Greetings everyone. Although it’s hard to take notes while participating in a dinner party, Barb and I will take turns to keep you informed. Occasionally the contents of our laptops may overlap because the two of us process our party’s data separately.
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When Joan of Arc turns up 15 minutes early along with her 5-month old kid named Francois, Barb and I are surprised (we didn’t know about him). Let's not mince words: I'm pissed and tempted to take my samari stance and shout "Back Off, Interloper." Tonight’s conversations will have to focus on the kid or on pro-life vs. choice issues. Further complication: we no longer have rattles or toys around the house to amuse him. And sleeping arrangements for the kid will have to be improvised.

Barb's happier about the uninvited guest. After sitting beside him coo-cooing, she leaves the room to find something crib-like. Perhaps there’s a wide drawer upstairs that we can empty, bring down, and use?

Joan and I nibble at talking politics, specifically gossiping over whether today's French President Sarkozy will marry that Italian supermodel. That spills over somehow (don't ask) to our appraising just-released data on fertility rates in the native lands of our three guests -- France and Ireland (each 1.98) and the U.S. (2.1, the level required to maintain a country's population). Joan attributes recent gains in those rates to French, Irish, and U.S. economies, their influxes of immigrants, and -- in the States -- 2007's chances to use subprime mortgages to buy big houses that can hold greater numbers of babies.

While we’re waiting a while for the other guests, intermittently I keyboard on this laptop. Also I watch the kid, his laugh, and his ‘swimming’ on the floor an inch or two. I find myself waving and smiling at him, saying ‘gitchee-gitchee-goo,’ and, yes, enjoying it all.

Her English is strong.

Joan doesn’t look at all like Ingrid Bergman did in that 1950s movie about her. She’s thinner and darker-haired, with reedy arms. Similar to some folk you meet at parties, Joan comes across as modest, quiet, and sorta out-of-place. She does not seem as cheerful as an American Joan of Arc would be.

To drink, she just wants tap water. It is spiritually and physically nourishing, she says.

I find myself walking back from my initial irk and thinking, ‘You’re likeable enough, Joan.’ Is my enthusiasm too tempered? O.K., I meant to type that Joan’s plenty likeable, eh?

Twice we hear Barb answering the door. At first ring, Francois begins making such a ruckus that Joan doesn’t even look up -- her cuddling isn’t working. Over Francois’s din, I don’t even try to introduce Billy Graham, who's first on the scene. Subsequently, Bob Geldof doesn’t press for her handshake either.

Those two chaps get talking between themselves in a corner of the living room. Bob’s eliciting Bill’s views on the poorest continent. “There’s a side in Africa that’s not written up too much, all kinds of religions,” Billy observes.

I let in a genial Billy Graham and after several minutes, I open the door for a gracious Bob Geldof. Each heartily pumps my hand. Rocker Bob does not look scruffy, and Reverend Billy has his white hair in a mullet. They and Joan seem like good scouts.

I lead each into our LR and then it's back to our bedroom (on the first floor). I have been gathering and putting blankets on the floor there for Francois’s nap. I presume Rick is in the other room introducing all.

When I chug back to the party, Billy is an ace at T.L.C., rocking Joan of Arc’s baby and tweaking his cheek, almost as if he is presiding over a baptism. Billy even offers to change the diapers (not needed now).

With his handkerchief, Bob tries to wipe Francois’s nose, but that is a turn-off for this baby. Bob’s song and jig is marvelous -- wish I could have filmed it.

Billy and Bob are hitting it off, very much in sync, talking about a 94-year-old blind golfer in Florida who sunk a hole-in-one the other day. I thought those two might click. Joan and Billy also seem simpatico.

Frankly, I cannot tell whether Joan and Bob are getting along. When he referred to the message on her orange sweatshirt as “ballsy,” she looked as if she had just graded that comment with an F.

After the breast-feeding, Baby Francois yawns, rubs his eyes, and dozes off.

“Right you are,” Joan responds to me, “blankets on the floor would be perfect.” So I guide mother and baby to the ‘nest’ I have made. Once we are certain that Francois is still snoozing, we leave the door ajar, the better to hear yelps.

Joan and I pop into the kitchen. After I check the braised carrots on the stovetop and as I put the meat back in the oven on ‘Warm,’ Joan makes a sign of the Cross…

Munching a handful of pecans, Bob Geldof leans over to ask Billy Graham, sitting nearby: “Why do you think you were invited to this party, Dude?” That question is posed with genuine curiosity about what he and Billy have got themselves in for here.

So begins the sets of stories we tell about ourselves.

In his deep North Carolina timbre, Billy muses that evangelists are wanted wherever folk are God-fearing and seeking a new life; “the Gospel that we talk about is good news to the individual that his own sins are forgiven.” That outlook on Heaven and God's love, he says, is what’s kept him preaching, and overseeing magazines, training programs, websites, a retreat center, and more.

At first, that’s about as far as Billy will travel in memory. I don’t want to force the conversation, but… but I do. Gradually I draw out, among other affirmations, that Billy feels “I’m not going to Heaven because I’ve read the Bible, nor because I’ve preached to a lot of people. I’m going to Heaven because of what Christ did.”

I broach the subject of Billy’s revivals, and it seems that some 185 countries have provided settings for them -- everywhere and anywhere, Billy says. There’s a light in his eyes as he speaks of living by God’s rules, by the Scripture’s rules. The rules are part of what the Bible teaches; they are not just what he, Billy, believes.

Inasmuch as there’s no set of Biblical rules for racial segregation, Billy’s always refused to conduct a meeting if black and white participants were isolated from each other. He’s proud to have paid bail money to spring Martin Luther King Jr. from jail during the U.S’s civil rights tempests.

“Ever get arrested on your own?” Bob baits.

“No, but if saying things in public that cause spectators to heckle, slug, and throw garbage at me, I would have been in jail a long time ago,” Billy says about his years-ago pitches on street corners. “Not that there’s anything wrong in serving jail time for God’s principles,” Billy adds.

Billy bats Bob’s ‘starter’ question back to Bob: “Why do you suppose that you were invited?’ Billy acts as if he knows the answer.

Bob dithers in replying -- he tilts his head 45 degrees, looks as if he’s pondering something in his past, and slowly finishes up his cheese and cracker. Billy uses that opening to present his ‘take’: Bob and he have been invited because they each convey a non-denominational message of hope, love, and urgent concern.

