I went to services at Rock City Church with Alzaruba, my sculpture teacher. I wore a sheer white blouse, black tights, a short skirt and Hunter’s headband she made of animal bones and braided fabric. The bones seemed sacrilegious to me, but I think that’s why I wore it. A woman named Dumbi was supposed to pick me up, but she overslept so Al swung by in his van to drive me there at 9 o’clock. The back was full of shredded green plastic bags. He told me about past churches he’s been a part of, artwork he gave to them and why he left. One church of a Protestant denomination I can’t recall was run by a lesbian woman minister who, according to Al, took scripture out of context and called God “She”. He left that place to go to Rock City. “Nothing against lesbians, of course, but you know.”
Al told me to listen to the voice of my heart. He said many people confuse it with intuition, or themselves thinking, so they seldom consider it to be the voice of God. It is. It’s that tiny, stern voice that we don’t acknowledge. Al had cancer of the brain at one point in his life, and afterwards when he went into recovery he said he’d been saved and declared himself a born-again Christian. Someone once said that when a certain part of the brain is damaged, the same part Al suffered cancer with, it triggers an increase in religious activity.
When we pulled into the parking lot Al pointed out the windshield and exclaimed to me that two morning doves flew above the van and into the trees. He told me they were dark grey doves, and seeing them was an fortuitous sign from God.
The church wasn’t a church. It was a complex, an enormous building made of cement blocks that greatly resembled a middle or high school. There was a lime-green neon sign, like the kind in liquor stores or Chinese take-out restaurants, that beamed “Praise the Lord” in cursive.
There was a welcoming brigade in the Narthex, and everyone seemed so friendly that it made me uncomfortable. Here’s the girl who’s curious about the church, it’s her first time there and she’s perfect for being recruited into Jesus's following, they must have thought. There were too many introductions and handshakes to remember. A small Asian lady who was very enthusiastic and spoke in fragmented English showed me around the labyrinth of the church. It was so large that they had classrooms, meeting rooms, a café and a bookstore. She took me upstairs to see a mural of three trees and a dove through a door’s narrow window because the room was locked. At the base of the staircase we realized the door had locked behind us and we were stuck in the stairwell. Before someone opened the door, I had a fleeting vision of her and I rotting to death there for a few days, and then I’d be canonized.
Al bought me a coffee at their café, which was a large blue room with a spread of food laid out and folding tables next to a cash register. People kept shaking my hand, asking my name and welcoming me. I was in a bit of a shock, I think. They could tell I wasn’t one of them.
Al showed me his large paintings that were hung around the café. They were mostly abstractions, though one sculpture was a boat made of curved driftwood. He cut out pieces of the canvas and used a lot of 14-karat gold, holographic images that changed when you moved, and red car reflectors. When I asked about the car mirrors he said he used them because they reflect only light, not images. The last painting he showed me was the largest and most narrative. There were crosses, patterns and outlined bones that swirled into the right side of the painting and represented a union of body and soul. In the bottom left corner he had painted falling ovals that, to me, were obviously blood platelets. I mentioned it to him, and he told me I found a piece to his puzzle. He always wondered why he had painted those shapes, but now he knows it’s the blood of Christ.
He took me into the bookstore and I looked around at some things, but mostly tried my best to memorize titles of Bishop Bart’s DVD series: “We Will Have an Army When We Return to the Garden”, “Responsibility- Increase Your Response-ability in the Kingdom”, and “Sharpen Your Axe Head”.
I hung around by the entrance and spoke mainly with this woman who was wearing a dress I have, only longer and a deeper blue, and how she’s been with the church for 27 years and runs their thrift store, Station North. She said it’s where she bought the dress and I should definitely visit. Another woman told me she was getting her MFA at MICA for graphic design. I remember her saying she regretted going to a regular college to study art and home-schooling her kids.
