Charaz (noun) \shuh-rahz\ — Grape juice used in place of wine in some protestant communions.
Example: After sitting through the sermon with the rambunctious triplets while visiting her in-laws, Peggy had looked forward to a shot of wine during the Lord’s Supper, only to discover the Church of Christ served charaz.
Can you use charaz in a sentence?
My friend Trixie and I once took a class at church where we met a middle-aged man who was a nice guy yet obviously did one drug too many back in the seventies.
One Sunday when I had stayed home, sick, Trixie called to check on me that afternoon. “Guess who I saw at church this morning.”
“Um … God?” I said.
“Well, I suppose He was there, but I meant a person–not the Supreme Ruler of the Universe.”
“I give. Tell me.”
“You remember Seventies Guy? Well, he came to church today wearing a Superman costume.”
I tapped the receiver of the phone. “Did you say a Superman costume?”
““Yeah, blue tights, red underwear, boots, and cape.”
““Why would he wear a Superman costume to church?”
““Well, after the service, I asked him that, and he said he was looking through his closet that morning and just felt like he wanted to wear something different today. That’s when he saw the Superman costume at the far end.”
I let the details settle in. “You know, I have to respect that. That’s cool.”
““I know,” Trixie said. “I wish I had the guts to just wear a Wonder Woman costume to church on a random day in April.”
Ever since then, whenever I feel stale in some area of my life, I ask myself, How could I bring a little Superman into this? I haven’t donned a cape yet, but it’s helped me to bring a freshness into the choices I’ve made.
How could you bring a little Superman into a stale corner of your own life?
God announced yesterday that He plans to retire at the end of the year from His position as Supreme Ruler of the Universe. “I’ve been at this gig for long time and I just can’t do it, anymore,” Gold told reporters at a press conference. “I knew it was time to quit when I realized that I really don’t like people. I mean, I give them ten measly commandments and they still lie, kill, and covet their neighbor’s ass–interpret that as you will–and that whole whole Chick-Fil-A business! Holy moly! I’ve said for years, ‘Eat more fish.’”
Questioned as to why He didn’t unleash His wrath upon humankind, God replied, “You just can’t turn anyone into a pillar of salt these days without some people getting upset and staging a lick-in. The next thing you know, someone’s taken a picture with her iPhone and tweeted, Guess what the Big Kahuna’s done now? #OMFG.”
When asked about his future plans, God said, “I plan to travel: the Grand Canyon, the Great Barrier Reef, Euro Disney. I know I created them all, but I’d like to experience them as just a tourist. I also plan to take up water colors, watch reruns of the Mary Tyler Moore Show, and maybe take some trombone lessons. I’m also intrigued by Zumba.”
Celebrity Buddhist Judi Carlisle wants the Buddha to get up and move his butt. “I’m as objective as the next Buddhist,” Carlisle said, “but I believe that with the obesity problem in the United States it’s difficult to motivate tubby Americans to walk away from the all-you-can-eat steakhouse, pick up a lotus, and gold leaf the Buddha when he has a sizable booty himself.”
Carlisle is best known for her role in the B-Movie Piece of My Heart, which is about star-crossed lovers trapped by a hurricane in a leper colony infiltrated by the undead and was advertised with the tag line: “Zombies are everywhere–literally.” She went on to achieve further fame with a poorly lit sex tape, a $500-per-day cocaine habit, and a wardrobe malfunction at the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards. She soon found herself blacklisted in Hollywood, but then discovered salvation in Buddhism and strawberry-seaweed smoothies.
Having recently lost 20 lbs., Carlisle opened her eyes in meditation one day and noticed the love handles on the Buddha. “I thought to myself, ‘He can’t be happy carrying that extra weight around.’”
Fellow Buddhists and Carlisle’s critics claim that she’s missing the point of enlightenment and she shoud wake up and smell the incense.
Carlisle remains steadfast in her belief. “Oh, right! Don’t look at my fat ass because I’m spiritual and perfect. I know on the inside he’s thinking, ‘One day I’d really like to wear hot pants.’ That’s how I felt, too.”
The former B-movie starlet believes that Buddha needs a new image. “Come on, they’ve rebranded everyone from Mr. Clean to Betty Crocker. Why can’t Buddha get an update? I picture him as sporty, yet casual–definitely more active, perhaps with a goatee and a cowboy hat.”
