Chapter Thirteen
Inside the museum infinity goes up on trial;
Voices echo “This is what salvation must look like after a while,”
But Mona Lisa must’ve had the highway blues
You can tell by the way she smiles.
“Visions of Johanna,” by Bob Dylan
Dr. Townsend read it from the pulpit. He read it on Wednesday, for Prayer Meeting. My overwrought brain was certain that this passage was for me alone. Funny that I don’t remember a single word that Dr. Townsend said about it. But I thought about that verse, meditated on it – through the hymns we sang and the prayer we prayed.
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth by itself alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit.”
So, here’s what Christianity says: most grains of wheat, and by most I mean millions, billions of grains, are given the opportunity and pleasure of being ground together to become flour. The flour will become bread, or biscuits, or pastries, or pie crusts, or cakes. They will be eaten to the accompaniment of moans of delight. They will plunge into the bodies of the humans who eat them, will undergo chemical reactions, and will ultimately be absorbed by the intestines – probably the jejunum – which will in turn release the digested grain of wheat into the blood stream to be carried somewhere in the body that needs replenishment or repair. What a journey, what an adventure for a grain of wheat to be taken on!
I am the grain of wheat that falls to the ground. The earth will cover me. Rains will come, and I will sink into the humus: the animal decay, the vegetable decay, the microorganisms who live there in their millions. Deeper and deeper I will sink, until I die in the dark. Then I will lay there for hours, for days, for time without end. There will be nothing there to mark the passage of time. All is stillness and blackness. I will become empty and forgotten.
But I am not empty. When the time is right – when the right amount of rain and the right amount of sun awakens the soil, my body breaks open. The husk that once encased me falls away like a discarded lifetime, and new, pulpy, trembling life begins to reach desperately for the surface. It finally cracks through the crust, and I am reborn.
That’s what my church would have me believe. Born again. Leaving the old, dead life behind, and entering the light.
During this darkest time of the year I was able to sink into myself, explore, try to find out what was actually inside of me. My inner world would come to me as a series of land formations, urban scenes, familiar spaces, sometimes houses and rooms. I visited them all from time to time, so that they were recognizable to me in my dreaming states. I was not able to match these places with certain people or things that influenced my life, but I did know many that populated my inner world. Here dwelt things and people that I love. Here were my family, there my friends. Sometimes I saw aunts, uncles, and cousins, and those who have passed beyond me and live entirely in dreams. Some of them I had never even met, yet I knew them.
Here was the large, ornate room for music, classical and soul and rock and roll. There was the riverbank grove of literature and poetry. Religion lived in this garden, thick with fragrance, almost cloying, and the ground unsteady under my feet. Yonder was the great arena, where all of the sports were played, and all my heroes were there.
All of this was familiar to me, and somehow comforting. But what about the fears, the unease, the confusions, the unknown? They would spring up unexpectedly in my inner world. They were the dimly lit hallways. They were the devious dank alleyways where I would find myself whenever I lost my way. The time when I was nine years old and was given an injection to calm my digestive system and then I couldn’t catch my breath and I couldn’t control my facial and neck muscles and I was going into respiratory arrest and I didn’t know this could ever happen to anybody. I landed in a makeshift room at Congaree General Hospital and was gradually rescued by coffee. Coffee saved my life. It woke up my depressed central nervous system. The terror stayed with me though. Beelzebub, Asteroth, Apollyon, Moloch – these demons are known to history, they are dark and dangerous. Mine had different names: multiple sclerosis, cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, and number of demons that could put me in a wheelchair, or leg braces, or hooked up to medical contraptions. A year or two later, nervous me went to a horror movie with a friend and came out with dilated eyes. For a year I couldn’t bear to look at a graveyard, even during the middle of the day, whether the small yard at our church or the other churches downtown, or other cemeteries scattered through the city. I became obsessed with human corruption. Death was followed by decay, and how horrible were the stages of this decay. To me it seemed a cruel and senseless reality, and it horrified me.
And now, all these years later, I had contracted a dreadful disease and was trying to figure out how to live through it, if I could expect any relief, and what the long term effects of it would be for my life.
