Like the Gospel of Judas, this codicil doesn’t change anything basic, like my theology. This codicil (I like using that word today) will shed new light on the question of suffering. Two things came out of the discussion around suffering. They are:

1) Extract only the lessons that are there. For example, the people who recently contracted E coli while eating at Taco Bell might draw the lesson that they should no longer eat greens. Wrong lesson. They might learn from it that they shouldn’t eat at Taco Bell or extend that lesson to fast food in general. That’s a better lesson, though the kind usually associated with people in advocacy groups who are also big fans of other junk science. Taco Bell is one of my "guilty pleasures" and I admit I like eating there once in a while. It was where this boy who was carefully aged in the Adirondack mountain foothills was first introduced to Mexican food. There's a soft spot in my heart for El Paso (TX) and Yuma (AZ) which were the first two Taco Bells I tried. The appropriate lesson might be to make sure you eat food that's been thoroughly cooked.

Now for the "conspiracy theory" part (think of this as 'the story behind the story' like the DaVinci Code). I learned this, not from the Bible or in Sunday School. I learned it from the renowned theologian – are you ready for this? – Mark Twain. He put it very succinctly when he wrote:

"We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it - and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again - and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore."

2) The best questions for learning what you need to learn are:

• What has God taught you through this experience?
• How are you going to live what you learned?
• When are you going to start?

I share these with you because, as (again) Mark Twain said "The man who carries a cat by the tail learns something that can be learned in no other way."