This morning, MiMi Tate, 22, an office temp and devout Buddhist, attempted to self-immolate herself in protest in front of Carlisle’s home while dressed as a birthday cake. “I was on a my lunch break from a job standing outside a bakery and waving to passersby,” Tate said. However, whenever she lit herself, pedestrians kept blowing her candles out.
Other critics have attributed Carlisle’s attempt to slim down the Buddha as a publicity stunt to get viewers to tune in to her new reality TV show, Judi in the Lotus Position, where Carlisle meditates on camera with her eyes closed for 22 minutes. Early reviews have described the show in one word: boring.
As some of you may remember, tragedy struck at the Kissimeecoochee Baptist Church last Christmas when members of youth group “borrowed” the plastic Baby Jesus from the nativity scene for an impromptu game of touch football. Rodney Dobbins, Jr. went out for a pass and tripped over a lawn sprinkler, missing the airborne Christ Child, who cleared the fence and landed on Old Confederate Highway where a inmate-staffed road crew was repaving the road with a steamroller.
“You’d be surprised how aerodynamic those little polyurethane Jesuses are,” Rodney, Jr. said. “Those outstretched arms help them glide on the air currents.”
When Rodney and friends recovered the Baby Jesus, they slipped him back into the manger and hoped no one would notice. It would have been a good plan had the Christ Child not been reduced a thickness of a half inch and pressed out to a 36-inch saucer-shape, his eyes now seeming to bug out like an alien.
Unfortunately, Mary Ann Snow, President of the Kissmeecoochee Baptist Ladies Auxiliary and First Soprano in the Bible Belters Music Ministry noticed as she and her husband, Deacon Don, drove by on their way to deliver one of their famous BBQ box lunches as part of their Jews for Jesus Outreach. Mrs. Snow demanded that the boys be ex-communicated from the church (not burned at the stake, as previously reported). However, the congregation opted to pardon the boys for being … well … boys. After New Year’s Day, most church members forgot about the incident, with the exception of Mrs. Snow, who Rodney, Jr. reported he would often see waiting in her car with the engine running, when he finished his shift at the Dixie Dawg, when the new preacher, Bobby Young, Sr., found what has been affectionately dubbed as the Flat-as-a-Pankcake Baby Jesus hanging on the back of his office door.
“At first, I thought I had stumbled upon some heathen voodoo, ” Rev. Young, Sr. said, “But then my secretary explained what it was.” Sensing that it might generate some publicity, Rev. Young, Sr. added the Flat-as-a-Pancake Baby Jesus to this year’s nativity scene. The response has been overwhelming. “We haven’t had this kind of reaction since we added pink flamingos to the stable animals back in 1972. Folks have driven in from all over the great State of Georgia to see our Flat-as-a-Pancake Baby Jesus. We’ve even won some souls for Christ, as a result of it.”
For a limited amount of time, you can even have your picture made with the Flat-as-a-Pancake Baby Jesus.
“Last year, I thought we were being punished,” said Mrs. Snow, “However, now we know that it’s just the miracle of the Flat-as-a-Pancake Baby Jesus.”
As more Christian fundamentalist churches are closing their doors to homosexuals, Gay/Bisexual/Lesbian/Transsexual (GBLT) people are finding room at an unlikely table–devil worshipers. In an effort to increase membership and gain access to double income with no kids, Satanists are reaching out and welcoming gays to their churches with their “Meet Your Neighbors Before You Burn in Hell for All Eternity” campaign.
“We figured we’re going to burn in Hell, and they’re going to be in Hell, so why not get together and become friends?” said Betty Jo Simpson, President of the Happy Valley Church of Satan and Cupcake of the Month Club. “After all, they like goatees on hunky, bare-chested men, and we like goatees on a hunky, bare-chested men. They like horny men, and we like “horny” men. They like orgies, and we like orgies. In fact, there really are very few differences between a Black Mass and the White Party, just a a disco ball and an infant sacrifice.”
Many gays agree that Satanism offers something for all GBLT people to enjoy. “My partner Kris and I both enjoy being naked at home,” said Gary Palmer, 37, a pharmaceutical salesperson. “With Satanism, we can expand our beyond the privacy fence surrounding our pool into the rest of the world.”
