Many of you probably didn’t realize that Tyler Perry, in addition to being a cross-dressing multi-hyphenate gazillionaire, also keeps a mailing list for his fans and sends out periodic newsletters. It’s like Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop newsletter, if $100 cake knives were INSPIRATION. I discovered his newsletter today, promptly subscribed, and was treated to this landing page:

Oh no, Mr. Perry, thank you.

In any case, I was alerted to the existence of Perry’s newsletter by his latest mass-send, which begins as a mundane true story about the search for groundwater on his property, but soon evolves into a redemptive tale of trust in a higher power. My God, what this man can do with the simplest of tools, he’s a magician!

Perry begins by explaining that a few years back, he was having incredibly high water bills, so he hired a guy to come out to his property to dig a well. The guy dug three holes without hitting water. Perry paid him, and sent him home, but after a few more high bills, called the guy back out again.

He said, “Are you sure?” I said, “Yes, keep drilling until you hit water.” The next well he dug he was down 500 feet and still didn’t hit any water. He asked if I wanted him to stop. I said, “Go deeper.” He dug down another 200 feet and still nothing. I said, “Go deeper.” He drilled another 200 feet and he hit rock. I said, “Blast it, cut it, do whatever you have to do but keep digging.” After fighting the rock and breaking his drill and getting a new one we got a little deeper. He said, “We are at 1,200 feet, why do you want me to keep going?” I said, “Cause I’m tired of these water bills and I’m going to do something about it.” He said, “But this is really deep.” I asked him if he had hit water yet. He said “no,” so I told him to go deeper. “But you don’t understand,” he said. “We don’t usually drill this deep, this is going to be expensive.” I told him that, “Sometimes you have to go deeper to get what you are after, no matter what the cost.”

BOOM. You know, maybe I’m reading too much into this, but I’m starting to believe that this story might be about more than just water.

Read the rest of this entry »