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'An Urban Tale: First Job Interview' by Donal Mahoney

1/29/2016

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An Urban Tale: First Job Interview


Let’s check the terminal and see 
what jobs might be available 
to match your skill set,
the interviewer said. 
The young man
sitting next to the desk
was wearing a plaid shirt 
and his first tie. 


I know you'll take any job 
but let’s see what we can find.
A young man like you, Deon,
just starting out, has his 
entire life ahead of him.


Here’s the personal stuff
you gave me so let’s go over it
and you tell me if I have 
everything right.

Your father left your mother
when you were two and then 
your mother died when 
you were four and your granny 
took you and your brothers in.
But she died in an auto accident 
when you were ten.


An uncle took you after that
and he had trouble finding work.
Food was scarce and you
kept moving place to place.
He tried hard, you said.


An aunt in another city
took your little sister and 
she sounds fine on the phone
when you get a chance to talk.
Your brothers went to foster homes
and you see them now and then.
Things aren't going too well for them.


You graduated from grammar school,
then dropped out of high school 
and went back to get your GED. 
You’re 18 now and have never
worked anywhere before.
You have no car, no driver’s license,
and no record with the police. 

You live deep in the city but 
are willing to work in the suburbs.
Transportation’s not a problem
because your church has 
bus passes for anyone who 
needs them to get to work.
Let’s hope that’s you, Deon.


Bus passes are important because
most jobs you qualify for are 
out in the suburbs, a long trip, 
but our city buses do go there.
From your address I’d say
it will take an hour or more
each way, maybe a little longer
in winter weather with 
the snow plows and all.


Now here's a restaurant chain
with seven outlets in the suburbs
looking for young workers
with a GED and no experience
to wash dishes and bus tables. 


It’s minimum wage but no benefits 
and you'd start on the third shift, 
apply for the second shift when 
an opening occurs, and then apply 
for the first shift after you’ve 
been there at least a year.

Then you'd wait for an opening
on the salad bar and after a year
with the veggies you’d want to 
look for an opening on the grill 
but that’s third shift again.


I’d be happy to set up an interview
but that’s all I have at the moment.
You want me to call now, Deon?
Or do you want to sleep on it.
This is America. It’s your choice.


Donal Mahoney


————————————————————————--
Donal Mahoney, a native of Chicago, lives in St. Louis, Missouri. His fiction and poetry have appeared in various publications, including The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, The Christian Science Monitor, The Chicago Tribune and  Commonweal.  Some of his work can be found at http://eyeonlifemag.com/the-poetry-locksmith/donal-mahoney-poet.html#sthash.OSYzpgmQ.dpbs=
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'Jesus, Can we Talk?' by Donal Mahoney

1/29/2016

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Jesus, Can We Talk?


Jesus, can we talk? Some folks say you're coming back any day now but many of them have been saying that for years. They say it could happen tomorrow, or maybe next week, and they've already put their affairs in order. They believe they will be swept up and taken into heaven, leaving many others on the ground, just standing there, slack-jawed and staring at all the backsides rising in the air. 

I'd like to among those rising but my Baptist barber says he doesn't think papists will be issued passports for this trip. I've been his customer for 30 years so he plans to take a rope along and drop it down to me. If I grab hold and can hang on, he says I'm welcome to come along if Jesus doesn't cut me loose. I may be a papist, he says, but he knows from all our haircut debates over the years that I believe in Jesus and the bible as the inerrant Word of God. He even tells his Baptist and Four Square Gospel customers I'm okay, theologically speaking. 

I keep telling him papists believe in Jesus just as strongly as he does. But that's not what he heard about Catholics growing up in the Ozarks as a child. What's more, since I grew up in Chicago, I talk kind of funny, he says. I always tell him I can sound just like him with a mouth full of cornbread. 

In the meantime, Jesus, I need a favor on different matter entirely. I'm hoping you'll find time to make a quick visit to the house of a friend of mine around midnight any night of the week. He's been retired for many years and he's enjoying the fruits of his considerable labors. As I often remind him, he's enjoying the fruits of your favors as well. But he doesn't see it that way, necessarily, if you want to know the truth. 

