THE 8TH DAY [M, 4-6-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Mutterings of An Old Curmudgeon—THE 8^TH DAY [M, 4-6-26]

 

I’d hate to be a Monday. Everybody hates Mondays,

Even cartoonist Jim Davis’ Garfield the cat. Especially Garfield. People ask, “Why does Garfield hate Mondays? For a cat, isn’t that day no different from any other?” But they underestimate Garfield. He is a theologian. He knows that Monday is not the first day of the week, or even the 7^th, Or the 2^nd, if you think of Sunday as the first. Or the third, if you’re a 7^th Day Adventist.

 

But there has to be a Monday. And it’s not the first day.

Garfield knows that Monday is the 8^th day, not the first. It is such a problematic day, because that’s when God let us into the mix, when the world really began after the creation, after God had rested.

Workers tell us that we should never buy a car built on a Monday. Or a house. Or potato salad. Monday is the day the line workers and the carpenters and the cooks are hung over.

I was having lunch with old friend, Bob Butts, one Monday. Our waitress brought the wrong food. He looked at our waitress and said, “Big weekend?” “I just got mixed up,” she said. Bob replied, “I taught college for 30 years. I know a hangover when I see it.”

Monday is such a bad day that preachers don’t even try to work then. What’s the use? We claim we take Monday as our day off because we are so tired from Sunday, and the week that went before it, but it’s really because nobody is going to pay attention to a preacher, or anything else, on a Monday.

Addicts know the 8^th day is dangerous. You’ve made it through a week and so you think you deserve a reward. No, not a sobriety pin. You think you deserve a drink, or snort, or bet. Everybody else celebrates that way. Why can’t I? If you can get through that 8^th day, well, that’s not just another day of staying clean. That’s an 8^th day of staying clean, regardless of where you are in the sobriety count you keep for your sponsor and your support group.

The eighth day is dangerous. Little chicks of pastel coloring to do something with. Same with a bunch of non-resurrected eggs. Chocolate smears everywhere. Bonnets and baskets to find a storage place. Trying to make sense of the gibberish the preacher used to try to explain resurrection… It’s enough to make a person say, “I’m not going back there until the end of the year…maybe the week before the end of the year…”

So, be extra careful today, this day after Easter, this Monday, this 8^th day. We’re riding high on sugar and ham and resurrection. A lot can go wrong in that condition. Just be patient with this 8^th day. There will be a first day tomorrow.

John Robert McFarland