For some of you, this sermon is now beginning. For others, there are a couple of brief paragraphs first, before the sermon begins. I have designed these opening words for those of you who are avid fans of Kurt Vonnegut’s writing, and familiar with his curious literary eccentricities. For the rest of you, the sermon begins in about a minute. I’ll let you know.
Like Billy Pilgrim, Kurt Vonnegut has now, thankfully, come “unstuck in time.” Though he didn’t believe in an afterlife, I’m sure he wasn’t too surprised last week when he awakened to find himself on the planet Tralfamadore. He was greeted there, no doubt, by a joyous “granfalloon” of other sardonic humorists and iconoclastic curmudgeons, such as his hero Mark Twain, along with H.L. Menken, Ambrose Bierce, and fellow Hoosier Kin Hubbard. Included in that granfalloon was Abraham Lincoln, who also had a dry sense of humor with a biting critique of the world he found himself in.
Back here on earth his opus of writing remains to enlighten and amuse. His books are filled with “foma.” Like all the best religions in history, foma offers us shameless lies that serve to comfort, and offer far more comfort than mere truth can offer. Foma also helps when facing life’s finitude. And so it goes.
http://www.allsoulsuuindy.org/ser20070422.htm
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