Seeing Things (10 page)
Authors: Patti Hill
Suzanne reached for another pastry and grew very quiet.
I know, I know, I should have kept my mouth shut, allow the Spirit to whisper sweet words of love to her, but the quiet taunted me. I struck out. “Besides, the serious brainwashing takes place during the midweek service when the snake handlers perform. Sundays are for collecting cash.” I smiled to show I could laugh at myself and my brethren.
Suzanne twisted her hair into a knot and secured it with a pencil. Did this action mark the end of our discussion, or was she strategizing?
“I'm still taking you.” Andy tossed a section of newspaper to the pile on the coffee table. “I'll be right back, Ma. Have something to eat.” Fletcher followed him at a trot toward the stairs.
I called after them. “The service doesn't start for nearly an hour. We have plenty of time.” I sat in Andy's chair with a sigh I hadn't meant to be audible.
“What are you up to?” Suzanne asked.
All I'd intended was to meet with people compelled by God Almighty to love me, a soothing balm to my battered soul. “Excuse me?”
“Don't play coy with me. I know people just like you. Worse than that, I work with them. They think they walk on water and I'm the Wicked Witch of the West.”
Careful. Shift tongue into neutral. Breathe. “I know people like that too. They infuriate me. It's all I can do not to strangle their scrawny little necks.”
“They talk about me like I'm not there.”
“They make my blood boil.”
“And they leave Bible tracts on my desk.”
“A neighbor once told me I was hell-bound for taking the kids hiking on a Sunday.” Indeed, another ranger's wife had marched across the street in her Sunday suit to shake her finger at me. The look of disgust on her face kept me and the kids out of church for years. What a shame.
“I fired the Holy Roller with the tracts. I don't need distractions like that. I demand collaborative teamwork of my staff.”
I said a silent prayer for the zealous woman, asking that her evangelistic fervor be tempered by love. “I put bitters in my neighbor's sun tea,” I admitted.
Awe filled Suzanne's voice when she asked, “Did she know it was you?”
“Not until I asked her forgiveness many years later.”
Suzanne captured a loose strand of hair to tuck behind her ear. “Why would you do such a thing?”
“Jesus called the self-righteous of his day âwhite-washed tombs,' basically nothing but containers for death. So whether you like it or not, you and Jesus agree on the distastefulness of religiosity.”
“But why ask her to forgive you? She's the one who wagged her finger.”
“Oh, Suzanne, it took a very long time for me to make that phone call . . . years and years. By that time, I realized I'd been forgiven so much that being spiteful seemed ungrateful. I called her out of the blue, on a Sunday, probably after a particularly pointed sermon. She didn't remember me, not until I told her about the bitter sun tea. I learned that day how powerfully the sense of taste paves a link to the past. Once she calmed down, I asked her to forgive me.”
“Did she?”
“She hung up on me. Her name is Philistia Concordia Pawlowski. I've had her name written in the front of my Bible for about thirty-five years.”
“Strategizing a counterattack?”
“Jesus expects us to pray for our enemies. Her name is there to remind me.”
Suzanne said provocatively, “Do you pray for me?”
“I do.”
I'd long considered Suzanne an enemy. Since she married Andy, my relationship with him had never been the same. And despite her recent, surprisingly adept, attempts to supervise my recovery, clearly she disdained my lifestyle. She patronized me. She hated my dog. But I did pray for her. I'm embarrassed to say what for, now that time has tempered my reactions a bit. I've never claimed to be anything but a work in progress, so here's how I prayed:
Dear Lord, please help Suzanne to value my contribution to the family, and may she work long hours, at least while I'm staying with them.
Dear Lord, please help Suzanne to value my contribution to the family, and may she work long hours, at least while I'm staying with them.
“We see the world differently, that's for sure,” I said. “I ask God to bless you with his love.” This may seem like a lie, but how else would she come to appreciate me?
Suzanne leaned back into the soft leather of the sofa to finish her pastry. Finally, she said, “Thank you, I think.”
Andy and Fletcher bounded down the stairs. “Let's go,” said Andy, tossing and catching his keys.
