to feel the way I was supposed to feel, and I just sat there and stared. Wasn't thinking about a thing in the whole world. At that point, Drew asked me, with his gaze still fixed on the lights of El Paso:



Isn't it so much better on this side?



Somehow, in that moment, I resisted the urge to say what I thought I was supposed to say (and the greater urge to respond in a way that connected with what my friend was feeling), and I responded without thinking about it for even a second:



"I don't know. I think they need me over there."



I'll never forget it. It just came out of me.



And I meant it. I honestly believe, despite the number of international experiences I've had, how well I've functioned in them, and what they have meant for other people, that there is some reason I'm supposed to be where I am.



I couldn't begin to tell you what it might be. I don't get the sense that I do much here. I've spent a lot of time trying to positively influence young people, but I don't hardly even do that anymore. I've spent a lot of time trying to positively influence people in connection with my church, but I've recoiled so hard from the effects of my time being a "really good Christian" that I don't know when I'll ever do anything like that again. I don't do much of anything significant here.



Come to think of it, apart from physical evidence of my presence in other countries in the form of medical centers, latrines, homes or cement floors, I don't get the sense that I've done much in any of the "theres" either.



But somehow I still believe that I am (for the moment) where I need to be. The answer I gave to Drew's question was incredibly honest. It just came out without my mind devoting any attention to it.



I couldn't begin to tell you why, but I believe it.

Ungrateful.

I've been sitting at my computer for several minutes, trying to think of a way to start this entry that feels right. Trouble is, very little about that about which I am about to write feels right. Okay, that sentence felt a little bit right, in a playful, former English major, stupid-nerdy sort of way.

But really though, this whole thing just plain feels wrong.

If you're a homeless beggar, trying to get a few dollars for your next meal or your next night of lodging, I am probably the easiest target in the whole wide world.

Feels wrong: writing in such a way that suggests that homeless people have "targets." Moving on...

If a homeless person (or someone conducting themself in such a way that suggests that they're homeless) approaches me and asks me for money, I'm going to give them money. I've done some calculations, and of the times I've been approached by anyone who fits that description and been asked for money, I've given them money 6,438% of the time.

For whatever reason, I simply cannot get past a humanistic knee-jerk reaction to the situation, and the money comes out of my pocket and exchanges hands.

Sounds harmless enough, right? If you're looking for all the wrong-feeling things I promised at the beginning of this post, just stick with me.

I have so little resistance to this kind of situation that I have made attempts to avoid people who I suspect will ask me for money. That's so wrong. Three such instances stick out in my mind as I write this.

One:

It was 2004, and the Minnesota Timberwolves were playing the Los Angeles Lakers in the Western Conference Finals, where they would eventually fall an injured point guard away from an NBA Finals berth and a probable NBA championship. I had tickets to game one of the series. I had also attended game seven of the previous series against the Sacramento Kings, which will likely stand for the rest of my life as the best basketball game I've ever seen in person.

I was walking from where I had parked to the Target Center, where a young and tall black man yelled to get my attention as I was crossing the street. He was thin and thin-faced, with prominent cheekbones and he smelled like cigarette smoke. He asked me if I could spare some money. I had a wallet with a bunch of money in it. I knew that if I took out the wallet, he would be able to get a much higher percentage of it than I would normally give in this kind of situation. I didn't want him to see that I had a wallet or that it contained a pretty decent amount of money, so I tried to tell him that I had to get going and made an attempt at leaving. I'm enough of a pushover that a four year-old kid could have badgered me into staying and giving him money.

He was persistent. I kept trying to reject his advances, speaking politely and addressing him as "sir." He thought it racist and patronizing, telling me "don't call me 'sir,' motherfucker." That pretty well pissed me off. Even in my angered state, feeling far more contempt than empathy for this man, I eventually dug a few dollars out of my wallet and handed them to him, then making my way to the game.

Two:

About six months ago, I was driving to a coworkers house to cook dinner, drink margaritas and hang out. I had to stop for a red light which is normally almost always green, only ever changed by the very infrequent crosstraffic stopping at it for a minute or two. The reason I remember which light it was and how it's almost always green going that particular way is that I saw a homeless guy from a distance, hoping I wouldn't get stopped by the light and have to interact with him. That's just wrong. I stopped at the light and he made his way to my driver's-side window.

I opened the window and he asked me for seven dollars with which he told me he was going to buy a chicken dinner. There was a car behind me and the light was about to turn back to green, so I told the man to walk over to the corner, where I would take a right and pull over so I could get my wallet out.

I got a better look at the guy there. He had a pretty heavy coat on, and he had a black goatee that had a good number of gray hairs sticking out wildly in random directions. In the time it took me to drive from being stopped at the light to the spot where we'd meet around the corner, I had decided to give him twenty dollars. I had enough different denominations of money in my wallet that I could have given him exactly what he had asked for, but I just felt like twenty was the amount to give.

