Sue and I were putting the end walls up on her studio.. the dust through the holes in the yet to be bolted walls were catching the golden light and it looked like the background for one of those saints candles and we took pictures.

Were I less honest, I could say that at that very moment a revelation was revealed to me (through that vast web of interconnected ancient sunlight in the garage) that told me I should declare myself a saint, but of course, it doesn’t happen that way. We were dog tired, took the pictures and went to eat and hit the hot tub.

Later on a camping trip on the Olympic Peninsula with our best friends in the world Ace and Eric, we did what we usually do when we’re together, which is have these great long amazing conversations about Life, evolution, politics, the human condition and something set my mind to wandering … to this place where it ALL SEEMED TO MAKE SENSE - except it was a half hour later and the conversation had moved on to burritos or chilies or how to keep ash out of the potatoes and I said

“ You have to be one with your whozit, and do it for the joy of making it way cool.”

Conversation stopped and Eric said
“Write that down.”
I did.
We remembered.
Little did I know it would become the
FIRST BEATITUDE of St Crispy.

Some of you may find my self-declaration of sainthood offensive, which is a thing that you should celebrate - because it gives you an opportunity to practice the modern day duty of taking offense. In a FREE country everyone gets to be offended – because one man’s holy whozit is another man’s latrine. We all get to have someone declare our sacred thingy profane, and if we’re really lucky, someday we’ll all learn to laugh at our foolishness and save our anger for the real stuff.

But who am I to keep you from getting red in the face? Go for it! Be offended! You should be SO offended, in fact, that you go to my ORDER page and buy a dozen St. Crispy mugs, (no refunds, no returns!) send out press releases to all the newspapers and tee vee and have a public burn-your- st.-crispy-mug bonfire. Buy piles of our stuff and have all your friends burn it. There now, doesn’t that feel better?
Think of how much you just saved in future therapy!

Now I know, saints are supposed to be a kind of intermediary between a pray-er and god, but, well a lot of you know this, but for those who don’t, um – well, do you remember the first time you figured out that there was no Santa Clause and that mom and dad were the ones who brought you those toys? Well, see god is kind of like Santa Clause, except for so called "reasons" that make NO sense, even the guy who has his finger on the nuclear button believes there really is a guy with a grey beard in the sky, but he doesn’t wear a red suit and deliver presents on xmas. The non-red suited guy supposedly thinks it’s more important that you don’t masturbate than if you studied hard this year and got along with your friends. Both are kind of creepy if you ask me – teaching us to accept authority and be good so we get our "reward."

But some folks believe that saints kind of “present” your message to god and even though absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, the data is not leaning toward a probability of godishness.
We may someday be proved wrong, but so far, the probability is, as they say,
NOT SO GOOD.

So if god’s not around to help you win the football game, why do we need saints?

We don’t.
But it can be a lot of fun to dress up and pretend, and now that the women in black aren’t going to slap their stingy rulers down on your knuckles, YOU will soon be able to become a saint in The Psychdelic Fellowship of the Boundless Light (TM) for a nominal fee and some imagination.

After I made up my first beatitude was revealed to me in the campground, I remembered the experience of the light, and realized that my name as I signed it in e-mail, “Chrisb” sounded a whole lot like “Crispy.” I started thinking about my youth and my uh, mind bending acid trips philosophical explorations under the influence of certain chemical enhancements that uh, turned me into a godless heathen altered my perspective. I realized that for a short-ish period of my life I was (in the notable colloquialism of 1970s St Louis) a bit of a “burn-out,” – kind of Crispy, and that it would be a notable and probably thankless bit of public service to be the guy who people think of when they remember all the acid they took way back in them hippy days, and smile.

So St. Crispy I am, patron of flashbacks and house hold clutter (because if you’re going to be a saint of something you have to have expertise in both the light and dark side…) and that people should buy my mugs and candles in the hopes that drinking hot chocolate and staring at a candle flame will help stop the procrastination when it’s time to clean the house. Or at the very least, be comfortable in the clutter, which is what I do.