As I see it, you've been very good to this man for more than 70 years but now he needs a different kind of help. Like me, he's old enough to find himself any day now next up in the checkout line. But he talks as though the life we both enjoy has no end in sight. If he didn't live in a far-away city, I'd take him for a haircut at my barber's shop and there he would hear the truth with a little cornbread on the side. 

Now don't get me wrong. I don't want to see my friend turn Baptist, not that there's anything wrong with Baptists, as Seinfeld might say. I just want him to get back to Mass every Sunday morning before someone has to push him down the aisle in a wheelchair. He has a lot to be thankful for and maybe not a whole lot of time to say thanks.


You see, he was a high school graduate who became a paratrooper during the Korean War. After he was discharged he found a job as a janitor. In no way dumb, he used diligence and brains to become vice-president of the same company in ten years. He got there by being a good salesman of condiments. The man can talk but then a lot of Irish-American papists can talk. Maybe we can't yodel like the Swiss but we can certainly talk. 

Not satisfied with being president of that company, he quit and started his own company. He decided to manufacture and sell products that were just catching on when Woodstock was all the rage. You remember Woodstock. That's where all the musicians and Hippies showed up on a water-logged farm in the Catskills in 1969 to celebrate free love and other developments in society at that time.

In any event, my friend figured that supplying health food to vegans and vegetarians would be a gold mine in the future and it turned out he was right. This is a guy who spent his adolescence at White Castle restaurants eating double cheeseburgers by the sack. It must have taken a conversion experience akin to the one Saul of Tarsus had to get him to try health food. I'm not sure he eats that much of it himself but he sure can sell it. 

Thirty years later, with his kids reared and on their own, he sold his company for seven million dollars. I haven't asked him yet if he had any outside help in his success or if he did it all by himself. 

He still believed in you while the company was growing but I don't know what happened after that. He's a good man, basically. He has the same wife now as when he was a janitor, a big bunch of kids now grown up and doing well and a flock of grandkids who adore him. Excess of any kind has never been a problem with him. He simply lost his faith somewhere along the road to becoming a millionaire. Other millionaires have followed the same path, I imagine, but I have never known any others, personally. 


Many decades ago in grammar school, he and I were always in the same grade and we both believed, without any doubt, that Jesus Christ died on the cross and rose from the dead and opened the gates of heaven for the likes of us and maybe for the likes of the worst of us if they shaped up in time. Now my friend is living the good life but says he doesn't know if you exist or if you died on the cross or if you rose from the dead. He says he'd like to believe in you but he needs some evidence. Otherwise, he says he'll remain an agnostic, a word he says means "I don't know." 

Well, Jesus, I don't think his problem is a simple one. First he has to come to believe in God again, a belief some philosophers say a man can reach through reason alone. After all, there are the five proofs for the existence of God that many philosophers accept. But then he has to come to believe again in Jesus Christ--that God sent his only begotten Son to die on the cross for the sins of all mankind. That's the hard part. He can't do that through reason alone. That takes faith, the gift you gave to both of us, the gift he lost and I somehow retained despite being no better than he is.Jesus, this man is 77 years old so perhaps you can sense the urgency of my request. There's not much time for him to believe again unless, of course, you step in.
That's why I'd like you to drop by his mansion some midnight when you have some free time. Just pull him out of bed by the ankles and hold him upside down for awhile before you introduce yourself. Then tell him you are Jesus Christ, a native of Bethlehem with strong ties to Galilee and Nazareth. Remind him about what you did with the loaves and fishes at Cana and ask him if he sees any parallels to that event in his own life. My hope is that before you leave, or shortly thereafter when someone revives him, he will find that he has the gift of faith again. 


You see, I don't know how he lost his faith but I can't find it for him. The nuns who schooled us in the life, death and resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ have been dead for many years. There are a couple of them who might have been able to turn him around. They had a way of making you see the truth. It's amazing how quickly you can see the truth clearly when an old-style nun in a big habit takes time to explain everything half an inch from your nose. 

In any event, you gave both of us the gift of faith in 1938, the year of our Baptism, and I somehow still have my faith, despite not leading a noble life. I mean I was honest and was never arrested but there might be a lady or more who would take a bumbershoot to my backside if she ran into me, even at my age. 