Palmer’s partner, Kris Hughes, 29, a flight attendant, agrees. “My experience has shown Satanist women to be very generous. They don’t get uptight about sharing their husbands with us. Instead of being on the down-low, everything is up-and-up.”
“And I love, love, love the drama,” Palmer adds. “The theatricality of the Witch’s Sabbath is more exciting than that old chandelier falling to the stage in Phantom of the Opera.” He feigns a yawn. “Been there, done that!”
“Still, nothing tops when they conjured Kylie Minogue from a bunch of flames in the middle of the pentagram and she sang ‘Better the Devil You Know’ live,” Hughes said. “I wet my hot pants!”
It seems that a beautiful relationship destined for Hell was made in Heaven.
“I think we have a lot to learn from the gays about coming out,” said Simpson. “Most Americans would be surprised to find out how many celebrities are in fact Satanists: Lady Gaga, Flo from the Progressive Insurance TV commercials, Garfield, Flipper, and Charo.”
The Happy Valley Church of Satan and Cupcake of the Month Club’s flavor of the month is Sinnamon Crunch.
“I became an activist for gay animals the day my dog committed suicide,” says Suzanne Tuff, Executive Director for Pride Tails, a non-profit that records the oral histories of homosexual animals. “We’re all expected to run with the pack; to stand alone and let our colors show only taunts danger. If only Spike had learned to play fetch like the other dogs …
“The trouble had begun earlier that year when our neighbor, Mrs. Armstrong, paid Mama a visit.
“The trouble had begun earlier that year when our neighbor, Mrs. Armstrong, paid Mama a vista. She casually mentioned over coffee that Spike seemed rather light in the paws, so to speak, and, unlike her Great Dane, Duke, who was infamous biting bicyclists, digging up flower beds, and generously defecating in the neighbors’ yards.”
Tuff said that her tan pug never barked at cars, chased cats, or dug holes in the lawn. “Spike preferred to lounge among the summer dandelions, rolling around on his back and exposing his soft belly to the world. With his tiny, compressed snout, Spike wheezed with every breath; the sibilance gave the impression that he barked with a lisp. In addition to being a friend to cats everywhere, Spike allowed my little sister and me to dress him in doll clothes and a long, blond wig. He sat patiently in a tiny chair–tongue hanging out and panting beneath the gold fringe–while Elizabeth and I poured imaginary tea into plastic cups.
“It seemed harmless at the time …”
At her mother’s urging, Tuff’s father enrolled her dog in obedience school to toughen him up and teach him discipline. “Spike pranced from his fellow student’s hindquarters to another, sniffing butts with a dreamy expression on his face. His affable personality and expressive curly tail only endeared him to the instructor. On his final report card, she simply wrote–Adorable!”
When Tuff’s parents couldn’t change her dog’s behavior, they attempted to change his presentation with a studded collar. “Frankly, it only made him look gayer. He used to admire himself in Mama’s full-length mirror. She eventually threw the collar away when a confirmed bachelor who lived two blocks over from us, told her that Spike looked like a member of an all-canine version of the Village People.
However, it was a church scandal that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. “Mama was a sure bet to be elected President of the First Baptist Church Women’s Bible Brigade for traveling around to all of Dairy Queens in area to convert Pakistanis to Christ. Then Mrs. Armstrong swung the vote after she tearfully confessed that she went out to water her petunias and saw Spike trying to take Duke from behind. The other members were so sympathetic that they didn’t pause to think about the fact that it wasn’t physically possible unless Spike had a step ladder.”
Tuff’s mother tried to rise above it, but a confrontation in the frozen foods section of the Piggly Wiggly made her take action. “As my mother reached into the freezer for a box of fish sticks, a lady wheeled her cart by and whispered, ‘Your Sodomite mutt is going to burn in Hell.”
Tuff’s parents argued over what to do. “Mama told Daddy that Spike’s homosexuality was an infection that might spread to the rest of the family. ‘Today the girls may play with Barbies, but tomorrow they may sport mullets and fall under the influence of ladies’ professional golf!’ She gave Daddy a brochure for Rex Gay, an ex gay ministry for dogs.”
