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A LITTLE SIDESHOW
1
May, 1977
Keesler Air Force Base, Biloxi, Mississippi
A LITTLE SIDESHOW
I’m standing on the curb out front of my barracks building now, waiting for Sgt. Tunney to drive up… and take me to church.
To church. Me! Can you believe it? A rabid, fire-breathing, Bible-burning atheist like me, going to church—for the first time since my only time as a child.
To be saved.
Yep. I can’t believe it myself.
Sgt. Tunney is my Block 1 instructor from Air Traffic Control School, a young guy, with a warm, friendly demeanor, smiling eyes, and a quiet, unflappable charisma. He’s also a born again Christian, who’s managed to annoy me with his proselytizing almost every morning since we started… right up until he convinced me to go to his church with him.
That was last week. This week I’m actually thinking about signing up.
What the hell is that all about?
Seems like I’ve been asking myself that question a lot lately.
In Block 1, we’ve been getting all the basics—learning about weather, working on the highly structured ATC terminology, and playing with model airplanes in the little model airport room (otherwise known as the “VFR Lab”). Six hours a day, Sgt. Tunney has led us through the fundamentals, building the foundation upon which everything else in this line of work will be built. And somehow, every morning he’s managed to slip in at least one little religious aside or two, some cute little biblical reference that I can never just let him get away with. And it’s only gotten worse as the days—and the quaint theology—has gone along.
At first I’d just stuck with countering his little quotes and homilies with occasional lightly sarcastic one-liners of my own, just to remind him that (a) there was another side to every one of those fluffy little stained glass perspectives of his, and (b) not everyone in that room was willingly receptive to all his happy little born-again platitudes. And—at first—it had produced the desired effect I was looking for. It reduced the number of “Jesus-isms” substantially, and highlighted, I felt, the rough, unfinished side of all that polished dogma of his as well. But then…
Then he started directing his little parables and tenets at me specifically, presumably trying to goad me into another one of my smart-ass comments, against which he was now ready to do combat. From there it went on to suit/counter-suit, point/counter-point, then question to counter-question. Thrust and parry. And finally, all-out argument.
By midway through the second week of Block 1, we’d turned the first hour of each day into a no-holds-barred theological brawl. The rest of each class day stayed focused on ATC, but that opening hour had turned into the Scopes Monkey Trial revisited. No one else in the room participated. Most of them just dropped their heads onto their arms and went unabashedly straight to sleep. A couple of guys read novels, a couple more played desktop football with a wedge of folded paper, and one wildman actually studied air traffic control from his notes of the day before. But Sgt. Tunney and I were completely absorbed in heated debate.
And I wasn’t always winning—not so much because of anything exceptionally insightful, original, or unique in any of his points, but because I was beginning to discover all the holes I had in my own understanding of the non-supernatural universe to which I had always so ardently subscribed. Thanks to my Dad, the Professor of Geology at the University of Miami, I was pretty well versed on the entire evolutionary process from the Big Bang to Steve. But it was a familiarity that had not been seriously explored or challenged before.
For the most part, any previous discussions I’d had on the subject had either been with ill-informed zealots and fence-straddling borderline agnostics, or with others of like mind to my own. And neither had ever really tested the depths of my own scientific knowledge like this before. My stock surface-level responses had always proved sufficient. But between the increasing moments of pause that Sgt. Tunney’s questions were forcing from me, and the clear signals from the rest of the class that this was an obnoxious way to have to start every day, I soon found myself bowing to more and more of his points, allowing for possibilities that I would never have even considered under different circumstances. I mean, somebody had to make some allowances, or the arguments would become as pointless as they were annoying. And Block 1 was only four weeks long. After that, we’d be off to another block and another instructor.
So finally, one day, in a spasm of uncharacteristic open-mindedness on my part, I agreed to attend his church with him that following Sunday, just to witness firsthand the “power of the Lord in action.” It was basically a dare on both our parts.
Naturally, according to Sgt. Tunney, his church—the Fellowship of the Lighthouse, it was called—was different. They were neither ritualists nor revivalists, hell-raisers nor Bible-thumpers. They were just non-denominational followers of Christ and The Word… whatever that meant.
Well, as it turned out, there was nothing surprising about either the course the sermon followed or the evangelical timbre of the preacher’s voice. The message wasn’t new, nor was their interpretation. Despite his assertions to the contrary, Sgt. Tunney’s church bore a great resemblance to every other service I’d ever attended… until the very end, that is.
Then it got different. That was when it was time to be “saved.”
Now this I hadn’t seen before.
At the call to the pulpit, something like fifteen, maybe twenty people, scattered throughout the congregation, rose to their feet and shuffled into a single-file line down the middle of the center aisle. Three of the church elders took their places at the front of the room. Then, one by one, the line moved forward, one customer to an elder.
At first I wasn’t sure what was going on up there. The “Ones Being Saved” (let’s call them the “sheep”) would stand before the “Ones Doing The Saving” (we’ll call them the “shepherds”) with their arms raised high over their heads, and their closed eyes lifted to God. The “shepherd” would place one hand on the “sheep’s” forehead, with his other raised as if being sworn into the witness stand at a murder trial. Then sheep and shepherd would start mumbling furiously at each other. I couldn’t tell what they were saying from back where I was sitting next to Sgt. Tunney—even reading the shepherd’s lips, it was unintelligible. Sometimes it looked like the sheep was answering the shepherd’s questions, other times they might have been exchanging some ritual dialogue, but most of the time they seemed to just be murmuring straight at each other, simultaneously. It was an all-out alien mumble-fest of the first degree—with occasional bursts of “Hallelujah!” and “Praise Jesus!” thrown in for good measure—and it was really starting to weird me out. Then the really weird shit started happening.
When the first “sheep’s” knees buckled—a chunky woman who had been breathing pretty heavily anyway even before her collapse—I took it as an interesting but entirely understandable result of all her breathless agitation, head-rolling, and arm-waving up there. She’d simply fainted in the heat. A “shepherd’s assistant”—standing behind her—had caught her on the way down, and laid her out on the floor. The rest of the crowd quietly oo’d and ah’d and offered up a “Praise the Lord” or two themselves. Her shepherd continued to consort with the Almighty, in private, one hand still raised, his eyes still closed, and his head now nodding vigorously. Even the woman, still prostrate on the floor, raised her own hands, blindly, to the ceiling, and began weeping… loudly.
A little melodramatic for my taste, but there’s bound to be one in every crowd.
But then the sheep in the middle—a well-dressed, silver-haired gentleman—went over backwards, stiff as a board, arms still upraised, and was assisted to his own prostration at the feet of the next customer in line, gasping for joy.
He wasn’t even all the way down though, when the guy to his right—a much younger dude, probably in his early twenties—crumpled like his knees had just been kicked out from under him, and went to ground blubbering happily.
Now that got my attention.
I looked around the room. And everyone was either rockin’-and-noddin’, sending joyous thank-yous to the ceiling, or simply watching with a strange sort of placid acceptance. In the center aisle, the queue jostled forward as if on a conveyor belt.
And the giggling, weeping, rapturous bodies on the floor began to pile up. After a while, the “shepherd’s assistants” had to start urging their still supine parishioners up onto their feet, just to make room for the collapsing bodies yet to come. The three shepherds were working up one hell of a righteous sweat (pun intended), the sheep were dropping like flies (so to speak), and a couple of little kids near the back of the line—probably a brother and sister—were hopping up and down and wringing their hands, looking excitedly towards their parents (presumably), anxious for their own chances to be bowled over by the power of the Lord.
And everyone was getting bowled over. Everyone. Well, all but one young woman anyway, who somehow toppled forward into the arms of her shepherd, where she held on for a long, pious hug before being escorted back to her seat. But, one after another after another, every single last person in that line, young or old, male or female, stepped forward and met their Maker with arms and voices upraised. And every last one of them was swept right off their feet.
I didn’t get it. I didn’t feel anything unusual in the room, certainly didn’t see anything, and I had a hard time believing that there was anything more going on here than a bunch of really excited—really ready—people succumbing to their own expectations. But still…
It was an impressive show.
