All right, it’s not a city, more of a town really but smaller.  In the parlance of Nebraska, it’s called a village.  If you’re thinking saloon, bank, feed store, post office, general store; you’d be off by one general store.  What makes Ashton special is that it’s a town, excuse me, a village of psychics.  “Pish Posh” you may say; “there’s no such thing as a psychic, let alone an entire ripoff (new collective noun) of  psychics!”  There is undeniable and incontrovertible (thank you Harry Potter movie) evidence that this is a community of clairvoyants.

Some time ago I was called to the deathbed of an elderly man who had taken suddenly and seriously ill.  After the anointing of the sick and the prayers for the dying, Jan Smithski (not his real name),  promptly croaked.  As the family continued their grieving my cell phone chimed.  It was a parishioner from Ashton asking when Jan Smithski’s (still not his real name) funeral would be.  When asked how he knew the decedent had spun from this mortal coil, he responded that everyone in Ashton heard about it.  The dearly departed had only breathed his last two minutes before.

Now as a member of the Super Secret Skeptic Society of Southern Slovenia and associated Celery Sellers of Suburban Cincinnati, more proof was needed and was not long in arriving.  One morning, before dawn, I skipped town to a doctor’s appointment, not wanting people to know about their pastor’s medical problems.  Later that day back at the ranch a parishioner asked how the doctor’s appointment went with the knee.  Not only did she know about the appointment but that it had to do with an aging knee that was tired of carrying my fat rear end around for 60+ years!  “How did you know?”  “Well, Father, everyone knows.”

The evidence speaks for itself.  Sure, a youngster may have tweeted about the death in 15 seconds, and a minute later everyone knew.  Or a villager may have been in town that morning and noticed me walking into the orthopedic clinic.  Using Occam’s Razor, the simple explanation is the best, it is a village of psychics.  Imagine how far the Word of God would spread if it could move by word or mouth, or tweets, or any other mode of communicating?  Well, it can; it’s up to us to spread the message of mercy and love of  Our Lord Jesus.

While you’re doing that, I’ll be returning the razor to Occam and checking my horoscope again; for some unexplained reason the lottery numbers it gave didn’t work.