That sounds god-awful holy, yet I suppose that is our justification. Barb and I aren’t hoping to ‘bond’ with our guests -- we’re far too different from them for that -- but we’d like a ‘bridge’ over to them.

(I'm of an age that ponders the Afterlife. Thus if that topic comes up tonight, Joan may draw on her present career to tell me what lies ahead. Billy may reassure or energize me about the beauties of God. And Bob, well, Bob may try to hold me to the most godly standards of altruism in this life.)

Having given Billy’s ‘Why do you suppose?’ query some thought, Bob says he’s bringing to the table assorted personas: “Which Bob do you want? Do you want Boomtown Bob? Band Aid Bob? Big Breakfast Bob? Bob and Paula?”

Real quick, Joan of Arc purses her lips, emits a half-snort, and leans her shoulders away from Bob. She had appeared to like him as Singer & Dancer for her kid -- but now Barb and I both notice she’s looking uncomfortable. If Joan deems that Bob’s various personae are frivolous, tonight we may be in for an overload of piety.

HELP!

When Joan and I re-enter the LR, everyone is sitting around munching cheese on crackers. (This afternoon, I had mixed a mild cheese with a spicy topping of pepper jelly). Bob Geldof is explaining that he has Boomtown Bob and other narratives within him. And that he is evolving all the time. “Life has widened the narrow identities I started with.”

Billy Graham appreciates that perspective, saying that certainly he too is not the same man that he was, say, 20, 30, 40 years ago. "I am still a man in process.”

To which Bob says, “Do you ever run into the hellfire preacher who used to be you?” Instead of answering directly, Billy points to Bob’s slightly chubby gut and asks, “How long as it been, Bob, since you stopped working out at the gym?”

Gazing down at his belly, Bob smirks.

But then Billy does run with the idea of the guy he used to be. He shares examples of how he has tempered his hellfire views. “I talk less about sinning and more about having an abundant life. Less about fearing God and more about accepting God’s saving grace. I talk less about satanic forces in human affairs and a lot more about compassion.”

We all go on the record as favoring compassion, yes.

Joan of Arc says that identities not only change but, worse, can be misperceived. “Case in point: I get the impression that you gentlemen assume little Francois in there,” she points to her baby in the BR, “was from my womb.”

How come Joan is excluding me with that ‘you gentleman’ bit? Of course I assume Francois is hers. And what a strange phrase, "from my womb." Melodrama.

“Yes, yes,” we all react, although now we also are beginning to wonder. “And you seem like such a natural mother,” Billy Graham smiles.

“Well, my friends in this room,” she says without resentment but with a touch of psychospeak, “like other men in History, you have misperceived me. Sorry but I cannot construct myself as a biological mother. And Francois? Ah, dear Francois, he’s the child I nurtured, up to the end of my trial. I hope you don't mind that I brought him along tonight?”…

Joan of Arc’s mention of a trial darkens our party’s tone, provoking Billy Graham to draw back and Bob Geldof to furrow a brow or two. No one intrudes with questions about Joan’s trial, her trial’s outcome, or her present ‘nurturing’ relationship with the Francois kid. Those questions hang in the air. We’re silent because, well, because now Joan is beatific as she comes clean with us. She’s definitely not playing the victim to us friends in this room.

(Query to self: is the kid adopted? Francois sorta looks like her, only pudgy. I’m pretty certain no reference to him appears in biographies about Joan.)

Barb, habitually uneasy about prolonged silences at dinner parties, rushes into the void and attempts a smooth transition. She's saying: “Oh my, that is most interesting, Joan....Such an adorable baby too, and so well-behaved...Lucky Francois, Lucky Joan...Now, as we were saying about Paula...” That’s the core of Barb’s pivot of the room’s conversation -- only Barb is less abrupt, far more voluble and endearing.

No objection arising (even from Joan), Barb recalls that Bob Geldof’s ex-wife was a blonde, glamorous, and high-spirited music journalist. Bob produced a TV show where Paula was known for her ‘on-the-bed’ interviews. (That’s not something I see Joan or Barb doing.) Barb further reports that Paula and Bob had three daughters, each with a distinctive name.

(Because Barb and I have three kids, each with an ancestral first name, we savour this adjective ‘distinctive.’ It’s better than the demeaning ‘Such unusual names!’ reactions we used to get back when they were still at home and we would introduce them.)

Bob takes up his story from there. He shares various winsome qualities of Fifi Trixibelle Geldof, Peaches Honeyblossom Geldof, and Little Pixie Geldof. Following the early deaths of Paula and her second husband, Bob went to court and became the legal guardian of Tiger Lily Hutchence, so she could be raised with her half-sisters.

At that, there’s a decided lighten-up in Joan’s grimaces at Bob.

Even Barb, sometime observer of pop culture, is in the proverbial dark, though, about that earlier ‘Breakfast Bob’ tag. The rest of us are too. Bob says he has better things to do with his life than talk about that incarnation. Abrupt?

Boomtown Rats? No one speaks up about Bob’s fore-mentioned association with those varmints either. “Were you doing slum clearance?” Billy chuckles. “Nah,” Bob comes back, “I leave redevelopment to you.”

Barb announces that ‘Boomtown Rats’ was the name of his first rock/punk band in England (funny that she knows about that: it’s not her type of music). The name comes from a line in a Woodie Guthrie song.

We are reproached by Barb for not realizing that Bob later organized a more famous group. “In 1984, his Band Aid was a tip-top group of British and Irish pop & rock musicians who recorded a poignant Christmas song.”

Yes, now of course, I remember. Last month I’d seconded Barb’s initiative to invite Bob tonight -- but that was because of my great admiration for Bob’s concerts, the ones to raise money for African relief. I had plum forget that those concerts’ precursors were the Rats and Bob’s song, “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” Sure, vaguely I knew about them as sparky parts of pop culture. Yet up to this moment, I‘d never made the link between that Christmas song and Live Aid’s concert. I was real busy in 1984.

You know how it is with us septuagenarians from the Silent Generation. We remember and then blather on and on about the screwiest things. For a spell now, I wallow about “Do They Know?” being a titanic hit as a single. Three million copies sold. An unprecedented 96 pence for each record for aid relief.

(It’s true, it’s crass: once I too would’ve liked to have had a hit single -- even without proceeds going to provide relief. A dream every kid has when twelve years old? I’ve easily moved away from that dream, but you know, I wouldn’t mind singing at least once in a karaoke bar somewhere. You too?)

