Friday, March 16th

On this eve of Holy Patrick of Ireland, I am in an intellectual-spiritual conundrum. Tomorrow will bring with its many gifts the permission to drink. Now, being that Patrick hailed from Ireland, it seems only right that a man should enjoy a spot of Jameson or something of the sort. And yet I would like to drink bourbon and, if one thing in this world of seemingly unsolvable ambiguities is clear, it isn't fit to drink both Irish whiskey and bourbon on the same day. It's right up there with laying with one's mother-in-law, or some other such Levitical taboo. It comes to me though, that Patrick was an apostle to Ireland, an apostle. I therefore recall to mind the words of the Apostle, who once wrote that he "had become all things to all people". So it seems to me that the Apostle of Ireland, should he have drifted of course and landed somewhere in America, would have reached out his hand for a lowball of bourbon in a spirit of profound humility. Bourbon it shall be then! Praise be to God for simple clarifications.