My friend, on the other hand, has done everything according to the book but he no longer reads the book. So, please, drop by his place some midnight before he dies and yank him out of bed by the ankles. Let him know who you are and mention that you look forward to seeing him at Mass on Sunday. Remind him that he can get a spiritually nutritious bite to eat at any Catholic church in the world in case he still likes to travel. Food that will stick to his soul for the long road ahead.

By the way, this man can afford to tithe, big-time. Even though papists don't tithe the way Protestants do, they nevertheless give a ton of money to charities managed by the Church and other not-for-profit organizations. But it's probably best if we don't mention his ability to tithe to my Baptist barber. He might be tempted to get on a plane and go see if my friend needs a trim. 



Donal Mahoney 


——————————————————--
Donal Mahoney has worked as an editor for U.S. Catholic Magazine, Loyola University Press, and The Chicago Sun-Times. Retired now, he keeps busy writing poetry, fiction and nonfiction. Some of his work can be found at http://eyeonlifemag.com/the-poetry-locksmith/donal-mahoney-poet.html#sthash.OSYzpgmQ.dpbs=
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Nonfiction Book Review for ‘Big Dreams, Big Prayers Bible For Kids’ by Zonderkids

1/27/2016

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Book Description
The Big Dreams, Big Prayers Bible for Kids, NIV includes the complete New International Version (NIV) of the Bible along with devotions, prayers, and highlighted verses to help kids pray and listen for God’s answers to their prayers.

My Review: 4 Stars. The beginning has a page for someone to write To and From, which is a nice touch. The book gives a definition for prayer. The preface gives a brief history on the NIV version of the bible. Throughout the book, the sections titled Big Dreams, Big Prayers highlight certain sections and help guide the children through a devotion of their own.  Each book starts with some questions to help the child learn more about the bible, such as who write this book, and other important facts. At the end, there is a section for the child to write down their prayers, and then what God’s answer was.  Overall, a nice layout for the targeted age of 8-12.
 
I received this book for free from the publisher through the BookLook Bloggers <http://booklookbloggers.com> book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review and the opinions and thoughts I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255

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Fiction Book Review for ‘Jolt: A Rural Noir’, by Roberta M. Roy

1/27/2016

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 About the Book: A nuclear fallout brings refugees into a small town, and the characters calmly give them food and shelter, apparently.

MY REVIEW: 2 stars. I was very excited to receive this book because it seemed to be exactly my kind of story! I was pleased upon receiving it and looking at the cover. Unlike other books I have received recently, it seemed to be published by a company and to look professional.  So, great job on the cover.  Upon reading it, I did see some editing errors, which irked me, but I know how easily that can slip through even when the book goes through several editing phases.  The reason for the 2 star review (I didn’t hate it, just couldn’t get into it enough to even finish reading it) is because there was way too much telling and not enough showing. It was narration and little dialogue. The plot was a great plot and could’ve been written in an exciting, gripping way, but instead was dry and boring. Like I said, telling instead of showing. It almost read like a nonfiction book. If you want to know about nuclear fallout, then great. But if you want an exciting story, which I did, then not so great. It just fell a bit flat and missed the mark to me.
 
Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a review. I was not required to write a positive review, and all thoughts and opinions are my own.

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'Everyone Goes to Heaven' by Donal Mahoney

1/26/2016

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Everyone Goes to Heaven


Universal salvation claims
everyone goes to Heaven
and no one goes Hell.
Highly controversial.

The auditorium was packed 
the night three professors 
debated universal salvation.
Questions from the audience
revealed some folks were happy
to hear everyone goes to heaven. 
Others groaned in disbelief.

A man in the back row
asked if universal salvation 
meant some day he might
have to share a schnitzel   
in the clouds with Adolph.
Some folks applauded
that remark and others 
stood up and booed.

A man in a white coat 
and stethoscope necklace 
asked what happens if a 
doctor has a heart attack 
and dies during an abortion. 
Does he go to heaven or 
must he be vetted by Peter. 
More applause and more boos.

A college student stood up
and said he thought people 
should believe in something
then added he meant they 
should believe in someone.
Another young man asked if 
universal salvation means 
murderers and rapists spend 
eternity with the angels.