He caught up with my car and I handed him the money. He looked to see how much I had given him. The bill was crisp and pretty new, making more money noise than usual when it changed hands. He stood up straight (he had to bend lower to be closer to level with the window) and said "a'ight man, God bless you" as he began to leave.

Stupidly thinking that this kind of interchange would merit genuine communication and real interaction between us, I decided I would respond to him instead of just driving away. "He does, every day" is what I said. I was sincere enough in saying it that I was prompted to think about it in that moment - that is, until I realized that once the man had my money, he left so quickly that he didn't even hear what I had said. He heard just enough noise to know that I was talking, so he lifted his hand up as he walked away, giving one more "a'ight man" as he ignored me.

I closed my window, muttered "ungrateful bastard" under my breath in a shameful moment of weakness, and continued on to my coworker's place.

Three:

A couple of Sundays ago, I was at one of my favorite places to go out. I was with a few friends having dinner and as we were leaving the building to walk to our cars, a beggar approached the group. He engaged my friends and I slipped past everyone else, walking toward my car. The reason I tried to avoid this particular beggar is that I had seen him before in that very same parking lot and given him money and I didn't want to do it again. Look at that last sentence. I also knew that my friends would probably tell him that they didn't have any money (they typically don't carry cash) and then he'd turn to me and I'd squirm and give him money. So he asked my cashless friends for money, didn't get any, and then followed me over to my car, where I squirmed and gave him money.

I asked him what his name was and he said it's William. He was asking for sixteen dollars. He kept referencing some place he was going to stay and it was sixteen dollars a night. I gave him six. I had more in my wallet. I had just spent twice what he was asking us for on dinner and a couple of beers. I tipped our server as much as I gave William - and I tried to avoid giving him anything at all.

***

Each of these stories bothers me, but for different reasons.

The first story bothers me for two reasons: I'm enough of a pushover that a complete stranger can have my money whenever he wants it, and there are people out there who will be nothing short of abusive to get what they want. The guy got confrontational and aggressive with me for three dollars, and he'd have gone further if I wasn't such a spineless wimp.

The second story bothers me a lot more than the first. It bothers me because the guy did everything right. He did everything you do if you want to get money from a stranger - and then, once the money got into his hands, the switch flipped and he was done. He acted exactly as someone would if the whole thing was an act. I don't have the guts to accuse him of faking it, but if he was faking, I'd have been none the wiser. He acted really good, got what he wanted, and went on his way.

The second story bothers me because I'm exactly the same as that guy. I conduct myself no differently than he does. Difference is, my guy driving the 1990 Buick Century is none other than our lord God above.

I can do all the things that a good boy does and be really nice to God and ask him for things - and then I can get the things I want and go on my way. I'm exactly the same as that guy. I'm the ungrateful bastard.

The third story bothers me a lot more than either the second or the first. It bothers me because both William and I approach this problem in a way that will never, ever, ever fix anything. Both William and I are looking for band-aid solutions to a huge, festering, gaping wound of a problem.

The problem isn't that William didn't know where he was going to sleep a couple of Sundays ago. Don't get me wrong - that's a problem. But the real problem? The real problem is, even if William runs into a hundred people who are as big a pushover as I am, he's still not going to know where he's going to sleep a couple Tuesdays from now.

I could run into William tomorrow and give him a hundred dollars, and I would have the exact same effect on the real problem as I do when I avoid someone who's walking around begging for money. He'd still be in such a position that "where am I going to sleep tonight?" is a question he's going to be asking himself every day.

I'm an idealistic person. Small things usually mean a great deal to me. I'm the kind of person that really believes in a small decision or action, that it will add to some cumulative process that's eventually going to mean something.

I've never had more trouble holding that kind of worldview than when it comes to this issue.

How can I really believe that when it comes to this? How can I believe that what I'm doing means anything when William's sleeping on the pavement? Presumably, he hasn't been in this kind of position his whole life. At some point, he had provision and had connection to family and friends and all the things that add up to what we call "a life" - and that's all been torn down by some terrible combination of circumstances.

How can I still believe that the small thing matters then?

Six dollars. It's an insult to everything I've ever called hope. It just feels wrong.

Burning Upon Re-entry.

It's been a long, long, long time since I've blogged.

I'd tell you about all of the things that have distracted me from the practice, but I'm not sure they'd interest you, even though blogging, at its outset, requires a belief in the existence of some interesting quality in one's thoughts, opinions and experiences. Instead, I'll just skip right to the thoughts and opinions stemming from a particular experience.

I've been volunteering with a particular youth ministry for about nine years now.

There are any number of directions in which I could take this blog entry given that starting point. I have more stories about people going through the most awkward and confusing phase of their lives than I know what to do with.