And Sgt. Tunney, dressed in his casual Sunday best, had just sat there beside me, watching me, with this “knowing” smile on his face, as if to say, “see?”
Well, I thought a lot about that little sideshow over the week that followed—this last week, the final week of Block 1 and our time with Sgt. Tunney—and I came to the conclusion that, if ever there was a form of personally acceptable evidence for the existence of this Lord of theirs... if ever there was a recognizable “sign” that could only have come from On High, and would thereby satisfy my need for some form of “proof”... then being swatted onto my ass by an unseen force right at the moment I was begging to be swatted would probably do it. Sort of like screaming “Just give me a sign!” at the heavens, then having a lightning bolt zot down out of the sky and split a tree in two. It might not be definitive, but it would be sufficient.
Timing is everything in this business.
I was already fairly intrigued about the possibility of God’s existence just from all the badgering debates I’d had with Sgt. Tunney at school, but still needed something more to take it to the next level of all-out belief. Without some form of “evidence,” it was all just so much conjecture and well-rehearsed rationalization. And maybe this was it. Getting clobbered by the Lord would be a pretty danged conclusive piece of evidence, I figured, even for a spiteful skeptic like myself.
So, here I am on this fine, muggy, Sunday morning, waiting to be carted off for my very own holy slap in the face. Truth be told, I’m not entirely certain I want to do this. Nor am I sure that, even should I find the desire to do it, I’ll actually have the balls to stand up in front of a hundred or so spiritually aroused strangers, and submit myself to the melodrama. But standing here on this barracks curb, and stepping into Sgt. Tunney’s Volvo when he pulls up, is the first step toward finding out.
I exchange “howdys” with he and his wife, and spend the entire trip through the cornpone suburbs of Biloxi and Gulfport staring out the window, offering only single-sentence answers to their questions, and trying to keep my fluttering gorge bottled below my ribcage.
The simple, whitewashed, clapboard church—with its classic Southern Baptist steeple rising above its tiny shingled front stoop, and its grassy side lot littered with dusty family cars—appears in its little roadside clearing with the same disquieting naiveté it did last week. It bothered me then, and it still bothers me now. But then, everything about this bothers me on one level or another, so, as with everything else, I sublimate it for now. If this really is real, and I do manage to find my all-important “evidence” in there today, then I’m going to have to rethink all of this. And nothing will be served by succumbing to my disquietude before the fun even starts.
We find seats in the same general area as last time. The same pasted-on Sunday-best-behavior smiley faces surround us, along with all the same inane love-thy-neighbor chatter.
A LITTLE SIDESHOW
1
May, 1977
Keesler Air Force Base, Biloxi, Mississippi
A LITTLE SIDESHOW
I’m standing on the curb out front of my barracks building now, waiting for Sgt. Tunney to drive up… and take me to church.
To church. Me! Can you believe it? A rabid, fire-breathing, Bible-burning atheist like me, going to church—for the first time since my only time as a child.
To be saved.
Yep. I can’t believe it myself.
Sgt. Tunney is my Block 1 instructor from Air Traffic Control School, a young guy, with a warm, friendly demeanor, smiling eyes, and a quiet, unflappable charisma. He’s also a born again Christian, who’s managed to annoy me with his proselytizing almost every morning since we started… right up until he convinced me to go to his church with him.
That was last week. This week I’m actually thinking about signing up.
What the hell is that all about?
Seems like I’ve been asking myself that question a lot lately.
In Block 1, we’ve been getting all the basics—learning about weather, working on the highly structured ATC terminology, and playing with model airplanes in the little model airport room (otherwise known as the “VFR Lab”). Six hours a day, Sgt. Tunney has led us through the fundamentals, building the foundation upon which everything else in this line of work will be built. And somehow, every morning he’s managed to slip in at least one little religious aside or two, some cute little biblical reference that I can never just let him get away with. And it’s only gotten worse as the days—and the quaint theology—has gone along.
At first I’d just stuck with countering his little quotes and homilies with occasional lightly sarcastic one-liners of my own, just to remind him that (a) there was another side to every one of those fluffy little stained glass perspectives of his, and (b) not everyone in that room was willingly receptive to all his happy little born-again platitudes. And—at first—it had produced the desired effect I was looking for. It reduced the number of “Jesus-isms” substantially, and highlighted, I felt, the rough, unfinished side of all that polished dogma of his as well. But then…
Then he started directing his little parables and tenets at me specifically, presumably trying to goad me into another one of my smart-ass comments, against which he was now ready to do combat. From there it went on to suit/counter-suit, point/counter-point, then question to counter-question. Thrust and parry. And finally, all-out argument.
By midway through the second week of Block 1, we’d turned the first hour of each day into a no-holds-barred theological brawl. The rest of each class day stayed focused on ATC, but that opening hour had turned into the Scopes Monkey Trial revisited. No one else in the room participated. Most of them just dropped their heads onto their arms and went unabashedly straight to sleep. A couple of guys read novels, a couple more played desktop football with a wedge of folded paper, and one wildman actually studied air traffic control from his notes of the day before. But Sgt. Tunney and I were completely absorbed in heated debate.
And I wasn’t always winning—not so much because of anything exceptionally insightful, original, or unique in any of his points, but because I was beginning to discover all the holes I had in my own understanding of the non-supernatural universe to which I had always so ardently subscribed. Thanks to my Dad, the Professor of Geology at the University of Miami, I was pretty well versed on the entire evolutionary process from the Big Bang to Steve. But it was a familiarity that had not been seriously explored or challenged before.
For the most part, any previous discussions I’d had on the subject had either been with ill-informed zealots and fence-straddling borderline agnostics, or with others of like mind to my own. And neither had ever really tested the depths of my own scientific knowledge like this before. My stock surface-level responses had always proved sufficient. But between the increasing moments of pause that Sgt. Tunney’s questions were forcing from me, and the clear signals from the rest of the class that this was an obnoxious way to have to start every day, I soon found myself bowing to more and more of his points, allowing for possibilities that I would never have even considered under different circumstances. I mean, somebody had to make some allowances, or the arguments would become as pointless as they were annoying. And Block 1 was only four weeks long. After that, we’d be off to another block and another instructor.
So finally, one day, in a spasm of uncharacteristic open-mindedness on my part, I agreed to attend his church with him that following Sunday, just to witness firsthand the “power of the Lord in action.” It was basically a dare on both our parts.
Naturally, according to Sgt. Tunney, his church—the Fellowship of the Lighthouse, it was called—was different. They were neither ritualists nor revivalists, hell-raisers nor Bible-thumpers. They were just non-denominational followers of Christ and The Word… whatever that meant.
Well, as it turned out, there was nothing surprising about either the course the sermon followed or the evangelical timbre of the preacher’s voice. The message wasn’t new, nor was their interpretation. Despite his assertions to the contrary, Sgt. Tunney’s church bore a great resemblance to every other service I’d ever attended… until the very end, that is.
Then it got different. That was when it was time to be “saved.”
Now this I hadn’t seen before.
At the call to the pulpit, something like fifteen, maybe twenty people, scattered throughout the congregation, rose to their feet and shuffled into a single-file line down the middle of the center aisle. Three of the church elders took their places at the front of the room. Then, one by one, the line moved forward, one customer to an elder.
At first I wasn’t sure what was going on up there. The “Ones Being Saved” (let’s call them the “sheep”) would stand before the “Ones Doing The Saving” (we’ll call them the “shepherds”) with their arms raised high over their heads, and their closed eyes lifted to God. The “shepherd” would place one hand on the “sheep’s” forehead, with his other raised as if being sworn into the witness stand at a murder trial. Then sheep and shepherd would start mumbling furiously at each other. I couldn’t tell what they were saying from back where I was sitting next to Sgt. Tunney—even reading the shepherd’s lips, it was unintelligible. Sometimes it looked like the sheep was answering the shepherd’s questions, other times they might have been exchanging some ritual dialogue, but most of the time they seemed to just be murmuring straight at each other, simultaneously. It was an all-out alien mumble-fest of the first degree—with occasional bursts of “Hallelujah!” and “Praise Jesus!” thrown in for good measure—and it was really starting to weird me out. Then the really weird shit started happening.
