The year usually ends well for me.

In December I have a birthday and, for no good reason, people mark this occasion by giving me gifts. Now, I’m the sort of person who generally resists cultural convention, but for some reason I’ve embraced this one. Then, later in December, Jesus has a birthday and I get more gifts. Very strange indeed, but again I have chosen to accept this custom without protest. The result of all this is that December has become books and chocolate month for me. This past December, for example, I received 12 books (3,884 pages) and enough chocolate to support my habit till June.

Moral: When you discover a cornucopia don’t ask questions. Just quietly settle yourself down at the big end and hope nobody notices.

Of course, I’ve been trying to figure out how to blog you all a share of my chocolate but, alas, it can’t be done. I can, however, share my books, or at least the thoughts stirred up.

The first book I’d like to mention is A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut. A note on the cover proclaims, “[This] may be as close as Vonnegut ever comes to a memoir”, and, if it’s the closest he ever came, it’s certainly the closest he’s going to come. This was the last book he wrote before he died.

People sometimes assume that if a pastor likes an author he or she must be a Christian author. Well, Kurt Vonnegut definitely was not. In fact one of the things I love most about him is that he showed no sign of being religious at all. But he was a godly writer, and a modern day prophet. That is, one who has a gift for seeing the truth, and an ironbound commitment to declaring it, regardless of the consequences. Every time and place needs prophets, and my generation has needed them more than most.

Vonnegut’s first big success was Slaughterhouse Five (1968). It’s a witness to his experience as a victim of the bombing of Dresden, February 3, 1945. This was a British atrocity, as he recalls it, the worst massacre in European history (135,000 slaughtered in one night). “I, of course, know about Auschwitz,” he writes, “but a massacre is something that happens suddenly, the killing of a whole lot of people in a very short time”.

As I said, we need people who can see what’s true and will say it no matter what. Vonnegut was such a person so he was often vulgar, shocking, crass and, of course, a master of ironic humour. For example:

On present day war - “Why can’t the people in the countries we invade fight like ladies and gentlemen, in uniform and with tanks and helicopter gunships?”

And on a past war – “Now, during our catastrophically idiotic war in Vietnam, the music kept getting better and better.… No matter how corrupt, greedy and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious and charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful.

If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED

FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

WAS MUSIC

A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut is well worth reading as an intro to all his other works. But, to read further you have to be able to read tough stuff.

One day, when he was 82, Mr. Vonnegut asked his son what he thought life was all about. His son, a pediatrician, replied, “Father, we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is”.

Regardless what we think of his writing, Kurt Vonnegut seems to have had some considerable success as a father.