The gathering finally adjourned
to the cafeteria downstairs as
questions and answers
continued over coffee and rolls.
It was the kind of thing one finds 
after a church service on Sunday
except the fellowship was missing.
People were still arguing as they
drifted out in groups, sparklers
sizzling in the night.


Donal Mahoney
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'America Wants to Know' by Donal Mahoney

1/23/2016

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America Wants to Know


What will she do with him?
That is, if she’s elected.
She’ll have to take him 


with her to the White House
after keeping him in the doghouse.
Maybe the FBI can put


the doghouse out on the lawn.
He shouldn’t be a problem there.
Only men jump over the fence.




Donal Mahoney


————————————————————————--
Donal Mahoney, a native of Chicago, lives in St. Louis, Missouri. His fiction and poetry have appeared in various publications, including The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, The Christian Science Monitor, The Chicago Tribune and  Commonweal.  Some of his work can be found at http://eyeonlifemag.com/the-poetry-locksmith/donal-mahoney-poet.html#sthash.OSYzpgmQ.dpbs=
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'Arising Again' by Thomas Hall

1/18/2016

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Arising Again

Comes a time in your life when you face the rude thought that you're as smart as you're going to be.

You're now middle-aged and it cuts like a knife, but you don't grasp what that guy is braying.
But within yourself you've felt something wrong. Your mind's not the "Dead" but "Black Sea"
And you're clearly as quick as the fellow that speaks, only he's adept at conveying.

At times we all make the foolish mistake of mistaking loud talking for thought.
Or we'll swallow what's cruel, arrogant and untrue simply 'cause the facade is good-looking.
Humanity reigns as the dominant gene, the Golden Rule's gold can't be bought.
The ethics you hold are, by and large, the ethics that keep the brew cooking.

So write a new play, play a twist on the old, you're the music that keeps the world dancing.
Shakespeare stole "Hamlet" from an old piece of coal and he found the diamond in the dust.
But it's not the changes we change overnight, but the whispers you add are enhancing.
Our world resembles ourselves at fourteen when you still had to squeeze out the pus.

It's wrong to forget what our elders have learned, to disregard is to swallow your tongue.
Just by using our resources we can advance a world understood by the young.

by Thomas Hall

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Fiction Book Review for 'Doodletopia: Cartoons'

1/14/2016

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Doodletopia: Cartoons
About the book: An interactive doodle book from a best-selling art instruction author and cartoon master that pairs illustrating insights with drawing, designing, and coloring activities for aspiring artists.

Welcome to Doodletopia! Your first stop in this paradise of creativity? The world of cartoons. Your tour guide Christopher Hart is ready to introduce you to the interactive, artistic possibilities of creating your own exciting, hilarious, off-the-wall cartoon characters, gags, and more.

Unlike other doodle books that leave you stranded, with no help at all, Doodletopia: Cartoons pairs fun doodle-based activities with the sort of insightful (and laugh-out-loud funny) advice and tips that countless readers have come to expect from cartooning master Christopher Hart. For the first time ever, you can pick up your pencils, pens, markers, or crayons, and draw, doodle, or color right on the same page as the author.

From finishing cartoon faces to selecting costumes to completing wacky cartoon scenes,
the opportunities for creative expression are endless. So what are you waiting for? Open up
and start doodling!
 
MY REVIEW: I got this for my 10 year old son, who has been enjoying watching videos and drawing the cartoons from voice instructions.  I don’t know if this is a little above his level or if he just prefers hearing instructions, but this has proven a little harder for him to follow than the videos he is used to.  I think it’s a wonderful book, though, and I recommend it for anyone who has an interest in drawing and would like a step-by-step instruction to help them get started.
 
Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a review. I was not required to write a positive review, and all thoughts and opinions are my own.

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Nonfiction Book Review for ‘It’s Not What You Think’ by Jefferson Bethke

1/14/2016

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MY REVIEW AND THOUGHTS: I’m going to give this book a 4 star rating.