UPDATE, a fact that I had to look up: In the ‘90s, Breakfast Bob was a popular program of Bob’s TV production company.

Billy Graham is aware of Bob Geldof’s Christmas song, recalling that the record’s vast earnings were channeled by Bob towards reducing famine among Ethopians. “That’s right, Dude,” Bob says. Bob also has ‘Dude-d’ Rick earlier tonight.

Bob: “I sold DVDs. One of them sold shitloads. The difference is this one kept people alive because of me. The weirdest thing is the carol singers coming round…They don’t know it’s my flat, but they start with “Silent Night” and “O Come All Ye Faithful,” and then soon they’re into ‘It’s Christmas time, there’s no need to be afraid…’ They think it’s as old as ‘Silent Night.’ You go, ‘[Expletive], something really entered the culture.’”

(The realization hits me suddenly: two of our guests are not wearing clothes that fit their ‘brand.’ Bob is decked out in a formal tux, Irish green, but still a tux. Joan of Arc is indulging her inner rock star, wearing Led Zeppelin-inspired velvet pants. Billy, however, conforms to his image: he is all-American in colors, with a power-blue suit, red tie, and white handkerchief in his jacket.

(Rick is in his turtle-neck mode; he got that gray sweater for Christmas. Oh, how he resisted my buying it for him -- regularly these days, we squabble about whatever clothes I buy him. He thinks elders do not need anything new. And me? I am in a powder-blue pants-suit…These days it is hard to find nice dresses in stores, so practically every woman I know goes around in pants. I predict dresses will come back again as the woman’s brand.)

While I have been appraising everyone’s outfits, tonight’s talk has veered. The topic has shifted, from sales of Bob’s Christmas records to other aspects of Africa, including the terror this week in Kenya and the ongoing genocide in Darfur. I am surprised to learn that evangelicals have taken a key role in fighting poverty, AIDS, malaria, and climate change. Globally, not just in Africa.

Then we flip back to how Bob led Live Aid’s televised concert in 1985. Somebody mentions how it raised $84 million for starving and dying in Ethiopia and how, at Bob’s behest, 60 musical acts played for free.

Bob is aghast that, even after that concert and assorted other charity stints, just as many are hungry in Africa as before. In some places, more.

Not to miss the moment, Billy gently is saying that people instinctively know, and feel uneasy, about the world’s present inequities. Poverty impedes access to -- here, Billy easily cites the usual sectors (health, education, et al.)

Saying something in an earnest manner can help convince others, and so Rick looks terribly earnest as he lays out what he admits is a cliché. "Yet it's still true: $160 billion, less than a tenth of the cost of the total budget for the Iraq War, could lift entire countries out of poverty, teach every person in the world to read and write, significantly reduce child mortality, and make huge leaps in the battle against AIDS."

Bob asks Rick for the source of that $160-billion statistic. When Rick gets red-faced and embarrassed that he cannot recall, I back up my husband, citing an economist’s blog we both read. (We spouses have to look after each other. But it would require more than $160 billion annually to raise global levels, would it not?)

Joan observes that more aid does not always lead to more development and therefore less poverty.

Bob's chagrin is the enormous Live Earth pop concert in the Summer of ‘07, an event that many people thought he had put together. Bob says he would have only organized Live Earth if he could have gone on stage and announced "concrete environmental measures from the American presidential candidates, Congress or major corporations… Everybody's known about that [greenhouse effect] problem for years. We are all [expletive] conscious of global warming."

I have a chagrin to share too, and when it is my turn to speak, I sound off like a lawyer writing a threatening letter, i.e., I am "adamant and irrevocably in opposition towards African rulers who are more interested in their own welfare than their people’s. Corrupt elites in Africa, you better watch out." (Bob’s mention of Christmas lyrics somehow has got me retrieving that ‘watch out’ line from “Santa Claus is coming to town.”)

At some point at other dinner parties elsewhere tonight, I imagine other diners also are verbally smiting their enemies, hips and thighs.

I glance over now at two in front of me, Joan and Billy. They do not look vengeful, not at all. So I need to qualify what I said about other dinner parties: a portion of diners everywhere, not all, are verbally smiting villainous characters.

One thing is unnerving me, and that is the dynamic between Billy and Bob. They are making cracks about each other, only a very few of which I have noted here (too off-putting) or laughed at (too weird, not ha-ha). Maybe I am over-reacting, but the edge of their comments strikes me as mean-spirited. Oddly enough, from their body language, neither is particularly bothered. It is almost as if they are masochists.

To quote somebody (I do not remember who) quoting Yul Brynner quoting Oscar Hammerstein quoting the Teacher Anna Leonowens quoting the King of Siam, “Is a puzzlement.”

Let me tell you, however: at dinner parties, women do not snipe at each other like that.

(We're really into it. I’m sitting on our couch, taking in the flow, the opposite of being bored as hell. I’m flexing my disgustingly huge ego, jubilant that Barb and I somehow managed to attract and hold this set of luminaries. Their high ideals seem more important to them than their robust egos. Besides using terms like ‘charismatic’ or ‘energetic,’ it’s hard to describe people you appreciate. So I’ll just say they fill the room.

(Additionally, I’m relishing the affable banter between Billy Graham and Bob Geldof. They’re just foolin', not riding each other hard. When one of them seems to put on airs, the other zings a friendly insult, and that’s enough to sand-down the other’s rough edges. It’s not so much what they say as how they say it, how they play well with others.

(Before I retired a decade ago, all the time I’d give and receive the same sort of ribbing with work buddies. We’d keep each other real.)

Billy acknowledges that he has had faults and missed opportunities. Some of the many thousands of conversions to Christ that followed his sermons may have been short-lived. Billy regrets that he did not always bring the Gospel to the White House -- Harry Truman, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter could be “prickly.” Billy’s concerned too that some clergy scorned his moderate and inclusive teachings, i.e., fundamentalists have found him insufficiently conservative for a southern Baptist. Billy laments a 'with us or against us' disposition that is out there.

As the talk gets around to the meaning(s) of God, Joan of Arc pitches in. At one point, a maxim she offers sounds like something provocative from the outdoor marquee of a church: “Lying in bed and saying ‘Oh God’ is not the same as going to Church.”

Bob likes that, and in turn Joan likes that he likes that remark. Billy laughs and says something indecipherable.

Bob re-frames the discussion to the Church in the past and organized religion’s misuse of God in medieval wars. He is stumped about why good people do bad things in the name of religion. He seems open to the possibility that divinity could exist without religion.

