It's questioned Tuesday, the day that I answer real questions about the big questions.

Let's get right to it.

I know you were once a hospital chaplain.

How does religion influence your life now?

Nobody likes my answer to this question, but here it is.

Religion is an important part of my life.

I like going to church.

But I also find the way that people often talk about religion just like completely baffling.

For example, I'm just not that interested in questions about, like whether God really exists or whether heaven is really, really or whatever.

But I do get really excited about questions like what meaning can we find to human life together while we're here?

And can that meaning hold up to scrutiny?

Does the meaning acknowledge and embrace the humanity of all people?

Can we use the meaning to support and lift up the most vulnerable people in our community?

Those are interesting questions to me.

As for my personal theology, Dietrich Bonhoeffer summed it up very well in a single sentence.

God is weak and powerless in the world, and that is exactly the way the only way in which God can be with us and help us when you use quotes.

Do you have the memorized or do you need to Google tthe um most of them I need to Google.

But that one I do have memorized.

So when you go to church d sweet, holy infant, baby Jesus, that is enough.

Talk about religion.

Can't we talk about something less controversial like politics and money and sex?

How did stegosaurus reproduce?

Not the sex question I was expecting, but all right, so the short answer is that we don't know, but you're right to be concerned.

One study using computer models found that a male stegosaurus would risk castration if you tried to mount a female from behind.

So they may not have done it that way.

There are lots of theories about this.

The female stegosaurus may have laying on her side.

They may have also, like, backed up into each other, but we don't really know.

All right, that's enough sex.

Let's move on to love.

Do you believe in true love?

Not really.

But I do believe in something I find even more miraculous and beautiful.

Which is that two people who were not created explicitly for each other can still find a way to share a lifetime of joy and grief and wonder and hope.

We spend all this time in our culture talking about falling in love.

We should talk more about being in love and growing in love and how the decades of that can really be amazing.

All right, let's move on to politics.

My friends don't want to vote because they say it won't make a difference.

How do I convince them otherwise?

So young people are much less likely to vote than olds like myself.

And I just don't think it's a coincidence that the structures of power are also west likely to listen to young people.

Voting is one of the central ways in our system of government that you conform us the structure of power to listen to you.

So vote registered your friends to vote, even registered your enemies to vote.

What's your opinion on the current 2020 presidential candidates?

My opinion is that the presidential election is over 450 days away, and this multi year obsession with the presidential election is bad for US life in Canada.

The last election cycle lasted 78 days, and they seem to be doing fine.

I mean, how long does it take to warn somebody's position on health funding and education policy?

It doesn't take 450 days.

All right, that's enough politics.

Let's move on to death.

How do you feel about being in the sunset period of your career?

Um good, Yeah.

No.

Fine.

No worries, he said, staring into the middle distance is the fact of his relevance washed over him.

Have you thought about what you want your last words to be?

How old do you people think I am?

Although yes, yes, I have thought about my last words.

Look, when it comes to last words, I think you have to get pretty lucky.

Like there's no way the writer Paul Claudel could have planned to say, Doctor, do you think it was the sausage as his last words?

But those air still perfect last words.

But honestly, my friend Amy Cross Rosenthal, who died in 2017 always ended conversations by saying, Bye, I love you.

Thank you.

And that is what I would like to say to the people who have loved me at the end of my life.

Bye.

I love you.

Thank you.

That noted, just based on frequency.

There's a pretty good chance my actual last words will be Hank.

I'll see you on Friday.