God Squad: An inside look at the five lost commandments

Q: No doubt you've see Mel Brooks' "History of the World." There is a scene where Moses comes down from the mountain with 15 commandments from God. He has three tablets, and one falls and breaks, leaving us with 10. What do you think were the lost five commandments? — From L and J

A: A Good Thanksgiving table question! I will tell you my missing five commandments if you tell me yours, dear readers.

11 Never cut a line. (Wait your turn.) The measure of our virtue is not constituted in our major acts of heroism. Life gives most of us precious few immense moral challenges. No, our measure of goodness is how we resist the little temptations to cheat, lie and deceive.

12 If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. The towering challenge of our present time is to resist the temptation to tell the people with whom we disagree politically that we think they are jerks. It is fine to think it, but it is not fine to say it because it shreds the fabric of civility in our culture. Just keep it to yourself and remain confident that time will teach them the truth.

13 Bundle your sticks. My favorite old wisdom saying from the Maasai tribe in Africa, "Sticks in a bundle are unbreakable. Sticks alone can be broken by a child." We all need to be a part of a group where we protect and care for one another. Alone we are lost, so get bundled.

14 Always say, "please" and "thank you." When you ask for something, try not to ask for it like it's owed to you. Don't make your requests sound like demands. Be humble in your life. Since nobody owes you anything, when you get things try to be grateful. Everything God has given you is a gift, so start your pleases and thank yous with God.

15 Don't pee in the pool. Try not to do bad things even when there is no chance you will be caught. Nobody knows if you pee in the pool, but it is unsanitary and gross. The big idea is to always try to act in private the same way you act in public.

(For more see my book, "Always Wear Clean Underwear.")

Note from a smoky Gellman

I have been smoked out of my home and wrote this in the midst of the California fires. I sent it to friends but not yet to readers. It has been a difficult time. Now we are back home. I pray for the safety of all who live on the edge of fire and smoke.

Dear friends: Betty and I live in the middle of just one part of the great California fire that has burned an area bigger than Long Island.

We were one of the 250,000 people who had to evacuate our home. The evacuation was hard. I took nothing but my laptop. Stuff means very little to me now and I did not realize it.

I might have taken my golf clubs, but I left them behind. Maybe I left them because stuff does not matter or maybe I left them because I wanted to buy a new set. Not sure.

Finally tonight, the Santa Ana winds are dying, but the fire is still burning in Malibu and the hills are mostly all burned there.

Most of the homes in the Malibu hills are gone. Up north the town of Paradise is all gone. Scores of    people are dead there.

Down here we are trying to comfort friends who have lost everything and who are trying to believe what they say about being lucky to be alive.

Our house and our daughter Mara's house are OK, but everything smells like smoke. Everything. I may be smoking chicken for dinner by just letting it sit out on the countertop.

The fire came to our back porch and was stopped by some firefighters from Utah. They were kids, but somehow they knew that eventually the fire would lie down before them.

They certainly had no idea what their courage meant to those of us driving away into the clouds of embers and smoke.

There are singed animals wandering around the burned-out areas looking for some soft place they remembered. There are llamas and horses and a zoo of animals tied up to lifeguard towers on Zuma Beach.

On the property of a burned vineyard in Malibu lives a giraffe named Stanley who made it through the fire. Stanley is crying constantly. They say it is from his burned eyelashes and the smoke in the air. I have other ideas.

Love from the place of burned bits and hope, and thanks be to God.

Marc