AT LEAST ONCE A month during the high season, the kids talked Chuck and me into joining the camp-side church services rather than drive into Gardiner, nearly a hundred-mile round-trip from our station in Yellowstone. I didn't mind one bit. Whatever saved me time in the car with two small children, meant less time refereeing Andy's smug comeuppances and Diane's screaming over injustices. Above all, in the age before disposable diapers, the camp-side services meant fewer wet or otherwise soiled diapers to change on the road.
Lay or retired pastors regaled the camp-side crowd with messages predictably safe within the middle ground of doctrine, invariably centered on the majesty of God's handiwork. With the Grand Tetons in the background, the point was easily made. The fellowship among vacationing saints was frequently sweetened with invitations to campsites for lunch. I always toted a pie. Even in the wilderness, a sensible woman didn't show up empty-handed. Over the years, we nibbled hot dogs and potato salad with Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Methodists, Pentecostals, Catholics, Lutherans, and Congregationalists from all over the United States and several foreign countries. Under the canopy of God's cathedral, our differences didn't matter one lick. The experience expanded my view of the church, and love for my Savior deepened.
Later, when I traveled with the Round Robins, a group of women who loved good food, good art, and more good food, I never missed a chance to visit a church wherever we happened to land on a Sunday. I've attended services where the rain dripped through a thatched roof in Zambia and pummeled a tile roof of a Lutheran
kyrka
in Sweden. But no church suited me better than the little band of faithful at the Ouray Baptist Church, where they did a drop-dead imitation of the love of Christ. We gathered in the basement of Mount Abrams Variety and Gifts where we sat on cold metal chairs, summer and winter, to hear the Word of God preached, although no one begrudged the calling of a potluck now and again, especially if Josie brought her funeral potato casserole.
kyrka
in Sweden. But no church suited me better than the little band of faithful at the Ouray Baptist Church, where they did a drop-dead imitation of the love of Christ. We gathered in the basement of Mount Abrams Variety and Gifts where we sat on cold metal chairs, summer and winter, to hear the Word of God preached, although no one begrudged the calling of a potluck now and again, especially if Josie brought her funeral potato casserole.
The Jackson Park Community Church I attended with Fletcher that day spanned the past and the present with ridges of glass and steel. Quite substantial yet agreeable, the stone walls muffled the traffic noise from the busy street while backs of heads glowed green, yellow, blue, and red from the light shining through sweeps of colored panes. I wondered what color bounced off my platinum curls. Green overlaid Fletcher's heap of chestnut curls, not an altogether pleasing combination. I hoped for a splash of red. I'd always wanted to be a redhead. The redder the better.
As the church filled, Fletcher waved a pamphlet and said, “Is this the program?”
“Yes, you'll have to help me follow along. Hand me a hymnal.”
He grabbed a Bible.
“The red book, I think, sweetie.”
“Sorry, Grandma.”
“You can't mess up here,” I assured him. “This is church, not some hoity-toity club. Everyone here is a sinner saved by grace.” I patted his leg. “You're sitting in the safest place on earth. God's people understand mistakes.” I handed the hymnal back to Fletcher with a bundle of sticky notes. “I need your help. Mark the hymns listed in the program.” Never mind I'd forgotten my magnifying glass and wouldn't be able to see a word.
“There's three listed,” he said like I'd asked him to clean out the toothpaste drawer.
“Hymns are the best part.”
“No, I mean right at the beginning.” He groaned. “There's two more later in the program.”
I held the hymnal to my face, trying to decipher the first title, but the page was nothing but gray smears. My heart leapt when I recognized the introduction to “Be Thou My Vision.” Fletcher stood as silent as a statue while the congregation sang, even during the next two songs that turned out to be praise choruses with plenty of guitars strumming and drums thumping. But truthfully, beholding the structure and rhythm of a church service, through his or anyone's uninitiated eyes, probably made church seem a strange place indeed. Where else did grown people stand and sing togetherâbesides the ballpark during the National Anthem and the seventh-inning stretch?
When the pastor stepped behind the pulpit, my heart sank. Not because of anything he said or did. He could have been the Cookie Monster, for all I knew. No, Huck was there, holding his hat out to congregants in the front row, pleading on one knee for a bald-headed man to drop some cash into his hat. I must have gasped because Fletcher asked me if I was okay.
