(Part 1 here)

Okay, TrueTom, it’s your turn at the New System dinner table. Did you make peace with anyone that later saved you from strangling her in prison? Anyone that can put up with you—that’s saying a lot. Come on, spill.”

”Yes, brothers, I had such a trial. I had almost lost my peace with a certain sister. I had used the D-word online, as in “You would think that the same d**n button that puts you in private mode would take you out again, but nooo!” —and she was offended by it.”

No!

”Yavolle. Your English is no good, she said. That clearly indicates that you are pagan. Whereas others are instructed in the proper use of English, you are clearly not. And although you speak of God’s name on the several diverse social media forums, I can tell that you are really not for him!” (sung to the My Fair Lady tune of You Did It)

”Whoa! That really must have been a test for you, Truetom. What did you do?”

”I told her about when an elder backed into my car when it was parked in the turnaround spot where he did not expect it to be and said ‘Sh*t!’ He apologized and I said, ‘Don’t worry about it. That’s what bumpers are for.”

And I also thanked her for for contacting me to apologize for calling me out in front of other digital people, said an apology was not necessary, and that I could stand a rebuke now and then, that it did me good.

That certainly is an upbuilding experience, TrueTom. Thank you for sharing. But now it’s time for our nightly serenade in the courtyard. Tonight, we will be singing the tune ‘Jailhouse Rock.’ Who knows?—maybe a guard will be listening. That verse in Acts about Paul and Silas shows they do that sometimes.

(The guard did afterward make the observation that, ‘Even though you were prisoners, you were ‘truly free.’ This may be an allusion to Emily Baran’s book, an allusion I also picked up in ‘I Don’t Know Why We Persecute Jehovah’s Witnesses’ of a Russian guard observing Witnesses singing in the gulag, who remarked, “Truly only someone who has internal freedom can become a Jehovah’s Witness.”)

To be continued here

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