There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job;
and that man was perfect and upright, and one that
feared God, and eschewed evil
Job 1:1
Barton Jenson was a good bishop,
a verifiably pious man
perfect and upright,
and one that feared God, and eschewed evil.
And together he and I took the Scouts
on the adventures we had always wanted to take,
And the boys complied because
we were bad at Minecraft.
By day we camped and rafted and ate.
By night, we sat around the campfire
and homilized our captive congregation:
The virtues of work, of motherhood,
of most women.
The dangers of wine, of Minecraft,
of some women.
It came the Bishop’s night to homilize,
which he did to great effect,
Pausing strategically under scrolling stars
to allow crickets to trill agreement.
But Bishop paused too long,
And lost JC, our most looking-to-be-lost boy,
who said, “Look, Bishop, your shoe is on fire.”
And the Bishop looked and his shoe was on fire.
The Bishop acted swiftly,
swatted his burning sneaker,
recoiled from the
blob of burn on his hand
and howled,
“Dammit.”
The crickets quit trilling.
The stars ceased scrolling.
Seven boys sat mouths agape and stricken,
some burning hotter than rubber to tell their mothers.
That one-word homily
became legend in the Rexburg Third Ward,
the greatest homily ever given to man or beast,
for the Bishop was perfect and upright,
and one that feared God, and eschewed evil.
And the boys sensed,
some clearly, some vaguely,
a world that existed beyond their own.
A world capable of
terrible hurt,
a world that warrants the
anger of even a pious man.
The boys sensed,
there might be things worse
than hooting at girls
or smoking behind the church.
Even JC was changed:
he vowed to
curse more carefully.
Phil Murdock is a poet, naïve watercolorist, and retired English professor. Most days you will find him at the desk, in the studio, or flyfishing the Henry’s Fork.