Reply #24: Have you ever been to some of those services?

[jmowreader]

If I was a congregant at someplace like Thomas Road Baptist or Westboro Baptist, I believe I would have to be...uhh...altered...to get through one of their services.

I helped bury this 300-pound retired mess sergeant when I was in the 101st Airborne. He was a fundamentalist, so naturally we had to go to the fundamentalist church to unload the casket containing the mess sergeant from the hearse, bring it in, put it on the little pedestal they had for it, then haul it back outside, load it back on the hearse, ride to the cemetery, unload it and put it on the casket hoist. This particular sect believed caissons were the tool of the devil, so we had to CARRY this motherfucker about 700 feet--and he was in a serious casket--it felt like it was lignum vitae veneer over granite. Very heavy. And I'm not kidding about the caisson/devil comment either--this preacher came out and gave us this little spiel about how the Lord said we were to be carried from this life, and that meant "by six men." Or, because it was a MI unit doing the carrying, four men and two women.

Anyway, back to the service...in two hours he managed to consign the entire burial party, half the congregation, the decedent's whole family, everyone in the state of Tennessee who didn't attend that specific church, and half of the rest of the world to hell--and he did this while he was praising the poor decedent.

If I would have known, I would have procured a wee pint of Everclear or something and brought it to the service. It would have made that sermon a LOT more fun!