You can take comfort in my presence
GOOD NEWS! This column will soon be entering its fifth year. The smiling dial that marks it has not changed one smidgin in all that time. I'm ageless, that's what I am. I'm still the same bloke I was way back when that pic was taken; still my dear old mother's son, the crème de la crème of the Highett Rileys in the prime of his wonderful life.
How can this be, you may ask. Surely one day he must be touched by cruel time?
My resilience from the toll life levies rests on a little-known feature of my existence: I'm the second son of God.
My brother you surely know. He dropped in for a while way back in BC something or other, and went on to make quite a name for himself among the locals.
Me? I'm the shy one in the family. You won't catch me getting up to the little tricks Jesus was forever performing whenever he thought he could pull a crowd. That's not for me. I'm the family intellectual. (Please note the glasses in that regard.) The thinker.
Dad's plan was to send down a sibling every thousand years or so. My sister, Eileen, who got the job for the millennium after Jesus got nailed, was burnt as a witch just as soon as she said boo.
You won't catch me as main course on a barbecue. I want to live on to a good old age (not that you will be able to tell it), thank you very much. So as far as my theological duties are concerned, I thought I'd keep them on a back burner and settle instead on well-chosen words of wisdom each week in the pages of Green Left Weekly.
You can't blame me. Members of my family tend to die young.
So, as another Easter passes, I want you to take comfort in my presence. You won't catch me pissing off home as soon as the authorities get nasty. No, I'm in it for the long haul. And you can forget that malarky about a heavenly reward — why do you think I want to stay on down here? Dad is so strict and dogmatic that he makes the afterlife a merry hell.
My advice to you is to do the best with what you've got.
Just don't tell Dad I told you so.
By Dave Riley