When I was growing up, my best friend was Clyde. Clyde had a vivid imagination. Whenever I went to his house to play, he dreamed up some scenario for us to act out. “Cops and Robbers” was too tame for him. Instead, we’d play “FBI Special Agents and Mafia Dons.” Invariably, he’d introduce each scenario with the word pertrank. I looked it up in a dictionary. It didn’t exist, except in Clyde’s mind. It meant something like pretend or dream up or imagine, but to an extreme degree. The value of pertranking was that for a few brief hours of … Continue reading What Kind of Dirty Are You? (Mark 4:1-20)