THE GOOD PARTS: I liked the author’s description of 90’s evangelicalism, and the way it seemed he was disillusioned about the process. The “repeat after me” altar calls, the colored bracelets. “Walking people through” the steps on how to get saved, as if it were a recipe. I have had the same disillusionments myself. I have seen church numbers grow on paper due to this kind of outreach and preaching, but it all seems so surface and fake. The growth doesn’t happen. The internal change isn’t there. There is something wrong about this. I’m glad that this author is challenging these things.  I was also pleased by the voice used throughout.  The author did not come across as “in your face” or pushy. He didn’t come across as having all the answers and telling everyone else that they were wrong.  He simply shared his thoughts and feelings in an almost conversational tone, leaving the reader free to either agree or disagree without feeling defensive.  This is an art that I wish more people could master.

THE PARTS THAT BOTHERED ME: To most it’s a small thing, but as a mental health professional, I am bothered when people throw out real diagnoses to describe normal everyday occurrences.  In this book the author uses the term schizophrenic to explain something (that actually sounded more in line with the definition of bipolar, but that’s not my point here) and he used the term ADHD in his acknowledgements to describe his writing style.  When this occurs, it minimizes the very real problems that people actually living with such diagnoses have, and makes the disorders that much harder for people to understand. Part of my passion is educating about mental health issues, and it’s the casual use of terms such as this that does so much harm, even when that was not the intent.  I winced at every casual use of terms such as these, and it did take away from my enjoyment of what the message of the book is really about.

This book will be donated to a Free Little Library in my local area.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a review. I was not required to write a positive review, and all thoughts and opinions are my own.

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'Country Boy and City Bumpkin,' by Donal Mahoney

1/12/2016

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Country Boy and City Bumpkin
 
Although I emigrated from Chicago to St. Louis, Missouri, a long time ago, I have never been anywhere near the small town of Ellsinore, Missouri, the birthplace of the late Albert Ray Morlen, barber extraordinaire. Al cut my hair in his St. Louis shop for at least 30 of the 47 years he did business there. He may not have been Andy Griffith but he was close to a clone and no one marketed the glory of his small hometown better than Al. And he did very well promoting belief in Jesus Christ as well.
 
His family had owned the only grocery store in Ellsinore back in the Forties and Fifties. He came to St. Louis looking for work. Finding none, he went to barber school and never looked back. He was a tonsorial artist unrecognized as such by most of his customers who were blue-collar men wanting little more than a trim or a crewcut plus an update on neighborhood news. Al not only gave them what they wanted but often a more liberal education as well. His specialty was theology. 
 
Al was a country boy and a Baptist and I was a city bumpkin and a Roman Catholic but we got along famously over all those years. If no one else were in the shop, we would discuss the differences in our two faith traditions. Al never flirted with Catholicism or I with his Baptist faith but when I first went to him he was convinced Mormons and Catholics were nothing more than cults and he didn’t hesitate to say that. After all, souls were at stake. Mine in particular unless I saw the light that he turned on every time I got a haircut. 
 
But after many years cutting my hair, and many long discussions, he one day told me he had changed his mind. Only the Mormons qualified as a cult. He had been wrong about the Catholics but he was still not too fond of all those statues. And since most of his customers were Catholic, he often had to attend funerals and still could not understand what was up with all that standing and kneeling. He never knew what was coming next. 
 
I could understand his problem since I had a attended a Baptist wedding once and we sat for the entire service. Big difference in the mechanics as well as the substance of the two faiths and not easy to explain, one to another.
 
It may have been on the same day that Al told me Catholics were not a cult that he also told me I was “saved,” whether I knew that or not. I knew this was no small thing coming from a Baptist, never mind one as solid as Al in his faith.
 
I had spent 19 consecutive years in Roman Catholic schools in Chicago without ever being told I was “saved,” a concept not accepted in Catholicism in the Protestant sense.  But then I had never been tempted to be a priest, either. So when Al told me I was “saved” and just too dumb to know it, I took that announcement as a Medal of Honor whether I could wear it or not. 
 
I demurred vociferously, of course, and said I was always in the process of being “saved” and hoped I would never fall off that path. I had a history of many tumbles in my time. 
 
I tried to explain the Sacrament of Penance to him and its biblical roots but that did not go over well. Nor did Purgatory and Martin Luther’s throwing the Book of Maccabees out of the Bible in the 16th century because of its allusion to Purgatory. But it was the doctrine of the Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist as discussed in John 6: 41-59 that may have made some impression on him. Nevertheless, he remained steadfast in his appreciation of the grape juice and crackers used at his monthly Baptist communion service. 
 
