Years ago I came across a program that was supposed to highlight the 100 scariest moments in film history.  I already knew which movie was and is the scariest of all time. It was so scary that at one point the guy sitting behind me gently grabbed my shoulder and said, “It’s only a movie, son.  Sit down,” because I was literally standing there screaming. (I was 13.)

I just had to see where my number one scariest movie was on the list.  They agreed with me that the #1 scariest movie of all time was Jaws.  And boy was it scary. After that movie I didn’t feel safe at the beach.  I’d be walking around in the surf, looking.  I didn’t even feel safe in a swimming pool.  It’s probably when I started taking showers instead of baths.

What was so scary about that movie? 

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Some years ago, our son Sam and his wife Abby adopted a cute little Chihuahua-Pekinese-mini poodle mix named Sage. Sage is cute as she can be, all 4 pounds of her. But she had a problem when they first got her. She was covered with fleas. The poor dog was absolutely miserable. She looked frightened, cowering, and much smaller than her 4 pounds would indicate.

I suggested Sam should go get a flea and tic shampoo so we could kill the fleas and wash them away. Sam got a flea shampoo. It smelled really nice, but it claimed to be a repellant, not a killer. And it didn’t seem to bother the fleas at all. So, I ran to the store and grabbed the right product, came back and we washed her. The second bath killed all the fleas.

The change in Sage was abrupt and complete. She immediately became joyful. She couldn’t stop smiling and as soon as we got her mostly dry, she started bounding all around greeting everyone. It was quite a transformation. Sudden. Complete.

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Not long ago a very experienced, committed and devout Christian friend was excited to tell me about an article he’d read by a Jesuit priest, which he summed up by saying, “You can reduce the Gospel to five words, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.”

He was very pleased. He found that very comforting and it sounds like a badly needed tonic for this era of social media and 24-hour news, rife with political opinions, which I suppose it is.

That was very well-intentioned, but made me cringe.

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