Alcoholic poet Dorothy Parker is commonly credited with a rather clever spoonerism: “I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.” I’m forced to agree with her. As evidenced by… the bottle in front of me. Hell, I’d even substitute a juice box (like the li’l disciples here) for the bottle, if need be. At least liquor leaves some creativity intact.

I have a confession to make. No, not the one that every good Christian on the internets is praying for me to make, but a creative one. You see, when I got to about this point in writing the first draft of the story, I still didn’t know how it was going end.

I’d started with just the premise of the story – just the name to be totally honest – and was just kind of running with it. I was as oblivious as to how this version of the Christ story would turn out as Fetus Christ Himself. In fact, that uncertainty slipped into Fetus’ dialog here and there, as I projected my own thoughts into Him. (After all, I’m the Creator of the universe this story takes place in… why shouldn’t I identify with the God character in it?)

But I figured it out as I started to write the Last Supper scene, and it immediately seemed perfect to me. As if God Himself had handed the idea to me. Which is how the name came to me too. As I did revisions to the earlier parts of the story, the foreshadowing of the ending worked its way in seamlessly.

There’s a lot about this story that’s worked out that way. The idea, some of the gags, the ending, the fact that the scripted story had exactly the same number of pages as there were Fridays between Christmas and Easter this year. It was as if God wanted me to write it, and to publish it, now.

But unlike the folks who wrote the original version of this story, I don’t think that I’ve got God whispering in my ear, directing my thoughts, nudging me along. I’ve got something even better: human creativity. It’s better because I know it’s real. I see it, hear it, feel it, taste it, and even smell it, every day. It’s responsible for the past 17 pages, and it’s responsible for the conclusion that’s coming next….