How Faith Works by Brian Beatty My granny always tithed what remained of her Social Security check at the end of each month to a few of her favorite radio evangelists — to help them reach out across the AM airwaves to touch more souls with their holy healing powers. But I never saw her seal one cent into an envelope addressed to any of those charlatan TV preachers she watched just as religiously on a black-and-white set balanced in the window ledge of her rent-controlled senior citizen apartment — no matter how often they asked for her prayers. “You wouldn’t see Lord Jesus prancing around the front of a church in a fancy suit like that fool’s,” she told me more than once. “Not up in my idea of Heaven, you wouldn't, anyway.” How her gold brick of President Reagan’s government-issue cheese turned blue in the back of her fridge I remember now, too. Bio: Brian Beatty was born and raised in Brazil, Indiana. He received his undergraduate...
Flying Island is the Online Literary Journal of the Indiana Writers Center, accepting submissions from Midwest residents and those with significant ties to the Midwest.