When the first “sheep’s” knees buckled—a chunky woman who had been breathing pretty heavily anyway even before her collapse—I took it as an interesting but entirely understandable result of all her breathless agitation, head-rolling, and arm-waving up there. She’d simply fainted in the heat. A “shepherd’s assistant”—standing behind her—had caught her on the way down, and laid her out on the floor. The rest of the crowd quietly oo’d and ah’d and offered up a “Praise the Lord” or two themselves. Her shepherd continued to consort with the Almighty, in private, one hand still raised, his eyes still closed, and his head now nodding vigorously. Even the woman, still prostrate on the floor, raised her own hands, blindly, to the ceiling, and began weeping… loudly.
A little melodramatic for my taste, but there’s bound to be one in every crowd.
But then the sheep in the middle—a well-dressed, silver-haired gentleman—went over backwards, stiff as a board, arms still upraised, and was assisted to his own prostration at the feet of the next customer in line, gasping for joy.
He wasn’t even all the way down though, when the guy to his right—a much younger dude, probably in his early twenties—crumpled like his knees had just been kicked out from under him, and went to ground blubbering happily.
Now that got my attention.
I looked around the room. And everyone was either rockin’-and-noddin’, sending joyous thank-yous to the ceiling, or simply watching with a strange sort of placid acceptance. In the center aisle, the queue jostled forward as if on a conveyor belt.
And the giggling, weeping, rapturous bodies on the floor began to pile up. After a while, the “shepherd’s assistants” had to start urging their still supine parishioners up onto their feet, just to make room for the collapsing bodies yet to come. The three shepherds were working up one hell of a righteous sweat (pun intended), the sheep were dropping like flies (so to speak), and a couple of little kids near the back of the line—probably a brother and sister—were hopping up and down and wringing their hands, looking excitedly towards their parents (presumably), anxious for their own chances to be bowled over by the power of the Lord.
And everyone was getting bowled over. Everyone. Well, all but one young woman anyway, who somehow toppled forward into the arms of her shepherd, where she held on for a long, pious hug before being escorted back to her seat. But, one after another after another, every single last person in that line, young or old, male or female, stepped forward and met their Maker with arms and voices upraised. And every last one of them was swept right off their feet.
I didn’t get it. I didn’t feel anything unusual in the room, certainly didn’t see anything, and I had a hard time believing that there was anything more going on here than a bunch of really excited—really ready—people succumbing to their own expectations. But still…
It was an impressive show.
And Sgt. Tunney, dressed in his casual Sunday best, had just sat there beside me, watching me, with this “knowing” smile on his face, as if to say, “see?”
Well, I thought a lot about that little sideshow over the week that followed—this last week, the final week of Block 1 and our time with Sgt. Tunney—and I came to the conclusion that, if ever there was a form of personally acceptable evidence for the existence of this Lord of theirs... if ever there was a recognizable “sign” that could only have come from On High, and would thereby satisfy my need for some form of “proof”... then being swatted onto my ass by an unseen force right at the moment I was begging to be swatted would probably do it. Sort of like screaming “Just give me a sign!” at the heavens, then having a lightning bolt zot down out of the sky and split a tree in two. It might not be definitive, but it would be sufficient.
Timing is everything in this business.
I was already fairly intrigued about the possibility of God’s existence just from all the badgering debates I’d had with Sgt. Tunney at school, but still needed something more to take it to the next level of all-out belief. Without some form of “evidence,” it was all just so much conjecture and well-rehearsed rationalization. And maybe this was it. Getting clobbered by the Lord would be a pretty danged conclusive piece of evidence, I figured, even for a spiteful skeptic like myself.
So, here I am on this fine, muggy, Sunday morning, waiting to be carted off for my very own holy slap in the face. Truth be told, I’m not entirely certain I want to do this. Nor am I sure that, even should I find the desire to do it, I’ll actually have the balls to stand up in front of a hundred or so spiritually aroused strangers, and submit myself to the melodrama. But standing here on this barracks curb, and stepping into Sgt. Tunney’s Volvo when he pulls up, is the first step toward finding out.
I exchange “howdys” with he and his wife, and spend the entire trip through the cornpone suburbs of Biloxi and Gulfport staring out the window, offering only single-sentence answers to their questions, and trying to keep my fluttering gorge bottled below my ribcage.
The simple, whitewashed, clapboard church—with its classic Southern Baptist steeple rising above its tiny shingled front stoop, and its grassy side lot littered with dusty family cars—appears in its little roadside clearing with the same disquieting naiveté it did last week. It bothered me then, and it still bothers me now. But then, everything about this bothers me on one level or another, so, as with everything else, I sublimate it for now. If this really is real, and I do manage to find my all-important “evidence” in there today, then I’m going to have to rethink all of this. And nothing will be served by succumbing to my disquietude before the fun even starts.
We find seats in the same general area as last time. The same pasted-on Sunday-best-behavior smiley faces surround us, along with all the same inane love-thy-neighbor chatter.
I’m sorry, but that’s how it looks and sounds to me.
It all just seems so fake, falsely contrite and contrived.
I grimace at the thought that, should today’s experiences prove conclusive enough for me to buy into Sgt. Tunney’s vision of God and willingly alter my life to fit in with it thereafter, these people, and this quaintly alien social structure will have to become my norm. I just don’t believe that I’ll ever have it in me to behave that way though. And even if my whole universe shifts today, I tell myself that the essence of “Steve” must—will—remain intact.
The doors close, the heat and the sweat starts to build, the pastor takes the podium, and the routine begins. First comes the same old tired dogma that’s always driven me from any religious gathering at a screaming sprint. I want to question all of it—contest most of it—with a little of that good old fact-based reasoning that the preacher clearly does not trouble himself to consider. But if Sgt. Tunney has taught me nothing else (other than Block 1 Air Traffic Control), it’s that disbelief does not necessarily come from a greater understanding. Sometimes it just comes from sheer obstinacy.
Of course, that could also be said about “faith” as well.
So I listen, and I nod, and I rock patiently in my chair, and I clear my throat quietly, and I concentrate on what I came here to do. To meet God.
Let me feel a certainty about Him, then I’ll worry about coming to terms with this ideology.
It takes almost forty-five minutes to wade through the litanies, the recitations, and the tone-deaf hymns, and then it’s show time. The three elders take their places at the front of the room, and the center aisle once again fills with the faithful, the hopeful, and the God-juice junkies—because over half of the devotees streaming out of their seats were up there last week.
Just how many times do you need to be saved anyway?
I swallow my nerves, and I rise, and I follow. I’m near the end of the line, but that just gives me more time to watch my predecessors, and to re-evaluate my first impressions.
And I must admit, it still impresses me. The elders rant and jabber, side by side, like competing auctioneers, while the pianist prances through a lively and apparently unending gospel instrumental. The sheep mutter and gabble right back at their shepherds, while the crowd murmurs and gasps and cheers on their loved ones. And every thirty seconds or so, someone’s knees buckle, or their head rolls back limp and they topple over backwards, lowered gently to the floor by a ready and willing elder’s assistant. Some weep, some go down giggling, and some just lie there on the floor, arms still reaching for the ceiling, breathless with gratitude and awe. But I do not sense any fakery, despite my intellectual predisposition to assume it. Which leaves me only the worst-case possibility that what they’re thrilling to, and legitimately fainting before, might be something perfectly explainable that just isn’t God. And that would be disappointing.
Of course, then there’s always the best-case scenario… that it really is God doing all that.
I steady my breathing, and shuffle forward with the line, as each new euphoric folds up and creates another opening. One after another after another. No one just “walks away.”
And then it’s my turn.