Joan glowers at Bob as he holds that “The world doesn’t need any more Christians…” She relaxes, however, as Bob finishes his thought, “any more than the world needs more Buddhists or Muslims." Bob glances at Billy, as if to reference him for introducing the notion earlier, "What the world now is more compassionates."

You can't argue with that, and I think we've hit a dead zone in conversation.

Barb is visual-minded and eventually inquires into a prayer-wheel she’d heard about, one that Billy distributed at one of his New York crusades. Billy describes how you could turn a dial to questions on the outside of that wheel -- for instance, “Have you had personal sorrow?’ and ‘Do you hate someone?’ A window on the wheel then would cite the Gospel text that provided an answer. At best, Joan and I are only indifferent to the wheel. In a friendly way, though, Bob reaches over to tap Billy on the back, “Dude, that’s cool, technologically and aesthetically.” Billy thinks of the wheel as “a handy and simple self-help guide.”

Later, Barb’s interest in watercolor painting comes forward when we dive into art and religion. She’s familiar enough with religious subjects (like Bellini’s angels, Durer’s virgins, and Raphael’s Madonnas) -- only she hasn’t put them into her own artwork, at least not consciously. Joan, evidently now on one of her favorite turfs, tells us about faithful relationships that Giotto, Michelangelo, Leonardo, et al. had with God. She regrets that the era of great religious paintings ended with Venice’s Tiepolo.

Joan is on Picasso’s case for declaiming that “God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant, and the cat. He has no real style. He just keeps on trying other things.” For Joan, it’s blasphemy that Picasso equates himself with God, even if the painter is only teasing.

Concepts in play now include "heal,” "care," “charity,” "salvation," “redemption,” “spiritual,” “eternal wisdom,” and "God's love." Joan at one point throws in “firmament” as in “God’s firmament,” a word I associate with hymns. Can’t remember which one, though. Surely it must be in more than one hymn.

Then we take up the recent wave of books by tenacious anti-religionists such as Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett. Visibly Billy is the most stirred. With eloquence, he disavows those writers’ ideas of an impersonally originated universe. He mentions Oxford philosopher Richard Swinburne’s use of a probability formula known as Bayes' Theorem to place the odds of Christ’s resurrection at 97 percent. Still, Billy does not insist upon "sufficient evidence" of divinity that this Oxford chap (Swinburne) provides or that Hitchens et al. demand. And later by invoking assorted lessons from religion, Billy demolishes their argument that a broad education in religious faith is 'child abuse.'

True eloquence may make fun of eloquence (folk saying), but nobody here tonight outrightly mocks Billy’s stand.

Barb does remark that skepticism and religiosity can co-exist within an individual.

Joan says that an emotional need for faith cannot be denied.

In response to the question about whether God is dead, Bob points out that there's no conclusive way to disprove the existence of God. But then he gets in a quasi-jibe, good-naturedly of course. When Billy remarks “I'm for morality, but morality goes beyond sex to human freedom and social justice,” Bob allows that “Beyond Sex” would make a great title for something.” Just as calmly, Billy bespeaks, “Maybe even better than ‘Boomtown Rats’?”

Appreciating our giggles and grins, Joan says that “laughter is god-given. It reduces blood pressure, it lowers stress hormones, it increases muscle flexon, and it raises the immune function by boosting levels of infection-fighting T-cells and disease-fighting proteins which produce disease-destroying antibodies.” Each of us takes a deep breath and laughs again, which prompts Joan to characterize us as “triggering the release of endorphins, the body's natural painkillers. See? We’re each producing general senses of well-being.”

I register silent surprise as I hadn't realized Joan was into smiley or scientific stuff. Is her occasional laughter a mask for her deep pain?

With regard to laughter’s benefits, vocal agreement comes especially from Billy who says he used to begin sermons with funny stories.

The five of us then have a number of back-and-forths on the bombastics of Hitchens and the other anti-religionists, the charged’ tone of that atheistic vanguard, and the counter-itch that pulls folk toward God.

Ultimately pressed to declare myself on matters of the soul -- and this on an empty stomach -- the best I can quickly summon is this: “As a Christian, I prefer the anti-religionists’ chaps’ frontal attacks…I value their directness ahead of agnostics’ flapdoodle. It seems to me that agnostics merely pretend open-mindedness to uncertainty about God while underneath generally they’re concealing an arrogant disdain for believers.” That’s my little speech.

(Actually, I didn’t say that -- it’s what I wished I’d said. What I’ve just typed is a highly edited version of my stumbling-around. As a result, I've not paid attention to or noticed the last five minutes of talk. You see, I‘m not always a reliable narrator.)

Then, out of the blue, I hear and smell a fart. No one claims authorship.

‘Tis a good time to move on to the next room for dinner at 8. Barb goes to the kitchen for last-minute preps and to move dishes to the table. Everyone looks starved.

Joan says we have "touched on" a lot of things. I tell myself that her touched-on description means our approach has been too scatter-shot for her taste: we haven't even begun to 'cover' our holy topic.

When I get a signal from Barb, I say, “Church on the move,” and everyone digs that slang for “It’s time for our group to leave this location.”

Billy is first through our French doors and into the dining area. I wonder if he's always first through doors.

Our guests slip into their places with what I hope is a sense of occasion.

Not wanting to ghoulishly remind Joan of fire, at the table tonight I have not set or lit my usual tapered candlesticks.

Rick, my dear mischief-maker, had told me that he intended to ask Bob Geldof to say grace, but now my spouse holds off. Maybe he is wary that Bob may address God as ‘Dude,’ offending sacramental tradition. So it is Billy Graham who says a fast, multi-worded grace and message of comfort, and of course he has a way of delivering it electrically. We are rapt.

It also is the most inclusive invocation that our Shaker dining table has ever witnessed. Billy even conjures blessings for our absent children, Bob’s absent daughters, Joan of Arc’s ward/stepson (?) asleep in the next room, plus Billy’s own children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. It includes Christians, secular humanists, and non-Christians. The seculars and the non-Christians may be going to Heaven too, Billy explains.

Billy’s prayer is so ecumenical, so noble, that afterwards Rick has an opening of sorts to spice things up with a contrast; that’s his curmudgeon ‘thing.’ It is a non-inclusive tale he has picked up in his Folklore research: “Have you heard the one, Billy, about the Catholic Bishop who wanted to support a Baptist counterpart? ‘In the end, we both worship the same God,’ the Bishop says in Rick’s story says, ‘you in your way, and I in His.’”

