A Good Sermon Gone Bad

Some events stick with you. Years ago, I sat in the pew as an Episcopal priest declared "Heaven is not a fish-fry." Like a good sermon gone bad, I immediately quit worrying about my soul and started to worry about what food God serves to guests. Eternity is forever. And that's a really long time to be pushing food around the dinner plate. Afer visiting Hawaii, my bet is that God serves Spam. With as much time as God invested in creating Hawaii, sprinkling the islands from one end to the other with tins of Spam has to be a sample menu of some sort. Hawaiians love their Spam. They eat the jiggly, artificially formed meat-treat morning, noon and night. Trying not to think on the canned aspect, I ate an omelet egg, cheese and Spam sandwich and liked it. I also ate a seaweed wrapped Spam sushi roll, and I liked that, too. I didn't try the Spam-flavored shaved ice. But I'm feeling decidedly Spam-confident about finding something worth nibbling on in heaven. Spam isn't the first weird food I've encountered in Hawaii. As a child at Oahu's Fort Shafter Elementary School, I remember the school cafeteria ladies serving what seemed to be raw fish for lunch. On our trip, we stopped by my old school and  I asked a kindergarten teacher about the lunch menu. Raw fish isn't served now, and she didn't know if it ever had been served. But, she added, squid is on the menu. Apparently school kids, even in paradise, can't catch a break. In heaven, though, it'll be different. It'll be Spam-tastic.