An older gentleman receiving his salvation from the elder at my left suddenly goes slack, and sags, boneless, into the assistant’s arms. The assistant, in turn, lowers him—in a discreet drag—over against the left wall, where the bodies have started to pile up like cordwood. And the sweat-drenched elder waves me over, pride and brotherly love sharing his smile.
“Have ya’ evah been saved b’foa, my son?” he asks, sounding every bit the winded southern evangelist that he is.
“No sir,” I reply.
“Are ya’ ready to receive the Lord Jesus Christ as your lord and savior?”
“Yessir.” And not too surprisingly, I find I really mean it.
“Then raise your hands, my son, and let Him in.”
The last thing I see before I close my eyes is his eyes closing, and his head tilting back. My hands go up as if in surrender—which, I suppose, is just exactly what I’m doing—and a moment later, I feel one of the elder’s hands pressing against my forehead. And I mean it really is pressing, gently but firmly, shoving against my center of balance. I’m not fighting it hard, but if I don’t put up at least a little resistance here, I’m going to go over backwards before he even starts speaking. I silence the cynical voices in my head by assuring them that I’m just the sixth or seventh wayward child he’s laid hands on in the last ten minutes or so, and he’s simply gotten a little brusque as this “conveyor belt of salvation” has chugged past him.
He’s just not aware of the holy stiff-arming he’s doing… I tell myself.
Mentally, I bully past the doubts and turn my inner eye toward the heavens. I imagine great shards of the Christ light piercing through the overcast of disbelief and suspicion above me. I feel myself opening up inside, an empty vessel eager to gulp down the rain. I draw a deep, wide breath, opening myself up even further. I’m ready for this—ready here, ready now, ready for anything. A chill scampers back and forth between my shoulder blades and tickles at my sternum.
It’s happening, I assure myself. It’s coming. He’s coming!
Somebody off to my right whimpers a weak “Praise Jesus,” and I hear the congregation hum and rustle as a body thumps to the floor. Another one bites the dust, ay Lord? Well, I’m ready and eager. Let me be the next.
The elder in front of me seems to catch a breath of second wind from that as well, and he notches up both the intensity and speed of his own beseeching—as well as the pressure against my forehead. I wobble in place for a moment, recentering my balance. Surely this isn’t how they’ve gotten everyone to crumple to the floor. Is it? Surely it hasn’t been anything so blatant and crude as three old men just standing at the front of the room pushing people over one at a time! Surely, if it were, somebody in this flock would have caught on by now.
It all just seems so fake, falsely contrite and contrived.
I grimace at the thought that, should today’s experiences prove conclusive enough for me to buy into Sgt. Tunney’s vision of God and willingly alter my life to fit in with it thereafter, these people, and this quaintly alien social structure will have to become my norm. I just don’t believe that I’ll ever have it in me to behave that way though. And even if my whole universe shifts today, I tell myself that the essence of “Steve” must—will—remain intact.
The doors close, the heat and the sweat starts to build, the pastor takes the podium, and the routine begins. First comes the same old tired dogma that’s always driven me from any religious gathering at a screaming sprint. I want to question all of it—contest most of it—with a little of that good old fact-based reasoning that the preacher clearly does not trouble himself to consider. But if Sgt. Tunney has taught me nothing else (other than Block 1 Air Traffic Control), it’s that disbelief does not necessarily come from a greater understanding. Sometimes it just comes from sheer obstinacy.
Of course, that could also be said about “faith” as well.
So I listen, and I nod, and I rock patiently in my chair, and I clear my throat quietly, and I concentrate on what I came here to do. To meet God.
Let me feel a certainty about Him, then I’ll worry about coming to terms with this ideology.
It takes almost forty-five minutes to wade through the litanies, the recitations, and the tone-deaf hymns, and then it’s show time. The three elders take their places at the front of the room, and the center aisle once again fills with the faithful, the hopeful, and the God-juice junkies—because over half of the devotees streaming out of their seats were up there last week.
Just how many times do you need to be saved anyway?
I swallow my nerves, and I rise, and I follow. I’m near the end of the line, but that just gives me more time to watch my predecessors, and to re-evaluate my first impressions.
And I must admit, it still impresses me. The elders rant and jabber, side by side, like competing auctioneers, while the pianist prances through a lively and apparently unending gospel instrumental. The sheep mutter and gabble right back at their shepherds, while the crowd murmurs and gasps and cheers on their loved ones. And every thirty seconds or so, someone’s knees buckle, or their head rolls back limp and they topple over backwards, lowered gently to the floor by a ready and willing elder’s assistant. Some weep, some go down giggling, and some just lie there on the floor, arms still reaching for the ceiling, breathless with gratitude and awe. But I do not sense any fakery, despite my intellectual predisposition to assume it. Which leaves me only the worst-case possibility that what they’re thrilling to, and legitimately fainting before, might be something perfectly explainable that just isn’t God. And that would be disappointing.
Of course, then there’s always the best-case scenario… that it really is God doing all that.
I steady my breathing, and shuffle forward with the line, as each new euphoric folds up and creates another opening. One after another after another. No one just “walks away.”
And then it’s my turn.
An older gentleman receiving his salvation from the elder at my left suddenly goes slack, and sags, boneless, into the assistant’s arms. The assistant, in turn, lowers him—in a discreet drag—over against the left wall, where the bodies have started to pile up like cordwood. And the sweat-drenched elder waves me over, pride and brotherly love sharing his smile.
“Have ya’ evah been saved b’foa, my son?” he asks, sounding every bit the winded southern evangelist that he is.
“No sir,” I reply.
“Are ya’ ready to receive the Lord Jesus Christ as your lord and savior?”
“Yessir.” And not too surprisingly, I find I really mean it.
“Then raise your hands, my son, and let Him in.”
The last thing I see before I close my eyes is his eyes closing, and his head tilting back. My hands go up as if in surrender—which, I suppose, is just exactly what I’m doing—and a moment later, I feel one of the elder’s hands pressing against my forehead. And I mean it really is pressing, gently but firmly, shoving against my center of balance. I’m not fighting it hard, but if I don’t put up at least a little resistance here, I’m going to go over backwards before he even starts speaking. I silence the cynical voices in my head by assuring them that I’m just the sixth or seventh wayward child he’s laid hands on in the last ten minutes or so, and he’s simply gotten a little brusque as this “conveyor belt of salvation” has chugged past him.
He’s just not aware of the holy stiff-arming he’s doing… I tell myself.
Mentally, I bully past the doubts and turn my inner eye toward the heavens. I imagine great shards of the Christ light piercing through the overcast of disbelief and suspicion above me. I feel myself opening up inside, an empty vessel eager to gulp down the rain. I draw a deep, wide breath, opening myself up even further. I’m ready for this—ready here, ready now, ready for anything. A chill scampers back and forth between my shoulder blades and tickles at my sternum.
It’s happening, I assure myself. It’s coming. He’s coming!
Somebody off to my right whimpers a weak “Praise Jesus,” and I hear the congregation hum and rustle as a body thumps to the floor. Another one bites the dust, ay Lord? Well, I’m ready and eager. Let me be the next.
The elder in front of me seems to catch a breath of second wind from that as well, and he notches up both the intensity and speed of his own beseeching—as well as the pressure against my forehead. I wobble in place for a moment, recentering my balance. Surely this isn’t how they’ve gotten everyone to crumple to the floor. Is it? Surely it hasn’t been anything so blatant and crude as three old men just standing at the front of the room pushing people over one at a time! Surely, if it were, somebody in this flock would have caught on by now.
No, I insist to myself, this is just the physical manifestation of a man in the throes of his own devout fervor. He doesn’t even know how hard he’s shoving right now. Sort of like a man wrestling with his demons, who doesn’t know how hard he’s gripping his shot glass until it explodes in his fist.
Again I push aside my doubts, and concentrate on the imagery in my head… clouds withering and retreating before the onslaught of an overwhelming Divine Light. Light, light, and more light, pouring in from above with the physical force of Niagara Falls. I ready myself for that. I spread myself wide open for that. And I look for the first tentative trickle of the thundering cataract that will surely follow.