The groan from Bob is the party's only direct reaction to Rick’s religiously incorrect joke. I understand now that tale ‘works’ better -- if it ‘works’ at all -- in print than in discourse. Rick tried it out on me last night, and I did not anticipate that it would fall flat. Rick had wanted to explore why Minister A can fulminate over Minister B seeing God's ways differently. We thought the joke could launch a conversation about different churches coming to understand their differences, thereafter acting on their commonalities. My conclusion is that there is a time and place to talk about church unity but not here, not tonight.

Only partially daunted, Rick musters his pride and passionately ladles out his yellow mung dal soup. It is the most ambitious soup he has ever made. It is a mix of mung beans, turmeric, ginger, jalapeño, zucchini, chilanto, lemon juice, cumin, coriander, and three curry leaves.

Reminiscing with strangers is never easy. Nevertheless, over our second course (seared sea scallops on baby spinach with crème), once more Bob reaches back in time. In 1957, almost 30 years before his initial Live Aid show at Wembley, Bob says that same stadium was the site of the largest religious gathering in British history. At the time, Bob was only six years old. He was not there then, but he says that it was such a "big deal" that he heard about it. Next, with a melodic ‘Tah Dah,’ Bob points to that event’s central figure, “Billy, come on now, you were all wet, weren’t you?”

Oh my. They are at it again.

Billy bobs his head and beams broadly at the cut. Then there’s something revealing (and surprising to me): in 1957, a driving rain had dampened Billy and his rally. Hence Bob’s ‘all wet’ comment had a basis in fact. The problem, Billy says, was an absence of physical shelter (Billy then slips in the claim that umbrella-like, God provides a spiritual shelter).

Joan of Arc mentions Billy’s belief in Wembley and elsewhere -- that Christ’s salvation alone is the lasting solution to personal and world problems. In pretty much the same words, she also re-scores her earlier point that God is not a metaphor but a living being that affects our day-to-day lives.

Joan and Billy may be at opposite ends of our dining table, using different sets of salt & pepper shakers, but theologically they still seem together.

Billy says that is also the message of salvation that he took to New Orleans after the Katrina hurricane. For him, that visit that was “so emotional that I could not even talk to my wife for a while.”

That wife, a missionary’s daughter, died recently. Joan is the first among us to express condolences over Billy’s loss. For talking with surviving spouses, I have yet to learn how to turn my declaration of sympathy into some useful purpose. Hence tonight, when Joan mentions Ruth Graham’s passing, I keep my condolence short. Bob is better at voicing regret than I am…

Inbetween first and second courses, Bob Geldof says that because his life history and style differ from Billy Graham’s and Joan’s, it’s only natural that he doesn’t couch his pastoral message strictly in Biblical terms. Rather, Bob tells us of “using art and culture to move something that’s a grievous sore.”

About leaders of G-8 governments in 2005 who promised to help make poverty history, Bob recalls having created “domestic heat to pressure them into doing something they don’t particularly want to do…We will not get there if we don’t do ludicrous circuses like giant concerts…and stars being rallied.” Named after the other big-name Irish rocker at these "circuses", a recent term of derision for this pressure from celebrities is the BONOization of aid.

In an ideal world, rock stars wouldn't need to cut deals with world leaders on behalf of folk in the world's have-not nations. In a world that's lame, street-level protests against inequities associated with the World Trade Organization become viable in Seattle and Quebec City. So the more I listen, the more I think this Geldof chap "gets it” -- or gets part of it -- about the need for citizen pressure to break the problems of poverty, aid, and world trade in places like Africa.

Bob specifies a percentage of Gross Domestic Product that modern nations should give to underdeveloped ones. As he is speaking, Joan of Arc is asking me for the bread basket (yeast rolls with herbed butter). I don’t hear Bob’s amount. So where did he get his statistic (whatever it was)?

Now Bob is augmenting his concern with a danger: if the West doesn’t live up to its G-8 promises, “China will be all over Africa…and they [Africans] will embrace any government.”

(My mind harks back to the geopolitical zeal of our Chinese guest from last month, President Hu Jintao. If through some scheduling snafu, Hu had been a month late and showed up here for this party tonight, would he fit in with tonight’s crowd?)

If you ever want to learn about modern crusading, you should consider our two male persuaders.

During June 2005, Billy Graham ran another big-tent revival meeting in Flushing Meadows, New York. It is one that Rick is knowledgeable about. No big rain drenched it, nothing like Woodstock. Although afflicted by prostate cancer, hydrocephalus, and Parkinson’s disease, Billy made it to that event using a walker after hospital stays to repair a broken hip and pelvis. “You did your gig,” Bob says, approvingly. Billy adopts an aw-shucks posture, saying these infirmities keep him humble, helping him” “relate to people who are suffering…[and] in hospitals.”

Billy tells us that at that revival he had hoped to find people whose life could be changed. ““ Anybody that the Lord touches…I believe that while we are holding the meetings, the Holy Spirit is working among certain people.” Billy advises, “We [may] have all the trappings of true faith, but deep inside, we’ve never been born again.” He has preached that message to over 214 million.

Billy indicates that 20 or so years earlier, in order to distance himself from the Religious (political) Right, he had taken liberal stands on the era’s social issues of homelessness, capital punishment, nuclear disarmament, divorce, wayward teens, and the government’s role in eliminating the poverty that compromises social inclusion in the community. In 2005 at New York City, however, Billy only preached the Gospel. Realizing that he could have divided his audiences if he had taken on this era’s hot-button issues -- like abortion, homosexuality, Iraq, social security, and stem-cell research -- Billy says that he left it to “the younger people” to advise more specifically about responsible behaviors in society. He grins toward Bob, and Bob reacts by saying to Billy, “What’s the matter? Are you old or something?”

Billy: “I want to be shallow and say ‘No,’ but when you get to be my age, all of the world is passing you by.”

Like a schoolmaster, Rick is striving to get back on the rails our discussion about addressing global inequities. He does not succeed initially, for Joan coaxes Bob to say more about his Live Aid outreach in 1985 and his subsequent Live 8 concert for the next generation. I do not quite grasp why she has an interest in that, however...

