Grace is Righteousness, the sign read at the entrance into the parking lot of Mountain View Church of Christ in Tucson. I found a parking spot easily as a sporadic showing of vehicles left many empty spaces. I was early by a half hour. A fat lady with long hair in a long pink dress greeted me from a plastic chair as I opened the glass door of the chapel in my blue jeans, green cotton dress shirt, and new white gym shoes. “Welcome,” she said. “You new here?” “Just coming for a visit,’ I answered. “Welcome,” she again said. It’s been over five years since I had been to a Sunday service. I had at one time made a commitment to myself to never return to any building that was a part of any institutionalized religion. I’ve had share of burdens within these institutions, and the biggest kick in the pants for me to stay away was when I slowly watched over the course of years the massive cover-up of the abuse of children in the Catholic Church. These type of places just seem to swarm with a system full of middle managers that keep the gears of society in line while judging us from books and brain tweaking the truth of the Spirit that dwells within us that truly belongs to only us. I’ve been to many churches of beliefs like this and even though the beliefs may change their purpose doesn’t -- In the end they work for the powerful and make sure we all see that it’s not someone’s fault when bad things happen to someone in the course of a day. We have a Devil or a Shatan or Karma to blame it on when all things go astray. It’s all laid on some entity somewhere but never on our own actions which may have played a part in it all. And when things like the incident in Tucson happen we are never quick to judge ourselves but allow the finger pointing to begin first into our books of law and then at all others. The question why is reserved for them and not what dwells in our hearts, minds, and spirits. But this Sunday, the day after the Tucson shootings in Tucson, I was the first to take a pew in a small church called Mountain Avenue. It was clean and modern. The building couldn’t have been more than twenty too thirty years old. And as buildings go, since we’ve been building them, that’s pretty young. And as I sat alone and read the banner on the altar; This Do In Rememberence of Me, I wondered what it was like to see this building threw Dorwin’s Studdard’s eyes, the man shot and killed and was to be giving the sermon this day. What he truly thought of the whole system of religion and society and the people that came here to worship. The half hour went by quick and I noticed that in every pew there was more than one person sitting in them. I wondered if it was just me with my go-tee, and long hair, that may have scared some away from filling in the empty space between me and the other side of the long wooden empty bench. Right in front of me sat a man and his wife. They were an older couple. He looked European with short gray hair, and she was Latino with dark hair that covered her shoulders. I watched in vane as her hand caressed his back thinking of how lucky the man was to have a woman that wanted to feel close to him. And then I saw another man like me with long hair. And he found company in his own empty pew. Like cymbals ringing through the sound of an orchestra tuning their instruments, a group of children then bounced down the aisle and were led to the first pew in front. People that were still standing and talking to each other, now, began to find their seating for the Sunday service. I was still sitting alone in my pew as a man approached the microphone and asked the people to open up their hymnals to the song; We will Rise Up. I stood and listened to the people sing and they sang in the old fashioned way of the Sacred Harp singers, a way in which the voices blend and rise and fall in unison to a single one/two rhythm. The song lifted my Spirits and cut into my emotions. I cried for a moment listening to them singing this type of loud and balanced harmony. Once they ended that song another song arose; There’s a Stirring. And as heard this song I was caught by where we are today in America, the melting pot, about to be stirred together, no one Spirit greater than any other. A song to stir, to become truly one, must be out there somewhere like this day in the form of Sacred Harp singers. That is what this is all about... The great stirring… the final judgment into ourselves -- in heart and mind and Spirit. As the song ended, a tall thin man in a black suit, polished black dress shoes, grey collared shirt, and red tie, approached the children and began to sing the song, “Jesus loves the little children, all the little children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, they are sacred in his site. Jesus loves the little children of the world.” He then went into the same song and began it with Jesus died for all the children. He ended his song beginning with Jesus rose for all the children. He then told them all to raise their hand and wiggle a finger as he was doing. Some children in the front wiggled their fingers, others steered with a dull look, and others just looked around to see what was happening behind them. The man then began singing while wiggling his finger and bobbing up and down; “There was a fuzzy catapiller stuck up in a tree, he wiggled once, he wiggled twice, and then wiggled right at me. I put him in a yellow box and said don’t you go away, instead he turned into a butterfly… and I don’t know the rest of the song.” The church erupted in laughter as the man briefly laughed at himself. He was lost for words but not finished and he carried out the song by singing, “Only God in heaven can make a butterfly.” Placing his hands on his hips he then looked down at the children and said, “And who makes butterflies?” “Caterpillars do,” one child said. The church stirred for a moment as the man fidgety around for words, and then said, “No, no, no… God makes the butterflies.” “No.” The child said, “Caterpillars do.” The man then waved his hand at the child and said, “You’re right! You’re right! But who makes the caterpillar?” This was getting interesting to me. A man dressed as a sales man talking theology stumped for a moment by a child on who makes a butterfly. That was already resolved and he lost that battle of truths. And I watched as the child in her pretty little dress, and her hands on her lap, looked at the man deeply searching for a truthful answer. She was silent…. And into her eyes the man lied, “That’s right!” he said, “God does.” If she would have said that two butterflies make a caterpillar she would have walked away crowned. I was sure she knew the answer but was just afraid to tell the truth to a preacher man that has everyone believing he has all the answers. https://youtube/watch?v=fU_QFvkPJvw
Posted on: Fri, 09 Jan 2015 21:59:48 +0000
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