But as the seconds stretch into a minute, and the minute turns plural, I realize that nothing is happening… other than my head being driven further back over my shoulders by the pressure of the elder’s hand. That, and the fact that my shoulders are starting to ache from the exertion of holding my arms aloft. Still, I keep the faith. I’m probably a little bit more of a hardened nut than the rest of these regular churchgoers, so it’ll probably just take a little bit longer before the light of salvation burns through my shell. That’s all.
Suddenly the elder’s monologue cuts off, and his hand retreats from my forehead. Without instructions to do otherwise, though, I remain where I am, head back, eyes closed, hands raised. And after a moment of struggling to get his breath back, the elder speaks, quiet and subdued.
“How do you feel, my son?”
I give that a moment’s thought, meaning to be as accurate and honest—yet tactful—as I can. But after several silent seconds, the only response that seems to meet all those criteria is, “My shoulders hurt.”
That’s it? I scold myself. Your best response to the man who is killing himself trying to save your mortal soul is “my shoulders hurt?” But to say anything else—with any honesty—would be to simply tell him that God is not coming to me, that I am the only person among all the dozens of folks that I’ve borne witness to who has been unable to feel the power and saving grace of the Lord God Almighty Himself, as it rolls through this room like a tsunami. And it would suggest that this diligent—and exhausted—servant of God has failed me. And I don’t want to say that either.
So I leave it at “my shoulders hurt,” and wait to see what happens next.
The elder buries a sigh among his wheezings, and pats me on the arm. “Then lower your arms, my son, and let’s continue.”
Well, give him credit for perseverance.
I let down my arms discreetly, not wanting to look as resigned as I feel right now to the rest of the people in the room. I close my eyes again, and let him push my forehead back, while his tired voice resumes its discourse with God. Only this time, his exhortations take on a spooky new idiosyncrasy—in that none of his words are recognizable.
Now, I’m no polyglot, but even when I can’t tell what someone’s saying, I almost always have a reasonable idea of what language they’re speaking. But this guy is suddenly yammering away in no language I’ve ever heard before. In fact he’s machine-gunning completely meaningless syllables, with a bizarre, metronomically steady rhythm. It almost sounds like he's 'scatting!' And it’s freaking me out.
Someone behind me—probably sitting in one of the first rows of chairs—gasps, and whispers to someone else, “He’s speaking in tongues!”
What? Is that a good or a bad thing?
Is this guy’s head going to start spinning, flinging pea soup all around the room? Or is this “tongue speaking” just the kind of ace in the hole that the really “connected” Soul Savers use to bump up the amperage a bit?
I can’t help it. As sneakily as I can, I crack one eyelid open to look at him. Of course, the main thing I see is his plump, sweaty arm (with a gold “Bolex” knock-off dangling from its wrist), disappearing into the sleeve of his dark suit—after all, the hand that is clamped to my forehead is connected to me right above the bridge of my nose. But beyond that, I can only see the disarrayed silver cotton candy hair that veils his scalp. For his head is bowed and bobbing, nodding with the even rhythm of his “incantations.”
The silence of the rest of the congregation does nothing for my confidence either.
I close my eye again, and instead focus on deciphering his monotone chanting. But there are no “real words” there, no surges or pauses for emphasis, no phrasing clumps or shifts in tone from which to divine his context. He might as well be reciting Little Richard lyrics. I find myself listening for anything that might sound like “banana fo-fanna” flowing past in the torrent, although it doesn’t seem likely, since “banana” is a real word, and he hasn’t uttered one of those in a while.
As another couple of minutes labor by, though, I start to sense the capitulation in his voice. The pressure on my forehead eases. His hand actually slips downward slightly over my eyebrows and nose. His voice slows and turns husky, then sputters to a stop altogether. Soon all I can hear is his heavy breathing.
All I can hear… in the whole church… hell, on this whole side of the highway. Even the piano has stopped.
What? Are we the only ones left here? Did everyone else go home already?
His hand at last drops away, and my head straightens up on its own.
“How do you feel now, my son?” he asks again.
I draw a deep breath, looking inward for even the tiniest trace of God’s passage through my heart or soul. Then let it out again in a long sigh, my search unrequited.
“Better,” I answer as diplomatically as I can.
“That’s good, my son,” he wheezes. “You’re saved.”
So, that’s it then.
Well…
I open my eyes, present him with the warmest smile I can muster, and try not to sigh too overtly. “Thank-you,” I say. Then I turn to walk back to my seat—and realize that every eyeball in the room is fixed on me—all 59 or so of them (one of the regulars wears an eye-patch). There are no other sheep left standing before the other shepherds. All of the raucous congratulatory dialogue between the other saved souls and their thrilled loved ones has apparently played itself out while I was standing up there. And the pianist has apparently found the limits of her gospel sheet music as well. It’s not quite dead silent in here, but the ambience is definitely… “expectant.” Every face has some form of that same happy little patronizing smile, full of that same smarmy “knowingness” and “patience” and “tolerance for the spiritually backward” that has always annoyed me so much about the deeply religious. And they watch me—albeit politely—walk the length of that long aisle, then shuffle sideways down my row to Sgt. Tunney and his wife.
I can’t quite read the underlying sentiment here, but it strikes me as lying somewhere between pity and consternation, wondering just how lost of a soul I must be, how much of a godless heathen, that the power of the Lord could not reach me through all the elder’s exertions, when it had laid low everyone else that had stepped up to receive Him. Still, as much as that brand of primitive suspicion might irritate and disappoint me even more than I already am, I find that the ones that annoy me the worst are the ones who still stare with a childlike, almost glassy-eyed wonder, dumbstruck and blinded by the belief that some sort of miracle has occurred here anyway, regardless of all the evidence to the contrary. I may be reading this all wrong—almost certainly investing my own vast catalog of prejudices into their expressions of innocence and placidity—but those are still the vibes I’m getting as I sit down next to Sgt. Tunney.
A complete stranger—a June Cleaver lookalike from the row in front of me—twists in her seat and pats the top of my hand. “Congratulations,” she says excitedly, and turns back around.
Well, I know what camp she hails from.
The pastor is speaking again—as he apparently has been throughout my entire long walk back to my chair—closing out the morning’s agenda with announcements about other events that are coming up over the rest of the week. And then it’s over. The room explodes with the barks and groans of sliding chairs, and the jubilant babble of a small community relieved of its spiritual burdens for another week.
Sgt. Tunney finally turns to me, wide-eyed and beaming himself, and asks, “So how was it?”
On the inside, I’m screaming, “Were you not watching?! I got squat up there!” But on the outside, I’ve got an easy, accepting smile on my face, and a resigned shrug in my shoulders.
“I don’t know,” I say, turning my gaze back to the front of the room, where the elders are glad-handing everyone that comes forward, “I didn’t feel anything, but then… you know… “
“What did he say?”
I presume he’s referring to the elder that I left sweating and disheveled up by the lectern.
“He said I was saved.”
“Then that’s it! You’re saved! Great news! Congratulations!”
I turn back to face him, trying not to look as incredulous as I feel. And as our eyes meet, he seizes my right hand in his own, and claps me on the back with his left.
“But I didn’t feel a thing,” I remind him.
“Pffft, that doesn’t mean anything. A lot of people don’t feel anything.”
No one in this church apparently. Outwardly, I just say, “So…”
“So, don’t worry about it. You’re saved, man! Believe me. You’re saved.”
Oh.
Okay then.
Well, as long as it’s official.
“Okay… good,” I manage to mutter.
He smacks me on the back again, and leaps to his feet. “Let’s go get some pizza.”
2
May, 1977
Miami, Florida
LIKE I NEVER LEFT THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE
Memorial Day weekend. Miami. Home again, for the first time in almost three months.
It’s the longest I’ve ever been away from my family. Ever. In my life. And for its own perverse reasons, I find it also to be strangely disappointing.