The actual church part of the place, I forget what they called it, was essentially a theater without balcony seats. It was a circular cavern placed at the center of the building so it could be entered at all sides. There was a lot of sophisticated music and film equipment. The pews pointed slightly downward to a large, polished wooden stage with instruments and a black glass podium in the middle. There was no tabernacle, no crucifix, statues or mosaics. There wasn’t even an altar.
Behind the podium there was a large projector screen and a lot of potted plants. Each wall on the sides of the stage had an enormous television stuck into it. Performers were already singing and swaying when I was escorted inside by the Asian lady, and she left me to sit with an Indian woman name Sumba. I also met Dumbi for a moment. The music was too lively for me. It wasn’t even that soulful, which might haven been partially because of the psychedelic, headache-inducing graphics that were moving around on the screen with the lyrics of the songs.
Sumba asked if I had any questions, which I really didn’t, so I was glad when she did most of the talking and told me about her inner struggle with religion. I had told her I was just continually searching for things, they didn’t have to be answers, that I believed in all paths to God and wasn’t quite sure that Jesus was the son of God. She said she was born as a Hindu but always felt that the gods she prayed to didn’t listen to her or answer her prayers. In college she was close with people in the Christian bible group and always thought that the Bagavad Gita, the Bible and the Qu’ran stemmed from the same source. Then, with a sort of flame in her gaze, she leaned in a little closer and told me it was after college that God sent her a sign and she realized Jesus is the only truth. I asked her what being ‘saved’ meant, and she said it was when you realize Jesus is the only way and everything else was a lie. She said it was difficult to tell her parents they were living one, that they were stuck in Hindu ignorance. Sumba hinted that I’d also find that truth and one day stop my searching.
I was grateful that Sumba stayed with me throughout the entire service. I told her after she spoke of her background that being in the third row was too overwhelming for me and that I had to move back. She said she’d accompany me, and though I was really reluctant at first, I could tell she thought it was the best idea. A woman named Christie found Sumba and me in the back and invited us to move up a few pews to stand with her. I ended up in the middle.
The service was three hours long. It consisted of a long set of Jesus music and an aggressive sermon/homily by the pastor/minister/priest/preacher/reigning talker. I don’t know what he’s called, but he had a thick neck and was loud, terrifying and made me feel ashamed for things I shouldn’t have felt that way about.
People took of their shoes, swayed around or danced with their arms outstretched and their eyes closed, speaking in tongues. It was then I realized I had stumbled into a nearly evangelical church, not the open-minded, contemporary church Al told me about. Sure, there were many different nationalities represented, which was comforting, but religiously speaking they were the same, or worse, than my own Catholic church with its nose held constantly in the air towards people of faiths other than Christianity. The preacher of Rock City even scoffed at a Jehovah’s Witness in one of his stories. I was the only person not singing, dancing or letting the Holy Spirit into my soul by mumbling gibberish. Besides being a shock to me after spending my entire life in a relatively quiet church off of Main Street, it was all very fascinating.
The pastor spoke of a number of things. Somehow I feel like God is getting lost somewhere in Christianity. Even Jesus wasn’t represented in the church. Perhaps they didn’t want to “worship” his representations, which has always teetered on idolatry to me, but the church was barren save for those screens. A kid with a video camera was hopping around the stage to film people while there was a camera on the pastor, so the three screens were either filled with his image or people around me looking up at him. Some glanced up to see themselves. It was akin to seeing yourself on the scoreboard screen at baseball games. The holy trinity was locked in the screens- the pastor, the congregation and weird graphics moving to music- the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. The pastor seemed to think he was God. Everyone was being immortalized in the film and no one seemed humbled. This is only based on the service, of course, not the people, except for the pastor who was on a Billy Graham televangelist power trip.