Bob’s initial Live Aid concert took place just six short weeks after a crusade that Billy had, where the closing night saw 100,000 squeezed into New York’s Yankee Stadium in 105-degree heat. Then, 20 years later and in pleasant weather, Bob and musicians in 8 cities held a globally televised concert; 3 billion people tuned in. It was not so much to re-boost awareness of Africa’s problems but to change political policy. Live 8 was, according to our knighted guest, “the sole continent in decline since Live Aid. Why? How long do we seriously want this to continue?”

Thanks to Bob’s lobbying, that year G-8 leaders forgave debts for 14 impoverished nations, affecting 290 million Africans. Or, as Bob claims, those leaders said they would forgive debts. Governments are slithering out of their commitments, double-counting debt relief as parts of their aid budgets. “You ought to get after them Billy,” Bob urges.

Billy says softly, “We all must be doers of the Word.” (“Must,” Billy had emphasized earlier tonight, “is a Scriptural Word.”)

“We all have voices to which we respond,” Joan of Arc interjects. “Every time my voices appeared, I saw blazes of light. They spurred me to get out more. To become involved, you might say, with government.”

Pretty much Joan has been reticent entering the conversation -- much as she had been reticent 575 years ago before embarking on her divine mission. For a time way back then, when supernatural voices first were counseling her to reveal herself as one who could expel the English from her native France, Joan had demurred, saying “I am a poor girl. I do not know how to ride or fight.”

Tonight in our dining area, apparently she wants her fair share of air time, so she sits forward to recall -- all very explicitly for us -- that very time and those very "I am a poor girl” and “I do not know how” statements. From Billy and Bob’s expressions of ‘So What?’, it is obvious they do not have the foggiest about how to interpret this poor curious girl who is claiming to know zilch about riding or fighting. Rick or I have got to step in and clarify where Joan is coming from -- but at this late hour of the party, how do we start?

Using a cloth napkin to wipe from her lips a little baby arugula with warm mushroom and tomato vinaigrette, Joan chooses to unload as the other guests have done. Perhaps she is miffed that she did not have a chance to opine earlier: “I have three Reasons for being here tonight, “One, a change is better than a rest. Two, I’m also a poor cook -- I do not know how to cook or organize a dinner party. Taking care of a child’s demands can turn even a top chef into a loser in the kitchen.”

Compliment accepted, the cook in me sings. Seconds are served, all round.

Do you suppose Joan had a Reason Three for accepting our invitation?

As for questions about Joan’s knowledge about riding and fighting, they slip off our agenda. For now anyway…

I’d assumed that when Barb first met Billy Graham and Bob Geldof at the door tonight, she’d mentioned that Joan of Arc was here. Now I’m clueless about how to bring up the fact that the young woman blithely sitting over there is…is who she is.

Back to the surreal world and this alternate life that Barb and I live in this dinner-blog.

To much nodding of heads around the table, Bob is enthusing now about his hopes for improving chances for children in Africa. In the process, he’s again deploying his famous expletive. Bob’s comfort with that term, I recall now, became known around the world at his first Live Aid concert. Bob overruled an announcer who was directing TV-watchers to send donations through the mails. Expecting folk around the world to pledge generously as well as immediately by telephone, Bob remembers that he said, “Fuck the [postal] address,” i.e., f’god’s sake, get on with giving money to the cause. Bob robustly says he is mis-remembered, even in an Oxford Book of Quotations, as saying there “Give us your fooking money.”

I hear a sound that is more snort than laugh.

Joan appears to be quite the genteel lady, for each time Bob unleashes one of his “Fuck-offs”, she winces. Billy blinks each time too, but at least he’s been around and thus is familiar with that angry dismissal. I don’t notice Barb’s reaction to Bob’s recurrent use of the F word -- but subliminally I do recall her hooting at one of the ‘Ten Commandments for Attendance.' On big screens at openings of professional football games, we’ve seen ‘Thou shalt not swear.’

Here’s the thing. The foul-mouthed part of me is delighted by the freestyle sass that Bob is voicing, including an array of brilliant verbal “#@$+^%*!s” that I haven’t even tracked here. Pot, meet kettle. All the same, I’m conflicted because I agree with my high-school English teacher about Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage. That is, I remember Eddie Snyder saying that Maugham’s onetime use of the word ‘damn’ had impact by being the only swear word throughout all of Bondage. Put another way, as I've noticed in my post-high school years, not much impact is enjoyed by folk who always act annoyed, who swear their heads off. On the other hand, if they were not such bloody one-note soreheads, their occasional indignation and curse could have impact. Just sayin'.

Keyed to our other guests’ sensitivities, I deliberate how I might button-hole Bob and privately tell him in effect to ‘Fuck-off, Bob, with your Fuck-offs.’ I sense that he’s pretty irrepressible, though, saying whatever it takes to advance his noble cause. Since I applaud the cause, I hesitate in trying to restrain. A form of constraint, if not bondage.

From his aura and the courtly way he carries himself, the Billy Graham I see is comfy with Power. Rick circles back to an earlier to & fro tonight and asks about Billy’s back-channel work as an ambassador for U.S. Presidents wanting to break the ice with certain foreign leaders (but not the African crooks we were talking about earlier). “You dress like an ambassador Billy,” winks Bob, as if that were the lowest state to which a person of character could sink.

We value that, different from certain leaders of his era, Billy’s avoided fiscal or sexual scandals -- and as Rick observes, Billy has apologized for insulting American Jews as found on a once-secret tape from President Richard Nixon’s White House. Billy, it seems, had put faith in Nixon’s character and his misadventures in Vietnam and Watergate. Once that faith was broken, “It was nearly unbearable to me,” Billy tells us. Bob suggests, “Nixon’s downfall was pretty unbearable for Nixon too.”

Rick further mentions how Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Nixon advanced their careers and policies by identifying with religious leaders. More often than not, those politicos sought out Billy, rather than the other way around. Rick quotes a biographer who attests that being in a newspaper photo with the solid, benign, family-respecting, and quite lionized Billy could bolster anyone’s approval rating in Middle America by 10 to 20 points. This correlation leads Bob to muse about getting a picture of himself alongside Billy to use as publicity somewhere and somehow for something.

Billy realizes that sometimes he has come across as these secular authorities’ unofficial chaplain, causing critics to accuse him of endorsing their policies. Naturally, Billy inquires how Bob cultivates his relations with governments’ big-wigs. Bob acknowledges that “I wouldn’t call [England’s] Tony Blair and Gordon Brown my friends, but I know them pretty well and this whole issue of Africa really does bother them. I think if they could do something while they had power, they would. Or to put it the other way, if they didn’t do anything, I think they’d regard it as almost a badge of shame.”