I checked a book out of the library called The Merck Manual. It listed hundreds of diseases that humans can be afflicted with and describes their many symptoms. I compulsively read about several diseases that were genuinely horrible. Just short of getting completely grossed out I finally turned to the article on Hypothyroidism. It was bad enough.
“Symptoms of hypothyroidism may include, but is not limited to, the following:”
Not limited to…??? Just the list itself was a page and a half long!
Fatigue – oh yes, everyday; weight gain – not a problem for me; cold intolerance – I’m more of a heat intolerant kind of guy, I think; slowed heart rate, movements, and speech – now we’re getting to the crux of it; I don’t know about my heart rate, but I feel like I’m moving through molasses every day; joint and muscle pain, cramps, and weakness – this is me, all day long; constipation – very little, if at all; dry skin – yes; thin, brittle hair or fingernails – if they include toenails, yes, and my hair has gotten a little strawy; decreased sweating – not having this; pins and needles – yes, sometimes; heavy periods, or menorrhagia – next question? weakness – um, that would be a yes; high cholesterol – Doc hasn’t mentioned it; puffy face, feet, and hands – no; insomnia – guilty; balance and co-ordination issues – guilty again, especially when jumping rope or playing basketball; loss of libido – this has not happened; recurrent urinary and respiratory tract infections – none so far; anemia – Doc hasn’t said anything, though it wouldn’t surprise me; depression – yep, that’s what it’s called.
“If left untreated, the following symptoms can manifest: hoarseness, puffiness in the face, thinned or missing eyebrows, slow heart rate, hearing loss.”
“Missing eyebrows??” I was glad I was being treated.
“If it develops in children or teenagers, the signs and symptoms are generally the same as adults. However, they may also experience: poor growth, delayed development of teeth, poor mental development, delayed puberty.”
A couple of those trains had already left the station, but the “poor mental development” worried me a little.
Well, damn!
This is what I’ve got. Here I am in the ninth grade in a new school, trying to make the grade in basketball and in the classroom, be popular and get to know a lot of girls, and all of my batteries are at half speed or less.
Damn!
What was interesting about my dream life is that the difficulties of this year, the demons that terrorized me every waking day, had not leeched into my unconscious yet – though I was expecting them to. Other than the basketball laughing dream – which would qualify as a nightmare – my dreams were mostly benign. Strange and absurd, yes, but not really unpleasant. Ray nor Hugh nor Eddie had gained a foothold in my dreamworld so far. Good for me that when I was able to sleep it was mostly a restful sleep.
#####
Kenny Grenade was busy with a basketball game on Friday night, and Katie opted not to go. She would meet him later that night. Meanwhile, she invited me to drive around and look at some of the neighborhoods in Congaree that put a lot of effort into their Christmas lights and decorations. I was happy to get out of the house. It was raining – a cold mist. She helped me hobble out to the car.
We took the Mercury Comet. I loved this car. I addition to being more powerful than my father would have imagined when he bought it, it had some other nifty features – such as adjustable speed windshield wipers. As we passed house after house, all glittering with multi-colored lights framing the doorways and windows, clustered in the trees and shrubberies, and with reindeer, sleighs, Santas, wise men, mangers, and sheep in abundance, brightly illuminated, the effect was entrancing. As the misty rain would accumulate on the windshield, the colors would blur and melt and sparkle, until the wiper blade passed over and the lights became visually sharp again for a few seconds. Katie turned on the radio. All the Christmas oldies had ceased. Now we were back to the Top 60 in Dixie – the land of rock and roll.
“Close my eyes, she’s somehow closer now
Softly smile, I know she must be kind
When I look into her eyes
She goes with me to a blossom world
I’m pickin’ up good vibrations
She’s giving me excitations”
“I’m not sure what I think of that one,” said Katie.
“Really?” I said. “I thought you loved the Beach Boys.”
“I always have, but… I don’t know. It sounds like they’re trying too hard to be, you know, with it or something.”
“You’ll have to admit,” I said, “it’s a well-produced song.”
“I guess so,” she allowed. “Hey, you wanna hear the game?”
“Katie,” I said. “I really would like to talk. I mean, the music playing is fine, but we don’t get that much of a chance these days.”
“You’re right,” she said. “I think that’s a good idea. What you wanna talk about?”