I told Al, however, that despite canards to the contrary, Catholics believe that the grace of God alone can save someone and that “works” are not the deciding factor in salvation as some non-Catholics might have you believe. 
 
I added, of course, a reference to 2 James: 14-18 as the proof text which says “faith without works is dead” and told him Catholics believe that as well. Without works, faith is moribund, for all intents and purposes, but Catholics in no way believe works will get you to heaven. Works of mercy are what you do if you do believe, and you believe as a result of the gift of faith that comes freely from God. You can’t earn faith or heaven from the Catholic perspective but dying in serious or mortal sin can help you go to hell. Al didn’t agree with that. 
 
Al regularly invoked his belief that faith alone guarantees salvation, that when one accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior he or she went to heaven at death. No pit stop in the car wash of Purgatory. He did not buy into the idea of dying with mortal sin on one’s soul as a means of finding hell as one’s eternal destination. 
 
As a result, I used to remind him on occasion of a notorious adulterer in his home town shot to death by an angry husband. Al would always tell me that if the dead man had accepted Christ, he went to heaven and he thought legendary Cozy must have done that somewhere along the line. Maybe so, I said, but if he were a Catholic he’d have a lot of explaining to do, and we would leave it at that.
 
I never accepted Al’s offer to visit Ellsinore simply because I don’t like to “travel.” He told me I’d be welcome down there as a visitor and would love the catfish and barbecue but as a Catholic I might want to get out of town before dark. 
 
In a sense he was joking, of course, but in another sense maybe not so much. Solid fundamentalists, whether in southern Missouri or elsewhere in the United States, often have a deep-seated suspicion of papists whom they view as souls needing to be saved. In contrast, Catholics I know harbor no great animus toward Fundamentalists with whom we share similar positions on abortion, euthanasia and other issues in our society today. We disagree on many things but on core issues there is great similarity whether either group admits that or not. 
 
I used to read Al's hometown paper in his shop while waiting for a haircut and I had come to love from afar the people in that area. I would rejoice when I saw the rare obit in which the deceased “was of the Catholic faith.” I would circle that fact and give it to Al as part of my gratuity on the way out if only to prove we papists had infiltrated his part of the woods.
 
I also admired a senior columnist in the paper who at times not only voiced suspicions of cults (her readers knew who the cults were even if Al had pardoned one of them) but she also had serious questions about other Protestant denominations. She was a member of the Church of Christ. 
 
I told Al that as a good Baptist he might not pass muster with the columnist or perhaps the Church of Christ. I later learned this denomination had split in two and neither of the two, as I understand it, accepts the theology of the other. Martin Luther’s 16th century earthquake still has tremors today with reputedly more than 23,000 sects or ecclesial communities already established and more being born as disagreements in doctrine occur. 
 
I was often tempted to send the columnist a letter indicating that as a traditional Catholic who reads her column every week, I felt obliged to tell her we papists are Christian and believe that Christ is our Lord and Savior and anything she may have heard to the contrary is buncombe and balderdash. I never sent that letter. I didn’t think that kind of thing would be helpful in bridging the gap.
 
Al Morlen was truly one of a kind. Every time I go elsewhere for a haircut now I think of him. I have met a lot of people cut from rare cloth in Chicago and St. Louis but no one like Al Morlen, a Christian first and a barber second. 
 
The man had to emigrate from his beloved Ellsinore, Missouri, to earn a living and he did that successfully. He reminded me of my parents who had emigrated from Ireland, circa 1920, to earn a living as well. They too succeeded, making it possible for the likes of me to pick up a couple of degrees coming out of a neighborhood where few went on to college. And like Al making the long hike from Ellsinore, my parents brought their faith with them.
 
 
Donal Mahoney
 
 
 
------------------------------------
Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis Missouri. Some of his earliest work can be found at http://booksonblog12.blogspot.com/ and some of his newer work at http://eyeonlifemag.com/the-poetry-locksmith/donal-mahoney-poet.html#sthash.OSYzpgmQ.gpbT6XZy.dpbs
 

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