A Friend in Low Places

I like this story from In the Clearing: I believe in a lower power!

A kid with a clipboard and pencil came up to me on the street yesterday, and politely asked me, "Do you believe in a higher power?"

I answered yes and he thanked me and moved on, but what I really wish I'd said was, "Well, it depends on what you mean by higher."

But I don't suppose he had a category for that answer on his clipboard. I saw columns of checkmarks there, one I suppose for answers in the affirmative, another for answers in the negative, and perhaps another for the how-should-I-know types. But no column, I'm sure, for wiseguys who can't give a straight answer.

"Because," (and this is what I wish I'd said), "I believe in a lower power."

I imagine my young interlocutor tilting his head like an eager-to-understand beagle and saying, "You mean, like, the devil or something?"

"No, young man, I most decidedly do not mean the devil," say I, really grooving on the wise elder role (this is how I imagine it), "I mean that I believe in a higher power that made himself lower. Lowest, in fact, of all. The scum of the earth, you might say. And all by his own free choice, if you can imagine that."

I didn't say any of that. I just thought it afterward. And in my mind I see the young man say, "Why would he . . . ummm, or she . . . or whatever . . . do such a thing?"

That's when I put my arm around him and say, "Let me tell you a story . . . "

With apologies to Garth Brooks, It is good to have a Friend in Low Places!