Leaning against a wrought iron fence near the park, I inspected the Gay Pride parade passing by. “You know the best part about the Short North?” I asked Andre as we watched an array of scantily clad men strutting down the street in rainbow boas, neckties, and Speedos. “The stunning display of abs. I didn’t even know you could have that many.”
“Look—that lady has a twenty-four pack,” he answered, pointing to a woman riding a motorcycle in the next procession.
I called to my husband, who had gone to retrieve more drinks. “Hey Trent, can you snap a picture of me and Andre?”
“Hang on.” Trent rested three red cups on the grassy hill and grabbed his phone, capturing an image that showcased our funny grins, a host of half-naked people mid-march, and a contingent of angry protestors on the opposite side of the street holding up handmade signs that said, “REPENT!” and “GOD HATES FAGS!”
“Ugh,” I said, looking at the picture. “The Reba of the year 2000 would have been on the other side of the street with the protestors.”
“I guess you traded in communion with the saints for sangria with the sinners,” Trent joked.
“And she wouldn’t have it any other way,” Andre side-hugged me.
We turned back to the parade. “Andre!” I grabbed his arm. “Are those church floats coming our way?”
“Yeah,” he said, as though this was normal. “Some of the churches come out to support Pride every year. A few synagogues, too.”
Aghast, I watched fifty people march around King Avenue United Methodist’s float, tossing candy to the crowd. The protestors went ballistic against the church group, screaming all manner of vile things, the fully dressed people in church T-shirts appearing to offend them even more than the half-naked transgendered marching band.
“Stone Village Church,” I said, reading the print on the next, smaller group’s T-shirts. The protestors ratcheted up their discourse another decibel, so I covered my ears to avoid symptoms of PTCS at Pride. Stone Village. I turned the name in my mind; it sounded more like a place that would be holding protest signs, yet they strolled, smiling, past the protestors—a graceful display of acceptance in the face of graceless rejection. They looked like saints who might drink sangria.
KING AVENUE METHODIST CUT an impressive figure on the corner of Neil and King, and I wondered how I’d missed this place all through college. Once I noticed, it was hard to ignore the rainbow flags sticking out from the stone facade of the beautiful early-twentieth-century structure.
Entering through large wooden doors that reminded me of a storybook castle, I felt a little shaky at the scent of the place. (What is it about churches? They all smell the same—like all the old ladies in the world made a pact to wear the same perfume, make loads of stale coffee, and walk around fanning the scent into the walls. “Pearl, Gladys—we need some more perfume over here!”) The sanctuary was lovely: all arched ceilings and stained glass and old wooden floors under thick-piled maroon carpet.
I sat in the farthest possible corner from the pulpit, smooshed at the end of the last pew. I grabbed a few hymnals and stacked them in the seat next to me, barricading myself from overly friendly passersby. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I may have appreciated the role of the members in the Pride march, but that didn’t mean I wanted to meet their eyes.
“Please stand for our opening prayer and hymns,” invited the minister, a woman wearing a robe. I wasn’t ready to make that kind of commitment, so I sat very much like I had at Word Alive, aka The Palms, the very picture of closed body language. I imagined one of those TV body language “sexperts”—like the one who diagnosed Brad and Angelina with romantic problems based on the fact that he was turning his head to cough—and what they might have to say about my body language. “Aha! Note her closed posture: arms crossed and legs crossed means she is distinctly uncomfortable, as if her date just told her he’d like to eat her brain.” (That actually happened to me once on a dinner date courtesy of Match.com. He’d looked me straight in the eyes like he was going to confess love and said in a low voice, “I want to taste your brain.”)
A second pastor—this one a man sporting an impeccable white linen suit, blue tie, and flesh-toned ear microphone—delivered a homily that started in Matthew 10, detoured into a touching story about a closeted lesbian, and ended with an exhortation to Love Everyone, regardless of gender, sexual identity, nationality, ethnicity, family/economic status, and physical/mental/emotional ability. It took him less time to preach than Pastor Tom at The Palms had spent condemning the gay political agenda. Come to think of it, the entire fifty-minute service could have folded up nicely into the carry-on suitcase of my Word Alive experience.
I performed a quick emotional inventory during a post-sermon hymn: everything was surprisingly okay . . . until I noticed Communion listed next on the program.
My palms began to sweat. Communion and I were not on friendly terms. It seemed impossible that one cup could be weighted with so much guilt, and one morsel of bread with such anger, but for me these sacraments were the heaviest elements in the universe.
If communion wine and crackers were listed on the periodic table of my life, the chart would hang sideways. At various points since the Breaking, I had dipped the bread in the wine. But as oft as I had done these things, I had done them in memory of loss that had nothing to do with “backsliding” and everything to do with having nothing left to slide away from.
As the “righteous” went forward to receive, I cowered in my seat, as though the simple words, “This is my body, broken for you,” could break me all over again. I closed my eyes in fake prayer until it was over.
The robed woman minister dismissed the congregation with the exhortation to, “Greet those strangers around us and make a new friend!”
I did not want to make a new friend. I wanted to make a hasty exit. But an older woman in a watermelon hat (complete with painted black seeds on the ribbon)—stopped me for a handshake.
“That is a very refreshing hat,” I complimented, hoping to sidestep further conversation with her and her partner, a P.E. teacher–type with hip glasses and a crew cut. No luck. They chatted me up and I half-expected Ms. Crew Cut to blow a whistle when she noticed my hand, still bandaged from physical therapy after my hand surgery.
“How did you hurt it?” she inquired.
“Wrong side of a closing door,” I explained wryly.
She empathized with her own finger-smashing story. “It can take a long time to heal. Give it all the time it needs.”
