me and Jerry.

Jeremiah. I am naming my first-born after Jeremiah. Unless I marry a yuppie, in which case it'll end up as something like Jadon Skye. Or Payton Riley. Or some other combo designed to cause gender confusion, but make a kid easily identifiable by birth year (2005).

Earlier this week, it occurred to me that perhaps I've been looking for a mentor in all the wrong places (you know, like bars, and street corners, and church), and that maybe it's time hit the good book. A dead mentor has to be better than no mentor. Particularly when that dead mentor has done some crazy junk, and proved him (or her)self to God, and managed to be canonized. None of my previous mentors have reached that level of literary fame.

So, ok. Decision made, I'm going to choose someone from the Old Testament to help me out. Check. Now what? There's a boatload of rockin' potential mentors in that shizzle. Do I ask for resumes? Hold auditions? I mean, seriously. Though it'd be fun to write little skits with hand-puppets that have Abraham and Esther duking it out on my kitchen table, I see that taking a left turn from productivity.

I could pray. But seeing as how I don't really even have a short-list, and I'm not startlingly well-acquainted with most of the Old Testament, I was having trouble believing that I could get a definitive answer from God. I kept imagining that one name would pop into my head, "Moses!" And then I'd argue with myself for ten minutes about whether I had decided on Moses, or it had really been God's suggestion. So then, naturally, I'd clear my mind, hissing "Don't think about Moses, don't think about Moses," then "ok, go!" "Moses!" That could go on for hours.

I decided to put the debate on hold for a trip to Third Street Books in Ozark. I love books. Cheap books, even better. Used books, doubly better because they're generally cheap AND they make me feel environmentally-friendly, like when I get coffee from Starbucks, and read that my cup is "95% post-consumer material," (though I have no idea what that actually means, somebody does, and people seem to think it's good, so I'm going to keep feeling good about it).

I then spent an hour and a half examining each title in the theology section, making sure I could live without it. And then I hit the commentaries. Book by book, blessed shelves of knowledge and wonder. Oh man, they even smelled like bliss. I don't really care much for discussions about what heaven will be like, but I hope to be met at the gates and led immediately into the library. I bet there's a slammin' library. What do books in heaven smell like? Do you think they smell better than earth books? Or just as good? More inky, maybe...

So I was in the commentaries. And I chose Jeremiah. Right then and there. I don't know much about Jeremiah. Or I didn't. I do now. But at that moment, I just saw a book about Jeremiah, and thought, "Yeah, that looks about right."

So, friends, Jeremiah it is. I have a mentor. No kitchen-table, Old Testament celebrity death matches. No resumes, or auditions. I like to think that God had a hand in the choice. Unless Jeremiah turns out to be a crappy mentor, in which case, I'll take the blame. I'll try to do some periodic posting on how our relationship unfurls.

Right now I think we're just trying to get to know one another. I'm more interested in this than he is.