Not because it isn’t great—fabulous—being back among 'the clan' again—them and my 'long lost' friends—but because, well, it just doesn’t feel like I ever left them in the first place. You know? I fit right back in so easily and naturally that I might as well have just returned from a sleepover at Eldon’s house, rather than a quarter of a year of lunatic adventuring in the wilds of far off Texas and Mississippi. It doesn’t even feel like there’s been so much as a jostle in the timeline of my life. No, it feels more like a weird dream, from just one night of fitful sleep, and that’s all. Its details are not only quickly retold, but then they’re almost as quickly forgotten! Soon enough, I’m no longer the center of attention. Then the group’s interest shifts back to the realities of their own unshifted worlds. And I shift right along with them. Right back into “Home” gear again.
My sixteen-year-old sister Kimberly has a new boyfriend—well, a “good male friend” anyway—named Shawn. He’s a college swimmer. He stopped by yesterday, and he seemed nice enough. My old buds, Tag and Eldon and even Gene, stopped by today for my twentieth birthday party. Technically, Monday is my actual birthdate, but since I’m going to have to spend that day flying back to Biloxi, we’re celebrating it today… Sunday, the 29th.
I’d managed to get out of last Friday’s afternoon Combat Control PT session, and bummed a ride over to the little airfield in Gulfport right after school, hurtling along with Larry Connors in his old ’63 Camaro. From there I’d caught a Southern Airways flight (Southern Scare-ways, as my buddies call it) that had hopscotched from Gulfport to Valparaiso to Daytona to Miami, putting me back in my old bedroom again by sunset that evening. Then I’d had all day Saturday for catching up and telling my Tall Tales of Trial and Tribulation, and all day today for just being a civilian again… a civilian who gets to open birthday presents!
But now it’s all winding down. The Guys have filtered back to their own homes, the remains of the ravaged cake have been wrapped up and tucked away in the back of the fridge, and now it’s just Mom and me, kicked back on the patio furniture in the warm night air, watching the splintered light from the pool lap at the surrounding walls and ripple across the beams of the screen enclosure. And talking like two very compatible strangers who’ve just met for the first time.
Conversation had started disjointedly, distractedly, with most of the family trickling in and out of the wandering dialogue as their moods and energy levels ebbed. But now, it’s just the two of us, talking as if we’ve got to cover every topic there is before we run out of night.
Mom is still trying to coerce me out of the Combat Control program. There’s still time, she says. And that’s true. You can drop out of pre-Phase I without repercussion anywhere along the line. That’s the whole point of pre-Phase I Combat Control training, in fact—to winnow out the unfit, the unsuited, and the unwilling, leaving only a dedicated, motivated core to move on to the higher, more difficult, and more costly levels of training. And, to some degree or another, I could qualify as all three—somewhat unfit, in many ways unsuited, and sometimes even unwilling—which my mother, for some reason, sees as sufficient justification for me to call it quits. I don’t argue with her too strenuously. It is exhausting, it’s not a whole lot of fun (although it does have its moments), and it wipes out so much of my treasured free time. I’m still struggling to keep up, but… I am getting better. I actually managed to finish my first three-mile run the other day. I was a wheezing, listing, cramp-riddled, sweat-soaked dishrag when we finally came to a stop, but I’d made it. And that felt good. More evidence of progress.
I agree that I wouldn’t miss it much if I just suddenly stopped attending. But by the same token, I really like the idea of wearing camouflage, along with that cool dark blue beret… oh, and jump wings. Oh yeah. If I get nothing else from the program, what I really want is to jump out of an airplane, on a regular basis. And get paid extra to do it.
In the end, the topic fades with the two of us agreeing that that isn’t a terribly valid rationale, considering what I’d be asked to do in the event of an actual war.
But, dang it, jumping would just be so friggin’ cool!
We touch again on the subject of my recent salvation and admission into the Christian church. My initial trepidations about whether or not any salvation had actually occurred as I’d stood before that elder last Sunday—just a week ago today—had steadily faded once Sgt. Tunney had gotten some pizza into me. And though I’ll no longer see him at school any more, he’s promised to continue driving me to church every Sunday hereafter.
I tell my Mom about all the good praying I’ve been doing, calling on my new friend Jesus to help me break a few of my seemingly unbreakable bad habits—not the least of which is my newfound fluency with profanity—and consulting Him on every decision I’ve had to make, and every test I’ve had to take ever since then. I figure she’s got to be pleased with this gentler, more openly spiritual awakening in her otherwise very judgmental, opinionated and atheistic son. But she surprises me again with even more of that uncharacteristic lack of enthusiasm.
“Yeh, I wanted to talk to you about that,” she says.
She goes on to grill me about this church I’ve stumbled into, wanting to know about the kinds of people in it, as well as details about the pastor, the tenor of his sermons, and specifics on the “salvation rituals” themselves. She never comes right out and uses the word “cult,” but it soon becomes clear that, regardless of how carefully and tactfully she tippy-toes around the topic, she is definitely leery of this group I’ve fallen in with.
Yet another strange and unexpected disappointment from this trip home. After all, Mom’s always been the stand-alone spiritual voice of the Stipp clan—by no means a religious person, or a follower of any one particular orthodox institution, but still the most openhearted and “supernaturally curious” of the bunch.
I mean, of all the people in my family—in my life, truth be told—my mother is the one and only one that I could even imagine really understanding and approving of my little revelation. In fact, other than a couple of the guys at Keesler, she and Dad are the only ones I’ve even told about it so far, she for her endorsement, and he for the intellectual debates that ought to follow, in which I could hopefully try out some of Sgt. Tunney’s arguments that had stymied me so much in our discussions.
Again I push aside my doubts, and concentrate on the imagery in my head… clouds withering and retreating before the onslaught of an overwhelming Divine Light. Light, light, and more light, pouring in from above with the physical force of Niagara Falls. I ready myself for that. I spread myself wide open for that. And I look for the first tentative trickle of the thundering cataract that will surely follow.
But as the seconds stretch into a minute, and the minute turns plural, I realize that nothing is happening… other than my head being driven further back over my shoulders by the pressure of the elder’s hand. That, and the fact that my shoulders are starting to ache from the exertion of holding my arms aloft. Still, I keep the faith. I’m probably a little bit more of a hardened nut than the rest of these regular churchgoers, so it’ll probably just take a little bit longer before the light of salvation burns through my shell. That’s all.
Suddenly the elder’s monologue cuts off, and his hand retreats from my forehead. Without instructions to do otherwise, though, I remain where I am, head back, eyes closed, hands raised. And after a moment of struggling to get his breath back, the elder speaks, quiet and subdued.
“How do you feel, my son?”
I give that a moment’s thought, meaning to be as accurate and honest—yet tactful—as I can. But after several silent seconds, the only response that seems to meet all those criteria is, “My shoulders hurt.”
That’s it? I scold myself. Your best response to the man who is killing himself trying to save your mortal soul is “my shoulders hurt?” But to say anything else—with any honesty—would be to simply tell him that God is not coming to me, that I am the only person among all the dozens of folks that I’ve borne witness to who has been unable to feel the power and saving grace of the Lord God Almighty Himself, as it rolls through this room like a tsunami. And it would suggest that this diligent—and exhausted—servant of God has failed me. And I don’t want to say that either.
So I leave it at “my shoulders hurt,” and wait to see what happens next.
The elder buries a sigh among his wheezings, and pats me on the arm. “Then lower your arms, my son, and let’s continue.”
Well, give him credit for perseverance.
I let down my arms discreetly, not wanting to look as resigned as I feel right now to the rest of the people in the room. I close my eyes again, and let him push my forehead back, while his tired voice resumes its discourse with God. Only this time, his exhortations take on a spooky new idiosyncrasy—in that none of his words are recognizable.
Now, I’m no polyglot, but even when I can’t tell what someone’s saying, I almost always have a reasonable idea of what language they’re speaking. But this guy is suddenly yammering away in no language I’ve ever heard before. In fact he’s machine-gunning completely meaningless syllables, with a bizarre, metronomically steady rhythm. It almost sounds like he's 'scatting!' And it’s freaking me out.
