Once again, Caleb’s hero and mentor, Lincoln Waterford, stepped into the breach as Ruthy put it. She said this was what very brave people did when something hard had to be done that took courage, so I am happy to agree to this term. Having given it a lot of thought, Caleb and Lincoln decided that if they could steal a cross from a church and burn it like Joan of Arc, this should do the trick.

Caleb liked the idea of burning a cross because he felt it sorted out the nailed-to-a-cross business, along with the burning of Joan of Arc business, and apparently said, like his favourite character Virgil in Thunderbirds, ‘Thunderbirds are go!’

The next problem was how to find the right cross. Lincoln Waterford suggested one from our church would work best because it seemed it was our god that was causing the trouble. This confused Caleb, who had been told there was only one God, but Lincoln Waterford said he was sure his god and Caleb’s were not the same, and that ours was probably a more junior version. He felt it was likely that our god was like the captain of the Sturt Football Club in South Australia, whereas his god was like the captain of Carlton in the Victorian Football League, which was more important.

Lincoln was shocked when Caleb explained we didn’t have any crosses in our church because it was considered worshipping idols. He asked what other sacred objects we had that might serve the purpose, but all Caleb could think of was the little glasses in the wooden trays that held the wine, or the little tin dishes that held the bread. When Lincoln found out everyone could handle these, and in fact Caleb sometimes had to do a turn drying them in the middle hall after the Memorial Meeting, he was sure they wouldn’t fit the bill.

They discussed further the possibility of junior and senior gods, and compared it to whether all the Thunderbirds were equal. They finally decided that our god was probably more like the Brains character because we had to do church exams, whereas Lincoln’s was probably more like Jeff Tracy who was an ex-astronaut and founder of the Thunderbirds, and definitely the boss. They agreed that a cross from a more senior god was required.

Lincoln Waterford said they might be in luck, because things had changed at his church that just might sort out the problem. Apparently something called Vatican II happened, which was a really big deal in Italy somewhere. I gather it was a bit like our annual Christadelphian Conference that was held in a different city every year. When it was in Adelaide, we had to hire a whole high school for it. But theirs involved men in white and red robes and hats, whereas we just wore our Sunday best, and I gather there was quite a lot more fuss made about theirs.

The boss of their church, who I take it is the Pope, decided they should make a few changes. The priests in the long white frocks would stop praying to a big cross on the wall with their back to the audience, and would turn around and look at them across a big table with a smallish cross on it. This was ideal for Caleb, who told Lincoln Waterford that perhaps it was in God’s plan to save Dad after all, and that’s why God did a toy version of the idol they could steal. All they had to do was to snatch one of the new smaller crosses and burn it somewhere.