Part 34 (1/2)
”Oh.” We had. I dug it out of my jacket pocket. ”Yeah, here you go.”
But Miles was talking to the usher. ”The page is right. Ron is wrong and I told him that.” He saw the visitor card in my hand. ”No, don't give it to me. It's supposed to go in the offering plate. Were you here for the offering?”
Suddenly I felt a little stupid. ”Uh, yeah, sure. We just didn't have it filled out in time.”
He shook my hand again. ”Well, next time just drop it in the offering plate. It's nice to have you here.” Then he turned to the usher. ”Henry and Al have it squared away. Let them handle it.”
Marian tugged at my hand.
I thought I was still having a conversation with Miles Newberry. ”I'd like to say h.e.l.lo to Pastor Harris.”
Miles Newberry smiled. ”I'll tell him you said h.e.l.lo.” He went back to the usher. ”We're implementing it this Sunday but locking it in next Sunday. That's the mix-up.”
Marian got the hint long before I did and tugged at my hand again. I finally followed.
”Elvis has left the building,” she said.
I looked again toward the empty platform and toward every door where people hurried to join the gridlock. No Pastor Harris. As a matter of fact, no pastor at all. This wasn't the chatty, leisurely after-service leaving we were used to-this was an evacuation.
”Please keep moving toward the doors,” said another usher, his hands extended to press upon our backs if need be. ”We need to clear the building.”
Well, I thought, this is how they do things in L.A. I have a lot to learn.
Because we were the last s.h.i.+ft, we could go out any door we wanted. Marian and I chose the front door again, and walked several blocks back to our car.
”Pretty neat service,” I commented.
”They move you through there quick, don't they?” she replied.
”Yeah.” At the moment I wasn't sure whether that was good or bad.
”He snubbed us.”
”Huh? Who?”
”That Miles Blueberry or whatever his name was.”
”Well, I don't think he meant it. He was busy.”
”The usher was more important than we were, didn't you notice?”
”Well . . .” I did notice, but I didn't want to fuel any negative feelings by saying so. ”It's a big church; they have to keep things running smoothly.”
”Then the church is more important than us.”
I wanted to try the church for a while. This was Southern California, I told her. People down here are used to standing in line two hours for a three-minute ride at Disneyland. They did hours of business by cell phone just waiting for a chance to pull onto Ventura Boulevard. Everywhere they went was far and through traffic, so they described distances not in miles but in minutes. There was more to do than time to do it. Churches could get so big that the pastor couldn't possibly stick around to greet everyone. We could learn to live with that. We could get used to it. It was a different world down here.
I gradually talked her over to my side. That was in the days when I prided myself on my logical, empirical way of viewing things and figured she responded too much from emotion.
Actually, she had already seen the end from the beginning.
We made The Cathedral of Life our church home, and just as I was raised, we never missed a service. We were there Sunday morning for whatever service could fit us in; we turned out Sunday evenings and always got in, even if we had to watch the service on closed-circuit television in an overflow room; we were there every Wednesday night without fail. We planned our day in order to make it to the Young Marrieds Sunday school cla.s.s, one couple among fifty other couples. When there was a business meeting, we were there, on time, thoroughly studied, and ready to vote.
This was a deeply religious matter for me. It was time for me to humble myself and submit to G.o.d-appointed authority. If the man of G.o.d was sharing the Word, it was our duty to be there.
So we were always there, humble and submitted. For ten straight months we waited on the front steps for the ushers to unlock the doors, entered praising the Lord, and got out fast so the ushers could lock them again. In every service, we stood when told to stand, sat when told to sit, raised our hands, clapped our hands, said Amen, and turned to greet those around us the moment we were told to do so. Every Sunday the pastor told us to turn to someone and say to them whatever catchy phrase he wanted us to say, and we always turned and said it, laughing a social laugh at the cuteness of it. If Pastor Harris warned us against being prideful and self-willed, we repented and prayed that the Lord would help us be more childlike and submissive. When he said he saw an ugly spirit of pride attaching itself to members of the body to make them rebellious, we believed him. When he spoke about laughter being good for the soul, we all broke out laughing.
We even did what we were told when sitting in the overflow room watching Pastor Harris on television. The image on the screen would tell us to stand, clap, greet one another, say something to somebody, repent of this or that, and say Amen if we agreed, and we did it. It was a little bizarre at first, responding and talking to a television image that didn't see or hear us.
It seemed odd to turn to a total stranger at Pastor Harris's prompting and bare our souls-what we were feeling, what we were hearing from G.o.d, what we wanted to change in our lives, what temptations were still a snare to us. But we did it, and we got used to it.
WE WERE NEW to the Young Marrieds Sunday school cla.s.s: fifty couples wearing nametags and setting their own trend in polyester. During the brief coffee and fellows.h.i.+p time, we tried mingling. I stepped up to meet two young urban professionals, nose to nose in a theological discussion over Styrofoam cups of coffee.
”Don't you think the Pauline approach is epistemological, at least in part?” said one.
”Well, only if you bring epistemology to bear on the order of the list,” said the other.
”But I'm not talking about the specificity of the order.”
”You can't force the specificity.”
”Oh no, not at all.”
”I think Paul intended a general, well-orbed presentation. Otherwise the whole list becomes problematic. We're distantiating election and free will.”
”But there should be a distantiation, that's what I'm saying!”
Should I say h.e.l.lo? Would that be interrupting? Should I wait for them to notice me standing there? Should I stick my nametag on my forehead?
They never noticed me standing there and never paused long enough for me to enter in. They just went on with their discussion, talking like Pastor Harris and oblivious to my presence.
Perhaps I needed to learn the vocabulary. Perhaps I needed to comb my hair straight back and get a pair of white shoes and a white belt.
Marian tried to join a conversation between three mothers.
”Well, sometimes I spank her on her bare bottom,” said one, ”but you're talking heavy logistics!”
The second shook her head shamingly. ”But you have to deal with that spirit of rebellion! The correction has to be felt.”
”I tried the Gerber peaches but they gave Jamie the runs,” said the third. ”I'm going through more diapers. . . .”
”Try the peas,” said the first. ”Buddy loves the peas.”
”But Jamie hates peas.”
The second lady leaped on that one. ”Ah-ah-ah! Rebellion! Deal with it!”
Marian decided it wouldn't be courteous to introduce herself. Kids were the subject here, not hydraulic valves and couplers. No one asked her who she was anyway.
We met back at the refreshment counter and picked up a cookie for each of us.