“I was curious… about that religion class you took,” I began. “What was that about? Were they trying to make you into an agnostic or what?” I knew that Chesterfield College was a Methodist school. Why would they try to upset their students like this?
“That class…” she began. “It was something of a shock to me that a professor at a church related school would throw some of the things he did at us.”
“Was it all Freshmen in the class?”
“There were several freshman, but it’s one of three choices in Religion that everybody is required to take. So you can take it really any year.”
“What were the things he taught that shocked you?” I asked.
“Okay, well, the first day of class he walked in holding a Bible. He started talking about it: ‘Here’s the Holy Bible, isn’t it? This is the divinely inspired Word of God they’ve taught to you and preached to you, right? It is a treasure, and it has an honored place in most of your homes, I would expect. The very divine message of God our Creator, dictated to holy men of old.’”
“Then he threw the Bible against the wall and it fell crumpled to the floor. ‘But you see, ladies. After all, it’s just a book.’”
“Wow!” I said. “He really did that?”
“He was making a point,” she said. “It was really unexpected, though I got what he was doing. Some of the girls got very upset.”
“Then what?”
“He told us to forget everything we thought we ever knew about the Bible for this class, and to keep our minds as open as possible.”
“Girls from all four classes now have open minds,” I prompted.
“He began by talking about all the archeologists and anthropologists who had been all over Palestine and the Mediterranean countries, and how some of their discoveries cast doubt on parts of the biblical record, though some of them supported it too. Then he talked about all the different manuscripts and parchments and scrolls. Surprise! They don’t all say the same thing, and some of them actually contradict each other. Plus, they’re not very old. The oldest manuscripts used to be only about a thousand years old. And that’s just the Old Testament. They found the Dead Sea Scrolls in the 1940s, and they date back to right about the time of Jesus, but they’re still hundreds of years after the actual events of the Old Testament. Then there’s the New Testament: they’ve got like four fragments of the gospels that date back to around a hundred and fifty years after the crucifixion. There aren’t any complete manuscripts until hundreds of years later when monks started copying them on expensive, more durable paper. And guess what? They all disagree with each other. And when the church leaders got together in 400 A.D. and decided to finalize what should be included in the Bible, they threw out dozens of gospels and books and letters that some of the people had been reading all these years thinking it was part of the Bible. Hey, too bad for them! And what we know as the New Testament has been heavily edited – the took some stuff out and put other stuff in. It sounds like it was a complete mess. When they were finished, they met in a church council and introduced the new New Testament and told they people “This is the New Testament now, and it’s because we said so, and everybody that doesn’t believe this the real New Testament is going to, well, burn in Hell for eternity, you know, the usual.’”
“Incredible,” I said.
“Yes, incredible,” said Katie. “From there we moved on to nineteenth century Germany. There was a group of theologians that developed what is called ‘Higher Criticism’. Instead of studying just the text and trying to get accurate translation, they looked at the meaning of the scripture by putting it in the context of the ancient world. They called it sitz im Leben, which is one German phrase I don’t think I’ll ever forget. It was on a quiz and on the final exam.
“Then came the part that really got me upset. I don’t know if I should tell you, because I don’t want you getting upset too or that I should be responsible if you decide not to be a Christian anymore.”
“I wish you’d go ahead,” I said resolutely. “I think I need to hear this stuff.”
“Well, okay then,” she began. “He told us all sorts of theories about Jesus, how he probably wasn’t born in a manger, he may have been born forty years before Christ – if you can believe that, and how the whole story about his death and resurrection was made up by the apostles because they needed a new religion to stand against the Roman Empire. And why did they choose that particular story? Because there were several religions and myths all over the ancient world about a hero that stands against an oppressive government, who is killed, and who rises again on the third day. And most of them consume his body and blood in a ritual.”
“Wow. I’d never heard that.”
“He has us read a book by Karl Barth, and a book by Paul Tillich, and another book by… I can’t remember but the name started with B.”
“I’ve heard Daddy talk about those two…”
“And those books got me more confused than I already was. And yet, and the end of it all I made an “A” in the class. I guess studying so much about the Bible in Sunday School helped me with that, even though it was my little girl Sunday School religion that has gotten all shook up. I mean, what am I supposed to believe in? Is there anything to hang on to?”
“Are you going to be an agnostic?” I asked sincerely.
