‘Bleat’ comes from the drifting plea of lambs and their kin everywhere, and from an essay by C.S. Lewis called “Fern Seed and Elephants.” Lewis, then a layperson in the Church of England, was appealing to his priestly shepherds in the form of a lowly sheep. Lewis structured his essay around four ‘bleats’ which one might characterize as ‘humble complaints’. After all, a sheep just wants a decent supply of nourishment protection from (or at least advanced warning of) wild beasts, and participation in a healthy flock, right? The essay climaxed (if memory serves) around the criticism Lewis had those entrusted to interpret the scriptures: “These men ask me to believe they can read between the lines of the old texts; the evidence is their obvious inability to read the lines themselves. They claim to see fern-seed and can’t see the elephant ten yards away in broad daylight.” How d’ya like dem apples? I find myself returning again and again to the fundamental questions of life, relationships, Bible, etc. and discovering that it was not between the lines that the clues were hidden, but in the sort of gut-wrenching honesty of wrestling with the lines themselves. It reminds me of a little book on my shelf by the late and esteemed FF Bruce, The Hard Sayings of Jesus. Excuse me? With all due respect to questions of textual transmission, corruption and ambiguity, EXACTLY WHICH ONES ARE THE EASY SAYINGS OF JESUS? We may find it puzzling or historically enigmatic when Jesus says “Foxes have holes and birds have nests but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head,” but existentially this has little force compared with the verbal napalm of “Love your enemy, and do good to those who persecute you.” Clear as nails. Grace and Peace, Dan