Someone behind me—probably sitting in one of the first rows of chairs—gasps, and whispers to someone else, “He’s speaking in tongues!”
What? Is that a good or a bad thing?
Is this guy’s head going to start spinning, flinging pea soup all around the room? Or is this “tongue speaking” just the kind of ace in the hole that the really “connected” Soul Savers use to bump up the amperage a bit?
I can’t help it. As sneakily as I can, I crack one eyelid open to look at him. Of course, the main thing I see is his plump, sweaty arm (with a gold “Bolex” knock-off dangling from its wrist), disappearing into the sleeve of his dark suit—after all, the hand that is clamped to my forehead is connected to me right above the bridge of my nose. But beyond that, I can only see the disarrayed silver cotton candy hair that veils his scalp. For his head is bowed and bobbing, nodding with the even rhythm of his “incantations.”
The silence of the rest of the congregation does nothing for my confidence either.
I close my eye again, and instead focus on deciphering his monotone chanting. But there are no “real words” there, no surges or pauses for emphasis, no phrasing clumps or shifts in tone from which to divine his context. He might as well be reciting Little Richard lyrics. I find myself listening for anything that might sound like “banana fo-fanna” flowing past in the torrent, although it doesn’t seem likely, since “banana” is a real word, and he hasn’t uttered one of those in a while.
As another couple of minutes labor by, though, I start to sense the capitulation in his voice. The pressure on my forehead eases. His hand actually slips downward slightly over my eyebrows and nose. His voice slows and turns husky, then sputters to a stop altogether. Soon all I can hear is his heavy breathing.
All I can hear… in the whole church… hell, on this whole side of the highway. Even the piano has stopped.
What? Are we the only ones left here? Did everyone else go home already?
His hand at last drops away, and my head straightens up on its own.
“How do you feel now, my son?” he asks again.
I draw a deep breath, looking inward for even the tiniest trace of God’s passage through my heart or soul. Then let it out again in a long sigh, my search unrequited.
“Better,” I answer as diplomatically as I can.
“That’s good, my son,” he wheezes. “You’re saved.”
So, that’s it then.
Well…
I open my eyes, present him with the warmest smile I can muster, and try not to sigh too overtly. “Thank-you,” I say. Then I turn to walk back to my seat—and realize that every eyeball in the room is fixed on me—all 59 or so of them (one of the regulars wears an eye-patch). There are no other sheep left standing before the other shepherds. All of the raucous congratulatory dialogue between the other saved souls and their thrilled loved ones has apparently played itself out while I was standing up there. And the pianist has apparently found the limits of her gospel sheet music as well. It’s not quite dead silent in here, but the ambience is definitely… “expectant.” Every face has some form of that same happy little patronizing smile, full of that same smarmy “knowingness” and “patience” and “tolerance for the spiritually backward” that has always annoyed me so much about the deeply religious. And they watch me—albeit politely—walk the length of that long aisle, then shuffle sideways down my row to Sgt. Tunney and his wife.
I can’t quite read the underlying sentiment here, but it strikes me as lying somewhere between pity and consternation, wondering just how lost of a soul I must be, how much of a godless heathen, that the power of the Lord could not reach me through all the elder’s exertions, when it had laid low everyone else that had stepped up to receive Him. Still, as much as that brand of primitive suspicion might irritate and disappoint me even more than I already am, I find that the ones that annoy me the worst are the ones who still stare with a childlike, almost glassy-eyed wonder, dumbstruck and blinded by the belief that some sort of miracle has occurred here anyway, regardless of all the evidence to the contrary. I may be reading this all wrong—almost certainly investing my own vast catalog of prejudices into their expressions of innocence and placidity—but those are still the vibes I’m getting as I sit down next to Sgt. Tunney.
A complete stranger—a June Cleaver lookalike from the row in front of me—twists in her seat and pats the top of my hand. “Congratulations,” she says excitedly, and turns back around.
Well, I know what camp she hails from.
The pastor is speaking again—as he apparently has been throughout my entire long walk back to my chair—closing out the morning’s agenda with announcements about other events that are coming up over the rest of the week. And then it’s over. The room explodes with the barks and groans of sliding chairs, and the jubilant babble of a small community relieved of its spiritual burdens for another week.
Sgt. Tunney finally turns to me, wide-eyed and beaming himself, and asks, “So how was it?”
On the inside, I’m screaming, “Were you not watching?! I got squat up there!” But on the outside, I’ve got an easy, accepting smile on my face, and a resigned shrug in my shoulders.
“I don’t know,” I say, turning my gaze back to the front of the room, where the elders are glad-handing everyone that comes forward, “I didn’t feel anything, but then… you know… “
“What did he say?”
I presume he’s referring to the elder that I left sweating and disheveled up by the lectern.
“He said I was saved.”
“Then that’s it! You’re saved! Great news! Congratulations!”
I turn back to face him, trying not to look as incredulous as I feel. And as our eyes meet, he seizes my right hand in his own, and claps me on the back with his left.
“But I didn’t feel a thing,” I remind him.
“Pffft, that doesn’t mean anything. A lot of people don’t feel anything.”
No one in this church apparently. Outwardly, I just say, “So…”
“So, don’t worry about it. You’re saved, man! Believe me. You’re saved.”
Oh.
Okay then.
Well, as long as it’s official.
“Okay… good,” I manage to mutter.
He smacks me on the back again, and leaps to his feet. “Let’s go get some pizza.”
2
May, 1977
Miami, Florida
LIKE I NEVER LEFT THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE
Memorial Day weekend. Miami. Home again, for the first time in almost three months.
It’s the longest I’ve ever been away from my family. Ever. In my life. And for its own perverse reasons, I find it also to be strangely disappointing.
Not because it isn’t great—fabulous—being back among 'the clan' again—them and my 'long lost' friends—but because, well, it just doesn’t feel like I ever left them in the first place. You know? I fit right back in so easily and naturally that I might as well have just returned from a sleepover at Eldon’s house, rather than a quarter of a year of lunatic adventuring in the wilds of far off Texas and Mississippi. It doesn’t even feel like there’s been so much as a jostle in the timeline of my life. No, it feels more like a weird dream, from just one night of fitful sleep, and that’s all. Its details are not only quickly retold, but then they’re almost as quickly forgotten! Soon enough, I’m no longer the center of attention. Then the group’s interest shifts back to the realities of their own unshifted worlds. And I shift right along with them. Right back into “Home” gear again.
My sixteen-year-old sister Kimberly has a new boyfriend—well, a “good male friend” anyway—named Shawn. He’s a college swimmer. He stopped by yesterday, and he seemed nice enough. My old buds, Tag and Eldon and even Gene, stopped by today for my twentieth birthday party. Technically, Monday is my actual birthdate, but since I’m going to have to spend that day flying back to Biloxi, we’re celebrating it today… Sunday, the 29th.
I’d managed to get out of last Friday’s afternoon Combat Control PT session, and bummed a ride over to the little airfield in Gulfport right after school, hurtling along with Larry Connors in his old ’63 Camaro. From there I’d caught a Southern Airways flight (Southern Scare-ways, as my buddies call it) that had hopscotched from Gulfport to Valparaiso to Daytona to Miami, putting me back in my old bedroom again by sunset that evening. Then I’d had all day Saturday for catching up and telling my Tall Tales of Trial and Tribulation, and all day today for just being a civilian again… a civilian who gets to open birthday presents!
But now it’s all winding down. The Guys have filtered back to their own homes, the remains of the ravaged cake have been wrapped up and tucked away in the back of the fridge, and now it’s just Mom and me, kicked back on the patio furniture in the warm night air, watching the splintered light from the pool lap at the surrounding walls and ripple across the beams of the screen enclosure. And talking like two very compatible strangers who’ve just met for the first time.
Conversation had started disjointedly, distractedly, with most of the family trickling in and out of the wandering dialogue as their moods and energy levels ebbed. But now, it’s just the two of us, talking as if we’ve got to cover every topic there is before we run out of night.