“I guess I am one at the moment,” she admitted, “though it’s not by choice; it’s by confusion. I don’t like it. I guess I’ve been comfortable being a naïve little Christian. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe I need to totally rethink my faith in a kind of crucible, even though I’d honestly rather not. I guess I’m just lazy, or a coward.” She paused. I tried to grasp this new revelation about my sister. “What I’ve decided to do is this. I’m going to keep going to church. I feel like I’m a ship without an anchor, but if I keep going to church maybe I’ll find a way through it all. I know I’m not the only one at First Baptist who’s heard all this stuff. I man, come on! Dr. Townsend and everybody else who’s an ordained minister… and probably half of the people who’ve been to college. They’ve all had to grapple with this stuff. And they came out on the other side.”
We had been through three dozen winding suburban drives and had seen thousands of lights, then Katie turned toward home. The rain had stopped and had given way to a light fog.
“So Terry,” said Katie. “What can you tell me about your situation? I hope all this stuff from my college class hasn’t upset you.”
“No, that’s all right. My situation is… what was that German phrase you used?”
“Sitz im Leben.”
“Yes! I think my doubts and confusion and everything comes from the context of my life. It’s kind of like this. I… I basically believe in God, I mean, that he exists. But I don’t really feel like he’s that involved in our lives.”
We were parked in our driveway. The rain had resumed so we waited, the wiper blades squeeging at about half speed. The radio faintly played a Johnny Rivers song.
“After the year you’ve been having I can easily see why you’d feel that way.”
“That’s a large part of it,” I said. “The miseries at school, and all of the problems with this thyroid disease… that’s what’s pushed me into having these doubts. But it’s not just me. I’m not so hung up that I can’t see beyond myself. Take Amy, my friend from Atlanta. How many times do you think she’s cried out to God? And did he answer her? I don’t really know – I didn’t ask her that, exactly. But I wonder. Look at the world. If we have an all-powerful God, then what gives? Will he not use his power to make things better? Or if it’s a matter of human free will, couldn’t he be a little bit more persuasive? Couldn’t he move men’s hearts to do the right thing without forcing them or violating their free will?”
Katie dropped her head into her hands. “Wow, now you’ve given me even more to think about!”
“Oh, sorry!”
“No it’s all right. I was kidding – a little bit. But yeah, I’ve thought about that too. And well, I wish I had a halfway decent answer for you. But I don’t.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I wasn’t really expecting an answer. I guess this is one of those questions that people like me have to struggle with for a long time – probably years.”
Though it was faint, I could hear the weather report on the radio. Partly cloudy, with a high pressure system moving in to the midlands. High temperatures in the mid-sixties.
“Sounds like spring is already here.”
We were silent for several moments. Finally Katie spoke in almost a whisper.
“Look at us, would you? A couple of sad old agnostics! Mama and Daddy didn’t bargain on this.”
“I know they didn’t bargain on an oddball like me!” I said. “Truly!”
“Hey, are you going to stop going to church?”
The question caught me slightly off guard. It was something I hadn’t given much thought to. “No. Actually as strange as it may sound, I like going to church.”
“Oh!”
“Yeah, I think it’s interesting. I have friends there – something I really need right now. Mostly I enjoy being in the Chapel Choir.”
“You know, I miss the choir,” Katie confessed. “I decided I’d not be in a choir during my freshman year, but next year? Who knows.”
That Motown sound started pouring out of the radio. That unmistakable instrumental ensemble, leading up to… Katie turned up the volume.
“C’mon! We need to sing this one!”
“When you feel like you can’t go on, because all of your hope is gone
And your life is filled with such confusion until happiness is just an illusion
And the world around you’s crumbling down, Darlin’ reach out!”
And we fell into laughter. “I tell you, Motown speaks right to the heart, doesn’t it?
“I don’t know how we could get through a single day without it.” Katie agreed.
“Thanks for taking me around, Sister Kate. And thanks for the talk, especially.”
“My Brother dear, it’s been a pleasure,” she said. “Of course, when we get another chance you could return the favor.”
“Oh, definitely!” I said. “Ask me anything.”
“I want to hear everything, I mean everything, about your friend Suzanne. I’ll give you all the time you need.”
ijustcantstopwriting 