Bob tells about the time on television that he confronted one of Blair’s predecessors about the desperation of Africans. “People remember that as me telling [Margaret Thatcher] to go fuck herself, but that isn’t it. She said to me, ‘We’re very grateful for what you do.’ I engaged with her, very sotto voce and deferential, and she said, “Well, Mr. Geldof, it’s not as simple as that.’ I said, ‘No, Prime Minister, nothing is really as simple as dying, is it?’ And I looked at her and got the gimlet stare but I held it. So we went in for lunch, and she taps me on the shoulder and says, ‘Come and see me tonight.’ So we went to the flat and we had a scotch together.”…

An anxious-looking Joan of Arc says, “Excuse me,” interrupting one of Bob Geldof’s breezy asides to Billy Graham. You can tell something big is coming.

Knowing of her revulsion toward forces of occupation, I rise and refill everybody's drinks, anticipating that Joan is about to say the West is long overdue in compensating Africa for supporting colonialists, white racists, corrupt tyrants, and exploitative corporations. Cognizant of her sympathies for the oppressed, I also wouldn’t be surprised if Joan were to quiz Bob on whether Live Aid inadvertently helped fund an allegedly brutal resettlement program in Ethiopia in the late ‘80s, one that somehow may have killed up to 100,000 folk. Or perhaps she’ll lament that too few Africans sang at his Live Aid and Live 8 Concerts.

But no, when I sit back down again, she speaks no criticism of the substance of the chap whom she’s been half-snorting at. Rather, it’s a stylistic point that Joan raises her hand to make. Imagine! Style!

Bob’s routine profanity, she says, meeting Bob’s eye, is “counter-productive” (is that a 15th-century word?). It’s an unnecessary roughness that’s out-of-bounds, a gesture of bully masculinity that implies that only men have the guts to launch big-time crusades. Oaths don’t necessarily spark folk to do their zealous best. Her cussing, she admonishes, would have been a wretched example for her Army back in 1429. Joan adds that as a substitute for a foul-mouth word or phrase, she occasionally did utter a mild, “By my martin!”

By my what? A martin is a sparrow that migrates near the feast day of St. Martin of Tours -- but a martin’s relevance to oaths? Beats me. I know that Edward Albee has a running joke in his play Tiny Alice about cardinals (birds) and cardinals (church honchos); so if Joan is attempting a similar pun about birds and the church honchos who sent her up the river, sorry, I don't get it. To speak is to risk being misunderstood.

Bob and Billy are shooting a gimlet-stare at Joan, repeating the date of 1429, and being slow in starting, only starting, to comprehend just who in blazes our Joan is. Nervously Bob starts to reach for…well, I don’t know what. For his cell-phone? To call 911, a loony bin, a taxi? We’re not ensconced in Star Trek here, so Bob can’t beam up or down to anywhere else.

He looks over to Billy for guidance.

Barb is giving me her pinched ‘I told you so’ look.

This is a potential turning point for tonight. In the next moments, someone may say or do something that will be demoralizing.

Joan of Arc straightens her granny glasses, leans forward intently, and dials the time machine back: “Which Joan would you like here? Maid Joan, a mere lark in the skies of France, the country girl who rivaled other women in her village with the needle and spindle?"

A short pause. She must have been working-up this patter for many minutes here.

“Or Chosen Joan, with a God-given, gigantic mandate to assist her King in triumphing over English forces? Soldier Joan, ultimately the titular head of the French army’s victories at Jargeau, Meung-sur-Loire, Beaugency, Patay, Troyes, and St. Pierre-le-Mouthier? Heretic Joan, captured by English interests and declared a heretic by pro-English clergy coerced into producing a guilty verdict? Or Saint Joan, fried at the stake, only to be declared innocent 24 years later by the Pope? All right, Billy Graham and Bob Geldof, exactly which Joan is it that you want? Tell me now, which?”

Billy and Bob sort of catch on, their jaws tumble, their eyebrows wag, and something like an incredulous “No! You don’t mean…?” question begins to tumble across their faces. Rick shrugs with pretended nonchalance, as if to ask, “You were expecting someone on this side of the grass?” To suspend their disbelief and steady the ship, as firmly as I can, I profess, “Let’s all try to live in the moment, this never-before, never-again moment. For tonight, Joan is contemporary with us. That is all we need to know.”

After some exclamations and reassurance from Rick and me, the guest Dudes abide. Our male guests come around to preferring Crusader Joan -- the campaigner atop a white horse brandishing an ancient sword (or was it a white banner?), galvanizing her troops while articulating her faith: “ “Help yourself and God will find you!”

Billy is gazing at Joan now with newfound appreciation. He too was a farmer’s child, and these two discuss their common roots. Joan has her favorite Pope, and seems to find pleasure in what Billy says about his wonderful personal friend, another Pope (John Paul II) -- “he taught us that the Lord is working when we die...Very few people have allowed the press to cover so much of his last hours. And I think that was a tremendous encouragement to Christians, because almost everybody thinks about death.”

Billy announces that while our modern enemies certainly differ from Joan’s, we need to honor her dynamism in the face of opponents. Joan shares a pleasant facial expression, but opts instead to honor the visions of her voices.

Bob and Joan chat brightly on how they share something of a preoccupation with voices: she heard them and twice he organized them for the world to hear. Bob says that Joan’s ‘Help Yourself’ credo might be a useful part of everybody’s DNA. Then comes the highest praise: he could use her help to convince the well-to-do to aid Africa.

Joan seems to have changed her attitude towards Bob. I wager that if I were to ask her now to characterize the guy who three hours ago called her sweatshirt's message “ballsy,” I wager she would say he is great. And that she always has thought so…

Having witnessed almost seven centuries now, Joan broods that the tragedies of History do indeed repeat themselves, as when cover-ups become the crime (e.g.,Watergate, Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky). Joan says it’s up for grabs, though, whether the successes of History repeat themselves.

She reminds us that years ago, it was a talk with Billy Graham that led U.S. President George W. Bush to quit drinking, to start making something of himself, and to begin living his Christian faith. Joan compares notes with Billy about the wastrel that she counseled, the young French Dauphin (later King Charles VII). Before Joan ‘got’ to him, the Dauphin had been apathetic, inherently lazy, easily influenced by self-serving advisers, and waging only perfunctory warfare against the incendiary English invaders. It seems that after talks with her and after being moved by the force of her bold crusade, Charles listened to diverse points of view, looked at information that contradicted his biases, took decisive actions, secured better advisers who challenged his thinking, and aptly wrapped-up the One Hundred Years’ War.

