My Bologna has a first name, it’s O S C A R
My Bologna has a second name, it’s M E Y E R
I . . . Love to eat it every day
and if you ask me why I’ll say
That Oscar Meyer has a way with B O L O G N A

I hope you’re old enough to remember and sing along with the lyrics above. I was singing this the other morning when Suzanne walked in and gave me a really funny look, one which I’m accustomed to as I sing little songs that fit what I’m doing all the time. In this case, I was packaging up my recently smoked lunch meat and I sang this song as it’s the only way I can remember how to spell bologna to label the package.

Spelling was never a great subject for me. I struggled all through grade school, trying to memorize those ten words each week so that on Friday, I might get them right. Let’s just say, six out of ten was pretty good for me; you do the math on that grade. Typing term papers in college was a huge challenge. Yes, I’m that old; The pre-personal computer had not been invented and had to use a real typewriter. I can’t tell you how many times I would type a page just to find that there was a mistake. Can you say ‘White Out’? Do they even sell White Out anymore?

I got my first computer when Jason was about one, a 16k Apple IIe. Because I was frugal (some would say cheap), I used a cassette tape player as my storage device. That lasted for less than a year as the frustrations mounted, I purchased the Disk II floppy drive with 140k and I thought it couldn’t get any better than this.

Of course, we all know now how it got better. Like dial-up internet, oh how I miss that ‘crackle beep de-do de-do’ when you were trying to connect to the ‘World Wide Web’; and cell phones that folded in half, where texting ‘Hello’ was as simple as 4433555555666; and typing in a ‘word processor’ that would save your work and you could make sure it was correct before you printed it. How could it get any better than that?

Here we are today, cell phones that connect us every second of every day to everyone we have ever known; little white boxes that have names in every room of our house that we can ask questions, tell it to play music, or just have a conversation with; Church online so we can stay in our jammies, have a cup of coffee and be more comfortable while we worship; and with all these conveniences, we seem to be busier and more stressed than ever.

Sometimes, it feels good to just get out a pencil & paper to make a list, take a note, or just doodle; go out and hoe in the garden when there are no weeds in site; sit on the front porch swing and count the cars as they drive by. Sometimes, I need to sing a familiar song in church; watch an old movie I’ve seen before, or just look at old family pictures to remissness. Sometimes I just need to type what comes to mind and bare my soul for friends and family to read, even if it is just a bunch of B O L O G N A . . . . . How’s That?

This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.

Matthew 13:13