Everyone had notebooks out during his talk. A girl next to me even brought her laptop. In hindsight I wish I had something to write with too, just to remember things he said, not exactly for my own moral benefit but to add to my mental stockpile of Christian negativity. He called people out by a showing of hands about bringing pens, postage stamps and candy bars to inmates in one of their programs. He urged people use the two tickets in the bulletins to find a non-Christian to bring to the Resurrection Play next Sunday. He spoke of two as the number of witness in the bible, and went on about how God created Adam, and then another Adam, to witness the birth of Eve from Adam no. 1’s rib. I don’t buy into any creation myth. They’re all the same but none of the details line up with each other.
He looked up passages from Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy and Acts, but I can’t remember many specifics. The passages appeared on the screen behind him when he announced the chapter and verse. He told us about his life on the run as a drug addict, how he was so dumb that he pronounced herb with an “H” sound, and how he was chased by the police. He announced a plant sale and pulled radishes from a pot. He said he spent time in a barn in Europe with his wife. There were three beds there, and one night he tried to sleep in each of them but was restless. Then when he was hiding in a hotel room from the police, there were once again three beds and a picture of Jesus on a white wall. The pastor said the eyes moved to wherever he tried to sleep. The three bed story seemed too familiar. He went on about a girl in a pick-up truck during his hitch-hiking days who told him Jesus had a plan for him, and that Jesus loves him. Later, when he was working at a dam, a black man told him every day about Jesus during the lunch break. He put a lot of emphasis on the ‘black man’ part of the story. The man was a Jehovah’s Witness, and people around me murmured sounds of distaste. The sermon was conducted like a conversation when the other person talks too much; the pastor spoke out to the parish, and they responded with words of approval, usually “Amen”.
I used to think that the cold air I felt at my church was a sign from God or a dead relative. When I told my mother one day during mass she pointed up to the fans turning above us. At Rock City I experienced the same cold chill, but this time when I looked up I saw rows of air vents.
Finally, after three hours of standing stiffly with my hands folded or sitting with hunched shoulders, the service was wrapping up. The pastor invited everyone to the front of the stage to be blessed. “I’m prolonging this time! I know you’re wrestling with yourself! Don’t be foolish! Be not afraid!” I could tell he was speaking directly to me. I was the stiffest person there. A lot of people walked up to cry, speak in tongues, hold each other, put hands on foreheads and reach out for the pastor to bless them.
Christie and Sumba asked to pray with me after the service concluded and people were beginning to leave. They sat on either side of me, held my hands and we bowed our heads. Christie asked God to inform my art making, to allow me to give up my own will to do the will of God, and to not let me lose my gift of creativity. She thanked Jesus for me and my artistic gift. Sumba asked Jesus to give me the gift of discernment, to tell the difference between wheat and weeds. She spoke of my religious inner torment and conflict, which was her interpretation of what I told her before about my beliefs. I thanked them and told them the prayers were beautiful. I really did appreciate their concern for me. It was genuine. They wanted to save me.
Somehow, telling Sumba I would try to come to another service turned into me coming back next Sunday. “I’ll see you next Sunday, then?” After being lectured on breaking vows all morning, I felt badly about breaking this one, even if I never really promised it to Sumba in the first place. I hugged her and Christie, who told me she loved my hair, thanked them again and spoke to Al for a moment. He took me to an elderly couple he found to drive me home, Bud and Christine. They were very sweet people, especially the husband. Their daughter Jocelyn was there too. She must have been adopted. They told me how Jocelyn took weekend classes once at MICA on some scholarship, and that her ceramic plate was in a show. I told them that was wonderful.
I thanked the family for the ride home, hopped out of the car and immediately walked to the store for a pack of cigarettes. I fed half of a Pay Day to two pigeons outside on the sidewalk.
I would break the vow to Sumba and that church, but made one to myself that I could keep, that I was never going back there. I recently listened to Patti Smith's Gloria, where she opens by saying “Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine.” I empathize with her. I believe in Jesus and God, but I don’t believe Jesus is the only path to God. I don’t want to be saved.