Rex Gay, which is now under investigation by the Society for Prevention-Cruelty (SPCA), uses a stresses its use of hormone and praise therapy, but it’s their use of electroshock therapy that has been criticized and implicated in the deaths of a pair of standard poodles, a Border Collie, and a Chihuahua.
“As the orderlies were hooking Spike up to the electrodes, he bit them and managed to get away. He raced out the door as another couple came in with their St. Bernard. As he raced across the parking lot to the busy intersection, I called out to him. He stopped and turned to me with those sad eyes that seem to say, ‘Give me dandelions or give me death.’” Tuff pauses and wipes the tears from her eyes. “And then he leapt into the street and became a hood ornament for a minivan.”
Tuff no longer has any contact from her family. She went off to Sarah Lawrence College and dropped out to begin recording the oral histories of gay pets that she met. When asked about the value of these stories, since they are actually not in any language understood by humans, Tuff said. “It’s not important that an animal’s story be understood, only that its bark or meow is heard.”
When Hank Hunnicutt, owner of Marble Lions, Kissimeecoochee’s only independent bookstore, agreed to host a book club, he didn’t expect to be at the center of a literary controversy. Tracy Snow, a local college student, pitched the Last Call Book Club, which paired a cocktail with a loosely connected book. Since the book club started two months ago, Tracy has paired Catcher in the Rye with a Whiskey Smash and The Sun Also Rises with a Tequila Sunrise.
However, Tracy has drawn the condemnation from Marble Lions’ customers and members of the Kissimeecoochee First Baptist Church when she paired Nikos Kazantzakis’ The Last Temptation of Christ with a Rusty Nail, a classic cocktail made with Scotch and Drambuie. “One of the reasons I formed the Last Call Book Club was to encourage people to read and discuss books, along with an irreverent cocktail.”
Marianne Snow, Tracy’s mother and President of Angels on Wheels, The South’s only inline skating outreach to lost souls, summed up her daughter’s choice like this: “I think it’s sacrilegious, and I could have sworn we burned that book back in the Bonfire of 1997.”
It’s not the first time Tracy and her mother have clashed. Four years ago, Marianne expressed outrage when Tracy dropped out of The Bible Belters, Kissimeecoochee’s favorite mother-and-daughter gospel group, to form all-girl punk band Toxic Pussy, who had a local hit with “You Had Me at Meow.”
Although Hunnicutt understands the local displeasure of the book club selection, he also knows that it’s an opportunity to engage in a meaningful dialogue about the subject matter. “I’d also like to remind everyone that the Kissimeecoochee Volunteer Fire Department is out-of-town at an arson conference, so let’s not do anything impulsive or rash.”
As a child, I was always suspicious of Jesus. I mean, I know he’s the Son of God and loves all the little children of the world, but it’s not like he created the world in seven days or parted the Red Sea. In my mind, God was the Big Kahuna, and that’s Whom I was taught to pray to bless Mama and Daddy and, I suppose, my big sister who was sometimes mean to me, too.
I suppose it started with the rolling papers I found in the back of a Volkswagen Bug that my dad bought to fix up for my mom. “Put those yellow papers down and go wash your hands,” my dad told me. Naturally, I had to ask why. “Because they’re yellow papers and they’re bad, that’s why.” Again, I had to ask why. “Because hippies use them, that’s why.” So then I had to ask what a hippie was. “Hippies are men with long hair and beards who wear sandals. They don’t work and talk about love and peace.” My father leaned down and looked me in the eye. “You should stay away from them.” Obviously, being a hippie was a bad thing.
Some time later I remember being in Sunday school. It must have been shortly before Easter, because we were cutting palm fronds from green construction paper for when Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. Our teacher had just finished passing out those little butter ring cookies in the shape of a flower. It was fashionable, at the time, to slip the cookie onto one’s pinkie and nibble it until it was all gone.
So, I was cutting palm fronds with safety scissors with one hand, and nibbling a cookie on the pinkie of my other hand, when our teacher held up an illustration of Jesus entering Jerusalem on a donkey. In a flash, I noticed that Jesus had long hair and a beard and he wore sandals. Furthermore, he didn’t work because he was too busy traveling around with his disciples to preach about love and peace. My blood ran cold. I felt my head start to spin, and I reached out to brace myself from falling over. My butter cookie ring shattered as my tiny hand hit the table. Suddenly, I realized the truth: Jesus was a hippie!
