Gossip for the Lord

Praise be to the Lord

A lord looking to hear

Who’s been naughty

And who’s been nice

Praise be to a god like Santa Claus

And like my grandmother
And my aunts
And my mother

Who jumped on a telephone

Anytime she saw a man

Walking into Lois Paumgarten’s house

While Mr. Paumgarten was at work

The birds on the telephone wire
Flew towards Heaven

And why shouldn’t they?

What my mother was doing

Was no sin

It was sacred

It was treasured

It was gossip for the Lord

You think the lord doesn’t wanna know

Who’s stepping out on who?

I hear what you’re saying out there

In those cheap seats

In those wooden seats

In those back rows

You’re saying the Lord already knows
Who's doing wrong by who

And that’s a fact

But knowing isn't gossip

Knowing is only a small part

Of gossip

My mother knew lots of things

And she took it all with her

When she went

To her grave

Now we tell people all the time

That you can’t take it with you

Don’t we say that?
Isn’t that what we say?

But you see, we only say that

When we’re talking about money

And clothes

And cars

We don’t say it

When we’re talking about

Secrets

Do we?

And why not?

Why take all that juicy goodness

With you

When you go?

You think the Lord wants that?

You think the Lord wants you

Holding all that in?

You think the Lord wants you
To sit there
In the cheap seats
In the back rows

Keeping all that

To yourselves?

Let me tell you something—

I don’t think so

I do not

Think so

The Lord wants us to gossip

The Lord wants to hear us laughing and carrying on

About who’s doing what with who

And where they’re doing it

And what happened when Mr. Paumgarten came home early from work

And the other guy jumped out of the third story window

And landed in Mrs. P’s bushes

Now I’ve heard some people

From upon altars

And from behind pulpits

Such as this one

Complain about rumors

And compare them to shredded paper

Floating in the wind

Or feathers from a pillow

That can’t be put back in

But to them, my colleagues

My misguided colleagues

I say this—

If you see me at a party

Sit next to somebody else

Because I love to gossip

I love to talk

And I gotta talk about something
Now don’t I?

They say great minds talk about ideas

Average minds talk about events

And small minds talk about people

Well, let me ask you all something

All of you

Sitting in the cheap seats

In the wooden seats

In the back rows

Don’t people come up with ideas?
Don’t people attend events?

How can you talk about anything

Without talking about people?

I’m not saying it’s gotta be malicious

I’m not saying you have to gossip

With malice in your heart

But there’s nothing wrong

With giggling on the phone

The way my mother used to

Because one day the mailman and the plumber

Walked into Mrs. Paumgarten’s house at the same time

That’s just fun

That’s all that is

Fun

Mrs. Paumgarten had her fun

So why shouldn’t my mother

Have a little bit too?

See, my mother didn’t have a lot

My father worked on the road

And he’d be gone

Months at a time

And me, I was at school

Or at sports
Or running after some girls

--One of them being Mrs. Paumgarten's daughter

And my mother needed something

To keep her occupied

Because back then

Nobody told a woman

She could have agency

Nobody told her

That she had the power to do something
With herself

To get up out of the house

And go get a job

Or not to bother sitting around

Waiting for her husband
Or her son to get home

My mother didn’t have a lot of joy

In her life

So when I’d come home

And see her sitting on the phone

Holding her sides from laughing

About everything she’d seen out the window

Of our little apartment

On Knox and Turnmount

I’d feel glad

And thinking back now

I can’t believe that the Lord ever looked at that

And was…displeased

With my mother

If what she did was a sin
Then I bet the Lord
Forgave it
And kept right on loving the sinner
The way we're all supposed to do

Even those of us
In the back rows

The joy a little talking

Gave to a woman

Who spent her whole life

Listening

To my father

To me

To Bible salesman

Who’d stop by to bother her

Almost every day

To Mrs. Paumgarten

Who used to lecture my mother

Over the phone

About what a good

Christian woman

She was

So I don’t think a little gossip

Hurt the Paumgarten’s all that much

And I bet the Lord didn’t think so either

Because if the sound
Of my mother’s laughter wasn’t Heavenly
Then I don’t know what is