The Yom Kippur Option

Sedona, Arizona

The sun comes up here at 5 AM because Arizona does not observe daylight savings time.



I was standing outside the RV at 5 AM, when it came to me, in a sort of early morning epiphany, that, despite my early Catholic schooling, I have never made a confession of my many sins.



There's a Catholic church just down the road.



I discussed this, and all my sins with Mrs. Phred. She says that she repents her sins at the Day of Atonement on Yom Kippur, but that it's a private matter between her and her God, if there is one. I learned nothing more, despite sharing my sins with her.



When I was five I played with matches. I stole three yo-yos from the five and dime a year later. I built a 55-gallon still in High School metal shop class. I cheated once in college by writing the algorithm for determining a square root on my palm. I killed a cat when I was 20 instead of taking it to the vet to be euthanized. I often drink too much and upset Mrs. Phred. I have taken the Lord's name in vain 20-40 thousand times. I've been smoking for 54 years, which is probably a sinful use of perfectly good lungs. I get angry at tailgaters, cell phone users and Republicans. That's all I can remember. I don't think I ever seriously coveted my neighbor's wife or ass (donkey) . So I'm guessing somewhere between 50 and 1,000 Hail Mary's would do it for me.



But, I think I kind of like the Yom Kippur option. It's October 7-8 this year.

When they said repent,
I wondered what they meant.

Not much for the report today. I went to a walk in clinic to get a prescription to help me stop smoking, They say the average smoker quits eight times before achieving success. Maybe this is my time? Later we went to Sedona to find the tennis courts and get a haircut. The Montezuma Castle National Monument was a typical abandoned Indian dwelling on a cliff. Like the rest it was abandoned about 1425 AD for dark and mysterious reasons.

President Theodore Roosevelt created this National Monument though an executive order in 1906.