Even though I was only five or six, I can remember feeling quite paranoid when my mother picked me up and escorted me to the auditorium for the main church service. My father and older sister were there. Daddy smiled at me and I quickly smiled back. I couldn’t let on that I knew the truth. Didn’t my father realize that Jesus was bad? That he was a hippie? And then near the end of the service, the Lord’s Supper was served, and the ushers passed around collection plates with saltine crackers in them, which the preacher said was the body of Christ. If it wasn’t bad enough that Jesus was a hippie, now I was expected to grow up and eat him. It blew my little pre-kindergarten mind.
There was a period where we changed churches several times, and then we didn’t attend regularly for a number of years. During that time, hippies sort of disappeared from the media. I remember that I was wrestling with some sort of adolescent trauma, when a proselytizing schoolmate suggested that I turn my problem over to Jesus. I remember laughing and saying, “Why in the world would I want to do a thing like that?”
“Because Jesus is the Son of God,” she said.
I shook my head and explained to that silly girl that God was the CEO of the Universe and Jesus was just the Manger on Duty. “If I have a problem, I certainly have no intention of messing around with middle management,” I said. “I’m going straight to the top!”
“You’re going straight to hell,” she said. “Unless you accept Jesus Christ into your heart as your personal savior.”
I was confused. I thought, Gee whiz, you don’t go to church for a couple of years, and suddenly, it becomes the Jesus Fan Club!
When I got home, I asked my dad about it. He tried to explain the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost to me.
“I thought you said that there is no such thing as ghosts,” I said.
“They’re not,” my dad replied.
“So how can there be a Holy Ghost?
“Well, he’s not a ghost, really, he’s more of a Holy Spirit.”
“Isn’t that just another word for ghost?” I asked.
“Okay, so there is such a thing as a ghost, but the Holy Spirit is a good ghost.”
“Like Caspar?”
“Yeah, like Caspar.”
“Why did you lie to lie to me, then, Daddy?”
“I didn’t like to you,” he said.
“You told me there was no such thing as ghosts!”
“I meant like in haunted houses,” he said.
“You also told me there was a Santa Claus, and that turned out to be a lie, too,” I said, crossing my arms in front of me. “For all I know, you’re lying about this Holy Ghost business, too!”
And the next thing I knew, I was grounded because my father had lied to me about ghosts–and Santa Claus. Maybe I still blame Jesus for that. I should have never trusted that hippie …
The Church of Saint Francis of Fifi in Bald Knob, Arkansas has demanded that Cher be canonized as a saint. After winning the American recording artist, actress, and television personality’s ribs off eBay last summer. Since that time, the relics (as Cher’s ribs have become known) have healed several members of the congregation and the Bald Knob Gay Men’s Chorus.
“After being touched by the relic, Roger’s lisp vanished,” Doug Quattlebaum, Director of the Bald Knob Gay Men’s Chorus noted. “Kenny’s gonorrhea dried up, and Chip’s leaking implant was saved. It was a miracle!”
Quattlebaum, who also serves as the musical director for The Church of Saint Francis of Fifi, keeps Cher’s alleged floating ribs , which were supposedly removed in the ‘90s to make her waist appear smaller, in a Bob Mackie gown and placed on a scale model of the set for The Cher Show. “Sometimes I just sit, holding the Relic and singing “Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves,” and I can just feel power emanating from the ribs.“
When asked if he really thought that he held Cher’s floating ribs–especially since she has denied that she has ever had such surgery, Quattlebaum paused, before leaning forward and asking me if I believed in life after love. He also said that he thinks it’s absurd that anyone has to be dead before they can be canonized. “Really! What’s the point of being a saint if one’s not alive to enjoy it?”
Tahalia Roper, The Church of Saint Francisc of Fifi credits Cher’s missing ribs with saving her marriage. “I had burned a whole pot of gravy and didn’t know what to do with it. Quattlebaum allowed her to hold the ribs until she received an answer: Put it anywhere it doesn’t burn. Neither the gravy or Mrs. Roper’s gravy went to waste.
When asked about the whereabouts of her ribs, Cher had no comment.