Joan’s money lines: “Will George W. Bush conclude his war as successfully as the Dauphin? My analogy may be imperfect, it's not an apples-to-apples comparison, and I don’t mean to seem immodest, but has Condi Rice learned anything from my historical example?”

Time for Barb’s dessert (chocolate bourbon pecan cake). I look at my watch and am amazed at how late it is. We talk some about Leadership in today's sorry world. No one seems to like a definition I once heard, and which is tied in with gradually telling uncomfortable truths: Leadership is disappointing your people at the rate they can absorb.

Apparently, Joan has kept up with her countrymen and with another modern idea of Leadership, for as we start to leave our dining area, she lays on us a quote from the philosopher Camus: “Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow. Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. Walk beside me, and just be my friend.”

Instead of single-filing out of our dining area (the way we came in at 8:00), we follow Bob Geldof’s example. We link arms with Joan. Beside each other, we walk through French doors into the living room. Nobody turns right when the others turn left. Nobody goes through the doors first or last. We enjoy thus engaging our bodies and leading each other.

Each person returns to the exact chair they vacated before dinner. We're not free-wheeling in all things.

Our maneuver spurs Barb to describe what occurred one night in the early ‘60s after she saw a Fellini movie. The finale in 8½ has all the storyline’s characters, living and dead, linking arms and dancing down a street. That night at the movie theatre while credits rolled, Barb says she was part of a row of young folk who got up, linked arms, and similarly danced up the aisle and out onto the street. That was as memorable, she says, as the movie itself.

Finished with the meal, everyone had kicked back and lingered at the table, toying with their silverware and coffee saucers. Just a few hours ago, the table had been so clean. Now it is strewn with debris -- two wine corks, linen napkins with spots of mung dal soup, dabs of baby spinach, chocolate smears I had made when I had cut the cake, radishes that had been on salad plates (no one seems to like my peeled-back radishes), a cheese rind from appetizers in the LR (how did those get in here?), and miscellaneous other signs of our happily breaking bread together.

In the LR now, we stretch, self-scratch, return from using the facilities, peek in at the still-slumbering Francois, and appreciate the pink amaryllis plant blooming wild and crazy on the table (it seems to have grown an inch while we were away). Its destiny, Joan of Arc reminds us, is to fall by the wayside -- but meantime, it shines.

Billy Graham has that twinkle in his denim-blue eyes as he regrets the room’s other plants are not getting the respectful attention of the amaryllis. Acting out the old wives’ tale that plants grow better if you talk to them, Bob Geldof feels free enough to be hokey, very hokey, now: he bends, closely faces an ignored poinsettia, and jests, “Can we talk?”

We humans sit back and talk of cabbages and kings, of raspberries and dukes. In due course, Rick tears a stripe off John of Lancaster, the first Duke of Bedford, "the guy with anger issues" who was responsible for burning our Joan of Arc in Rouen. Rick expected, I think, our guests to join in and slag the guy.

That is not happening. Joan may not be 100 percent happy about John, but she has forgiven him and others who trespassed against her.

Rick asks Joan about her early teen years on her family's farm. She tells about the hard work there. Because he knows that many early teen-age girls nag their dads to buy them a horse, Rick then floats a bizarre notion -- that failing to coax her dad into such a gift, Joan at least partiallly was drawn to the military life where leaders could ride white horses. Rick's inquiry is not dignified with a response.

Billy Graham, who once spoke to one million Asians by TV satellite link, wonders aloud how Joan might have gone over on TV. Very well, he suggests, even on non-religious channels.

Bob Geldof wonders aloud what his native land might be humming today if Joan been born Irish. He claims Ireland might be even happier and free of the English sooner. Bob also notes that about the same time that Joan was leading an uprising against the English in France, Irish renegades were uprising against the English in Ireland. Less successfully, though, in the Irish case.

Joan wonders aloud what sort of ride she would have had as a player today. Would she, for instance, have welcomed the United Kingdom into the European Union? How would she feel about the farm subsidies now supporting part of what was her parents’ 50 acres in Lorraine? Would she have supported Sarkozy's tough economic policies? Context is all, and so none of us ventures anything about a 21st century Joan.

Barb wonders aloud how this woman from the provinces in “repressive, repressive” times managed to overcome the dismissive attitudes of veteran generals. As head of French forces, how on earth did she work such miracles as to lift the siege at Orleans in only nine days?

I wonder aloud how the Hundred Years’ War would’ve ended had Joan not experienced those visions or voices, the ones who told her to recover her homeland from English domination.

By gosh and by golly, we talk of medieval, current, and future events. At midnight, we are still going strong.

It is late, millions of words have been said, and now I need to recap our guests' final themes. Much as Rick did in his last schematic post, I simply am going to list a couple of their points that grabbed me. It is all more complicated and nuanced than this, but we need to move on.

1) Billy Graham gives a reprise, warning against a pastor electioneering or becoming emotionally involved with politicians. Rather, clerics need to proclaim moral standards that can guide politicians’ consciences -- that vital role is their everyday salvation. For ethical issues, Billy looks to future pols consulting a mix of religious leaders, not just one.

2) Joan of Arc -- holding an awakened, quiet, and newly-diapered baby Francois -- rejects Rick's offhand premise that everybody in Joan's village knew each other’s business totally. Instead, Joan recalls Frenchmen on farms enduring long private hours of back-breaking work alone in the fields. No time for kibitzing. No I-Pods in those fields. Much time for salvation thru personal and quiet alignments with God.

3) Bob Geldof almost regards technology as part of salvation ("...It can help us do practically anything..."). He briefs us on how musicians have started to use the tip-jar on their websites to sell their recordings. He is excited that his fellow-musicians who use that means of distribution will be able to make a decent living at what they really love doing. Bob also is turned on to using today’s new tools to advance anti-poverty goals. He salutes www.google.org’s grants for start-ups to industries that can provide needed jobs to Africans in Africa.

Through all this and other chatter about our world and its salvation, we adults nurse our Irish whiskeys, 20-year-old malt. Mind you, it is the first alcohol that Joan has ever had.

Outside, as the party-goers head home, Billy looks at his watch and sings out that old Irish salutation, “Top of the morning to you!”

Whereupon Bob sings out the old Irish follow-up, “And the rest of the day to you!!!!!”