“Fine. Never better,” I whispered.
Huck skipped across the aisle to beg with outstretched hands and a pouty face. Although I knew he performed for my eyes only, I listened for any tittering among the congregants. Besides the preacher and scattered coughs, the sanctuary remained silent. Fletcher's legs bobbed restlessly. I put my hand on his knee and whispered, “Thank you for coming.”
He stretched out his long legs by shifting to one hip and slid down in his seat. “Sure.”
Lord, open his heart to the message of your gospel.
Huck pulled his hat down on his head so that his ears stuck out like speakers. He scowled at the congregation before he sat on the steps in front of the pulpit. The pastor spoke into the microphone. “Turn with me to the thirteenth chapter of John and read along with me through verse five.”
Verse five? The story doesn't pick up speed until Simon Peter sasses the Lord about washing his feet. By habit, I checked the bulletin, only to see gray smears. Huck scratched at a scab on his arm. When it bled, he sucked on the wound. I fought not to react by focusing on the pastor's words.
He read about Jesus knowing his time on earth was short. The pastor's voice had the quality of a mountain stream, exhilarating and fresh. I listened intently as he read about Judas's treacherous plans and how Jesus, although definitely perturbed about his fate, bowed to wash his disciples' feet, all because he trusted the Father to get him home.
“Dear ones,” said the pastor, “I want you to focus on the end of verse one: âHaving loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love.' Consider the men he's sitting with, riddled with the weaknesses and blessed with the strengths we attribute to ourselves and those around us. They, however, earned the privilege of having every foible and act of faith recorded for our instruction and edification. I'm thankful the good Lord omitted my faith journey from the Scriptures. Surely I would have ended up somewhere between Balaam's donkey and Job's friends.”
The congregation laughed, and so did I, as I squirmed. Huck fell to his back, laughing silently, and kicking the air.
Don't look at him.
“Jesus knew these men, and he knew them well. Eleven of the disciples stayed in the boat when Simon Peter walked on the water. Those who chose the safety of the boat missed the exhilaration of walking with the Lord in defiance of nature's laws and experiencing the deep love of God's rescuing hand. And those crazy sons of thunder, James and Johnâthey wanted to call fire down on an unwelcoming Samaritan village. I've been tempted to do the same during rush-hour traffic. Another time, unnamed disciples complained to Jesus that their provisions had dwindled to one loaf of bread. Only days earlier, Jesus had fed thousands of people with a few loaves and fishes, not once but twice. And yet they'd forgotten. Again, Simon Peter stands out on this important night. Jesus knew that within hours of his last Passover meal, Simon Peter, the great burly fisherman, would deny he ever knew Jesusânot to the chief priest but to a young servant girl. And dare we forget Judas? He sat watching the preparations for the meal, making plans for his thirty pieces of silver.”
Huck leaned against the pulpit, crossed his arms, and closed his eyes. Soon his breathing deepened and his head lolled to one side.
“To these menâflawed, greedy, contentious, faithless, ambitiousâJesus demonstrated the full extent of his love. He did
not
lecture them on faithfulness, or pound his fist on the table or lean over to Simon Peter to say, âDon't make promises you can't keep.'”
not
lecture them on faithfulness, or pound his fist on the table or lean over to Simon Peter to say, âDon't make promises you can't keep.'”
Men behind me cleared their throats. The noise broke my concentration enough that I looked for Huck. He was gone. I looked to Fletcher, a reflex really, to see if he'd noticed. I needn't have worried. Fletcher had spent his time filling every blank space of the bulletin with doodles. My heart sagged.
The pastor continued. “This is what the Son of the Most High God did to demonstrate the full extent of his love: He became a servant. He removed his robe, wrapped himself in a towel, and washed his students' feet. Go ahead and add stinking feet to the disciples' offenses. One of them should have risen to wash the feet of the guests. But they were full of themselves, anticipating their grand futures as protectorates of the Jewish nation. Jesus did what they would not do for one another. And the bickering stopped.”
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