Normally this Substack is pretty emo, moody, dark, and broody. This week will be a little different. We’re going to take a little breather and talk about something lighter.
Lighter, but still infuriating.
I worked as a custodian when I was in seminary.1 Between day classes and night classes, another student and I cleaned the bathrooms, the faculty/staff offices, and the library.
Very occasionally, I’d notice a book in the trash can of one of the faculty. Usually inside the front cover would be a handwritten “Please read this book and share about it with your friends and students.”
Shameless.
And obviously not effective, as the book ended up in the trash.
(Fun fact, when I wrote my book about our church’s attempt to house the houseless, I didn’t send any free copies to faculty members at the seminary, as I knew of the real possibility that the book would end up in the trash. My fragile ego couldn’t handle that possibility. BUT if any of you are reading this and want a free copy, let me know and I’ll send you a free one. Or you can buy one on Amazon if you want to support Our Dark Overlords.)
There. I can be shameless too.
In the three years that I did custodial work at the school, I took home four free books from professors’ garbage cans.
This was one of them:
Maxims 1, by Paul Benjamin.
Paul Benjamin is a lifelong pastor and a former seminary professor.
The book is exactly what it sounds like.
It’s a book filled with a bunch of short, pithy sayings about life and God.
Some of the maxims are weird:
Some of them are quite good:
Some of the maxims are problematic or upsetting. For example:
A few things upset me about the book.
I hate the fact that every maxim is in capital letters. It looks bad.
I hate the way some of the words cut off partway through and hyph-
enate to the next line.
Those design decisions are bad, and are easily fixable.
But none of this is what really pisses me off.
It’s the way the book ends that has infuriated me for the last fourteen years:
The book ends with maxim 963.
963.
Thirty-seven maxims away from 1000.
He got all the way to 963 and then stopped.
You’re telling me Paul Benjamin couldn’t come up with thirty-seven more maxims?
He wrote 963, and then had no more in him?
I don’t buy it.
I wouldn't mind if there only forty-two maxims in the book, and he didn't reach 50. That would be fine.
But getting all the way to 963 and then stopping? That should be a crime.
Should I be as mad as I am about this?
Probably not.
In the grand scheme of things, this little book doesn’t matter.
There are more important things to be upset about.
Racism.
Genocide.
Homophobia.
Transphobia.
Mass shootings.
Suicides.
Unjust killings.
Unjust jailings.
These are all real issues.
963 maxims isn’t something to stew over for fourteen years.
Still, it makes me so angry. So very, very angry.
Take another look at the book title:
It’s called Maxims 1.
Maxims 1.
One.
ONE.
Meaning, Paul Benjamin had more maxims in the tank. He already had a part 2 in his mind.
Certainly, Maxims 2 would contain at least 37.
To spend as much time as Paul spent writing this book, he really should have finished the job.
37 maxims is not a lot to ask.
Here’s a few off the top of my head:
Gardening takes time, but the results are worth it.
Imaginary conversations will leave you angry with friends.
Yellow snow is full of waste. That’s why God washed our sins white as snow, not yellow as snow.
Are these maxims good?
Absolutely not.
But they exist.
3 crappy maxims gets us from 963 to 966.
Any maxim is better than no maxim when we’re trying to get to 1000.
So here’s the challenge:
There are a few blank pages at the end of the book. I want to scratch out the words “The End,” and hand write 37 more maxims at the end of the book to get it to an even 1000.
But I need your help.
Leave a comment with at least one pithy saying that I can write at the end of the book.
It doesn’t have to be good, it just has to exist.
I’d like to stop being mad at Paul Benjamin, and I can only do so if we fix the terrible thing he did.
For those who leave a maxim in the comments, I’ll choose one of you randomly and send you a prize.
Probably a terrible prize.
But a prize nonetheless.
Custodial work is great work. If you’re working with other people, you get to chit-chat while you clean. If you work alone, you can pop in headphones and listen to an audiobook while you clean. It pays well and it’s pretty fun, at least as far as jobs go.
You can be right and dumb at the same time. Oh, sorry. It's supposed to be all CAPS.
YOU CAN BE RIGHT AND DUMB AT THE SAME TIME.
A BIRD IN THE HAND IS NEVER GONNA HAPPEN BECAUSE THEY CAN FLY AND YOU CAN'T.