“COME AS YOU ARE . . . in your car . . .” I recited the church billboard advertisement as Trent drove us toward Lake Erie for a summer holiday weekend with his parents. Smiling goofily at the idea of a drive-in church, I imagined it as a 1950’s movie, with a pastor headlining instead of a film star, and communion wafers in place of popcorn.
“A drive-in church? This I have to see,” said my mother-in-law, Becky, stirring her famous mojitos on the porch at sunset.
Calm and cheerful, Becky is the mother-in-law everyone wishes for; in seven years, I had never seen her angry. Incredulous that someone could be so calm, I once asked Trent if she ever lost her cool when he was growing up. “What about the time you filled the gas tank with water? Or took apart the computer? Or drank gasoline?” Nope. She was petite, with shoulder-length blonde hair that had never been colored because, even at sixty-one, she had fewer gray hairs than I did. My theory was that she had good karma returning to her in the form of hair, perhaps from a former life as the Dalai Lama’s favorite kitten.
“Hey Becky, if we put down the convertible top, we could go to church topless!” I laughed after she poured me a mojito.
“Here’s to getting a tan at church,” she said.
ON SUNDAY MORNING DENNY, my father-in-law, was calmly drinking his coffee and reading his Sunday paper when Becky and I started jabbering about the drive-in. He partially lowered his paper and said with an air of good-natured sternness, “You two better not become Holy Rollers on me.”
“It’s too late,” I informed him. “In less than an hour we’ll be holy rollin’ right in to church.”
Denny shook his head and went back to the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
Dressed in bathing suits, cover-ups, and flip-flops, Becky and I climbed into the convertible and put the top down.
“Don’t forget the sacrament of sunscreen,” I reminded her, pulling an emergency bottle from the glove box.
We donned our sunglasses and set off for the bar parking lot/church. I drove, enjoying the feel of the hot July sun and the smell of summer: a heady mix of freshly cut grass and tangy lake breeze. As we waved to sailboats when the bridge went up, I thanked the Godiverse that the Sickness had granted me a measure of independence for Independence Day—not that I was ever really free. Every day of activity came at a price: a number of days spent in bed in pain, often too exhausted to roll over and lift a glass of water. The Sickness never told me the cost in advance; it sent me a bill after the fact, payable immediately upon receipt. Still, I tried not to think of the bad days coming and to appreciate the good times I was given, even if those days were tainted by joint pain and bearable (instead of debilitating) fatigue.
“Turn right here,” Becky directed when we got close.
I was surprised to see a long line of cars backed up off the main road, inching forward for admittance. “I guess we aren’t the only weekenders who appreciate a church where the dress code is, ‘no shoes, no shirt, no problem.’ ”
A caddy look-alike greeted us at the entrance. “Welcome,” he boomed. “If this is your first time, turn your radio dial to 88.1 AM to hear the service, and instead of clapping, toot your horn. Here are your programs.” He handed me two booklets and motioned where we should park.
After pulling into a spot, I fiddled with the radio dial, getting it right just in time for the pastoral greeting. If a tricked-out camper jobbie married one of those county fair food vendor carts that specialize in elephant ears and heart attacks, their love child would be this altar, er, stage. Distracted from the introductory remarks by the sheer strangeness of sitting in my convertible, in a bathing suit, in front of a fold-out stage, I couldn’t help but feel that cloggers were going to riverdance out, right over the pastor, in keeping with the county fair setting.
I privately hoped that fried Twinkies on a stick would be passed from car to car in lieu of the standard church meet-and-greet. Though fair food never materialized, all that was required to pass the peace was a quick wave to a neighbor through the windshield. “Church with a built-in shield,” I observed to Becky.
After we sang two hymns, the pastor began his message. “Church need not be entertaining to be beneficial,” he said through the radio.
“Bummer,” I deadpanned. “I came for the fireworks display.”
Throughout my church tenure, I’d encountered Christian jugglers, stand-up comedians, magicians, clowns, dancers, actors, mimes, puppeteers, strong men, fighters, musicians, and bands of every variety—heck, I’d performed four or five of those in church. Singers, acting troupes, acrobats, skateboarders, whistlers, motivational speakers . . . if the Christian label could be even vaguely applied to it, I’d seen it done.
It’s not that I didn’t enjoy such entertainment when I was growing up, but looking in my rearview mirror at the drive-in, I wondered why everyone felt so compelled to make Jesus sing and dance, play rock ’n’ roll, be faked-nailed to a cross, and transfigured via crane into a papier-mâché sky every Easter. If Jesus had to be dressed up so much, how would you recognize him if he walked in quietly through the back door?
Finishing his message, the pastor called for communion. Communion. Two weeks in a row, ugh. At least there wasn’t the usual public shame in refusing communion at a drive-in; the car offered the benefit of privacy. Soon a small army of caddies dispersed amongst the cars, ferrying single-serving communion cups. In well-practiced order they approached each window, offering the communion in one hand and the offering plate in the other.
A single-serving communion packet, drive-in style, initially presented like a tiny coffee creamer. A thin, clear plastic layer embossed with the words, “HE IS RISEN!” covered a cross-emblazoned cracker sealed between the plastic and the foil layer beneath. The foil peeled back to reveal a teaspoon of purple juice.
Fascinated by the ingenious little thing, I wondered aloud, “Who holds the patent on this and what is its official product code? ‘Single-serve Jesus’? ‘Individually wrapped Christianity, conveniently packaged for the on-the-go believer’?”
Becky took communion while I stowed my souvenir in my cup holder. I didn’t know it then, but that single-serving communion cup would be my constant companion for the remainder of my project, riding with me to every religious visit. Communion’s meaning would do somersaults and back-flips, turning me upside down and—eventually—right-side up.