You see a lot of things when working in youth ministry. You see a lot of different kids from a lot of different situations reacting to a lot of different things in a lot of different ways.

And then, when you thought it couldn't possibly get any weirder, when you believe you've reached the pinnacle of human strangeness, when you begin to look back on your own adolescence with a sense of comfort because of the baffling peculiarity with which some of these people conduct themselves - then you meet their parents.

I suppose that not all youth ministries attract the same sort of people. To give you some idea of what I'm dealing with, this particular youth ministry belongs to a moderately-floundering suburban megachurch. I'd try to give a general description of many of the people there, but that requires a lot of sweeping generalities and I'm going to do more than enough writing that people would consider "negative" in this entry.

So, back to the parents. Parents do many, many things in the name of protecting their children. Many of those things actually end up protecting their children. I'd like to tell you about one of the other things.

I hang out with some students from the youth ministry when I can, as I believe that spending time with positive influences is good for young people and, every now and then, I conduct myself in such a way that suggests that I'm a positive influence.

I was hanging out with a student at a coffee shop which is normally occupied with a disproportionately high percentage of Christians. It's located near a couple of private Christian universities, so it's a convenient place for them to have coffee. It's a Caribou Coffee, which, for whatever reason, is loved by suburban Minnesotan Christians. They're obsessed with it. None of that information is particularly relevant, apart from the fact that being around this particular group of people intensified my reaction to what the student told me about when we were having a cup of coffee together.

He was telling me about a discussion he and some students had with volunteer youth ministry leaders (many of which are parents of students involved in the program) at the latest of his semi-weekly house group meetings (this youth ministry meets at the church every other week, with the other weeks devoted to several smaller gatherings located in a few houses spread throughout the cities).

Conversations with teenagers can go a lot of different ways. Teenagers have active and growing minds, and a "normal" conversation with a teenager will likely deviate from one subject matter in favor of another with regularity. They are a curious bunch, if nothing else. It is one of the few consistencies I find in having discussions with people of that age group. I really like that about them.

The conversation this student was having (with other students and some volunteer leaders, a couple of whom were parents)? It was about Harry Potter.

Youth ministry exists in large part to guide the next generation into carrying on the tradition of faith which their parents have adopted, in a manner that helps the students grow into healthy, morally-sound people of faith. This involves a lot more conversations about a lot more things like Harry Potter than one without any youth ministry experience would expect.

I don't know much about the particular demographic of the people who happen to read my blog every now and then. I don't know how many of them have had consistent exposure to the kind of religious environment into which I regularly thrust myself in the name of hope for the youth of this world - but I know that I think that the following should be troubling to all of them:

Parents spend time telling young people about the spiritual perils of exposure to Harry Potter.

Doing this requires a worldview that is far, far more intense than I am willing to hold. I grew up hearing a lot of things about "spiritual battles." My parents never told me about anything like that, but I spent a lot of time at church to make them happy, so I heard a lot about it. I do believe in many spiritual things, and that in some way there are spiritual forces at work in this world, some good (those associated with the being to whom I refer as "God") and some opposed to those I consider good.

And I know that I have never read any of the Harry Potter books. That, however, has a lot more to do with my nonexistent level of interest in them than it does with a pervasive fear that one of the devil's little nasties is going to jump out of page 142, punch my spirit in the groin in order to incapacitate it, then tying it up, taking it captive until I experience deliverance from that damned Harry Potter and his band of spiritual goons.

That's the title of the next one coming out, right? Harry Potter and the Band of Spiritual Goons?

Come to think of it, Christians ought to rename the books that have already been released to more accurately depict the effects they might have on one's spirit:

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire? No good. How about Harry Potter and the Eternal Lake of Fire Into Which He Will Plunge Your Screaming Children If You Let Him?

I was going to rename more of those, but couldn't get past ideas that were wildly inappropriate.

Really though - just imagine it, the event of a lifetime, the long-anticipated, winner-takes-all, ultimate spiritual confrontation of the universe...taking place at the famed MGM Grand Las Vegas, with Michael Buffer doing the introductions:

DING DING DING!

And now...in this corner...standing five-foot-nine, one hundred forty pounds - the Prince of Peace, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords - Jeeeesuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuussss Chriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiist!

[wild cheering]

...and in this corner...standing five-foot-six, one hundred sixteen pounds - the Stealer of Souls, the Slayer of Spirits, the Devil's Dastardly Deputy - Harr-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Pooooooooo-tterrrrrrrr!

[raucous booing, children and their parents cursing and throwing garbage]

Ladies and gentlemen - llllllllllllet's get rrrready to rumble!

And then they duke it out. Imagine the pay-per-view sales.

Christians are taught (both by their Bible and by those who preach from it) that they are empowered by and have living inside of them the same spirit which raised Christ from the dead.

Gotta watch out for that Harry Potter, though.