Mom is still trying to coerce me out of the Combat Control program. There’s still time, she says. And that’s true. You can drop out of pre-Phase I without repercussion anywhere along the line. That’s the whole point of pre-Phase I Combat Control training, in fact—to winnow out the unfit, the unsuited, and the unwilling, leaving only a dedicated, motivated core to move on to the higher, more difficult, and more costly levels of training. And, to some degree or another, I could qualify as all three—somewhat unfit, in many ways unsuited, and sometimes even unwilling—which my mother, for some reason, sees as sufficient justification for me to call it quits. I don’t argue with her too strenuously. It is exhausting, it’s not a whole lot of fun (although it does have its moments), and it wipes out so much of my treasured free time. I’m still struggling to keep up, but… I am getting better. I actually managed to finish my first three-mile run the other day. I was a wheezing, listing, cramp-riddled, sweat-soaked dishrag when we finally came to a stop, but I’d made it. And that felt good. More evidence of progress.
I agree that I wouldn’t miss it much if I just suddenly stopped attending. But by the same token, I really like the idea of wearing camouflage, along with that cool dark blue beret… oh, and jump wings. Oh yeah. If I get nothing else from the program, what I really want is to jump out of an airplane, on a regular basis. And get paid extra to do it.
In the end, the topic fades with the two of us agreeing that that isn’t a terribly valid rationale, considering what I’d be asked to do in the event of an actual war.
But, dang it, jumping would just be so friggin’ cool!
We touch again on the subject of my recent salvation and admission into the Christian church. My initial trepidations about whether or not any salvation had actually occurred as I’d stood before that elder last Sunday—just a week ago today—had steadily faded once Sgt. Tunney had gotten some pizza into me. And though I’ll no longer see him at school any more, he’s promised to continue driving me to church every Sunday hereafter.
I tell my Mom about all the good praying I’ve been doing, calling on my new friend Jesus to help me break a few of my seemingly unbreakable bad habits—not the least of which is my newfound fluency with profanity—and consulting Him on every decision I’ve had to make, and every test I’ve had to take ever since then. I figure she’s got to be pleased with this gentler, more openly spiritual awakening in her otherwise very judgmental, opinionated and atheistic son. But she surprises me again with even more of that uncharacteristic lack of enthusiasm.
“Yeh, I wanted to talk to you about that,” she says.
She goes on to grill me about this church I’ve stumbled into, wanting to know about the kinds of people in it, as well as details about the pastor, the tenor of his sermons, and specifics on the “salvation rituals” themselves. She never comes right out and uses the word “cult,” but it soon becomes clear that, regardless of how carefully and tactfully she tippy-toes around the topic, she is definitely leery of this group I’ve fallen in with.
Yet another strange and unexpected disappointment from this trip home. After all, Mom’s always been the stand-alone spiritual voice of the Stipp clan—by no means a religious person, or a follower of any one particular orthodox institution, but still the most openhearted and “supernaturally curious” of the bunch.
I mean, of all the people in my family—in my life, truth be told—my mother is the one and only one that I could even imagine really understanding and approving of my little revelation. In fact, other than a couple of the guys at Keesler, she and Dad are the only ones I’ve even told about it so far, she for her endorsement, and he for the intellectual debates that ought to follow, in which I could hopefully try out some of Sgt. Tunney’s arguments that had stymied me so much in our discussions.
Instead, she’s sitting here now, delicately hedging around her discomfiture with my choices, about the inherent dangers of swinging so radically from one extreme to the other—from ranting about the lunacy of the Bible one minute, to practically dancing with snakes in a revival tent the next—and on being careful about how much I swallow with this one first bite.
Hmmm.
I back us both out of this uncomfortable realm by sidling “casually” onto a related subject: this guy I recently met named Keith Green.
It happened just a couple of days after my acceptance of Jesus as my Lord and Savior, as a matter of fact, which only made our meeting all the more providential.
Night had barely fallen in the barracks compound, and I was strolling back to my building from the nearby Airman’s Club, where I’d just downed an abysmal grease-burger, a basket of soggy fries, and a coke. As I was stepping out into the muggy darkness and crossing the street, I thought I heard a piano coming to life somewhere off among the drab concrete canyons of the barracks rows. And it was rockin’! Someone who really knew how to punch a rhythm out of eighty-eight black-and-white keys was just wailing away. Then an amplified voice kicked in—young, exuberant, powerful, and absolutely professional in its fiery delivery.
Whoa! Who the hell is that?
I tracked the echoing music for a block or two until, rounding a corner, I came upon… Keith Green.
In a small, empty, corner lot—just two buildings down the main drag from my own—someone had parked a flatbed trailer in the grass, and left it there as an improvised stage. In the middle of that “stage,” completely unadorned and without backdrops of any kind, they’d left a humble little upright spinet piano, its bench, a couple of microphones, and a cheesy little sound system. In front of all that, they’d also set up a couple of collapsible tables, from which they were apparently selling some LPs and cassettes. And they’d done all this in just the time that I’d been over at the Airman’s Club eating. Because I’d walked right across that lot on the way over, and there definitely hadn’t been anything there but scuffed grass at the time.
Now there was a full-blown one-man concert going on in the middle of the Keesler AFB student barracks compound.
I’d never seen the guy at the piano before, but he definitely wasn’t military. He was wearing low-cut hip-hugger bell-bottomed jeans, a gauzy white shirt unbuttoned almost to his navel, and an open vest. He was white, he sported a well-groomed Fu Manchu moustache, and atop his head was a massive globe of tightly curled hair that swayed and “flowed” with his every twitch.
But man, could that guy make a piano beg for mercy! I think that was actually the Airman’s Club’s backroom piano, dragged out of its little torture chamber and into the open air. And it sounded like it was experiencing its very first musical orgasm up there!
It took several minutes of watching him buckin’ and rockin’ and stompin’ and ravishing those keys before I even realized that he was singing about the Heavenly Host. He was one of those newfangled “Christian Rockers,” one of those rare creatures who’d managed to bridge the gap between gospel and contemporary music, making God more palatable to a wider audience. I didn’t know any of that rare breed by name, and until very recently, wouldn’t have cared if I did. But clearly this guy was one of them. This was great music! I mean, here was this dynamic, driving, heart-pounding sound and rhythm (nearly all of which he’d written himself)—and played on my personal instrument of choice, no less, the one to which I could most closely relate—and it was propelling along the very same message that I had just accepted as Truth only last Sunday!
He was like a rock and roll angel, come to bolster my newfound faith… with music!
The timing alone was inspirational.
I stayed for the entire show, cheering and applauding with the loudest of them. Then I bought one of his cassettes (according to the bio-blurb on the back of its lyric sheet, his name was Keith Green, and he had once been a commercial jingle and TV theme song writer, before finding God and leaving all that behind). And when the last encore finally died down, I hung around to talk with him and shake his hand. The line of eager fans, though, was not only long and slow to move, but only seemed to feed into a growing crowd of admirers that wouldn’t leave once they’d paid their homage. And by the time I got up to him, he was nearly lost in the throng, the massive umbrella of his ‘fro bobbing alone at the center of all those buzz-cut heads.
But I was able to clasp his hand—a gesture he returned with both of his—and I think he might have even heard me when I shouted over the pressing tumult about how fantastic his performance had been. But that was as close as we could get.
Cool though, huh?
I look at Mom now, searching for the excitement in her eyes that I know is in my own… and again, there’s that strange, atypical lack of enthusiasm looking back at me.
Aw, come on! Now what was wrong with that story?
Okay, I can see why she might not share in my own vacillating excitement for Combat Control—it’s dangerous, it’s difficult, and when employed to its fullest, it deals in death, delivered with cold, precise, and downright vicious intimacy. So I can dig that.
And I guess I can dig how she might be discomfited a tad by the apparent fundamentalist Christian brainwashing that she sees as having been perpetrated on her impressionable firstborn, especially so soon after stumbling out of the safety of her nest.
But what the hell’s she got against Keith Green? What’s wrong with being blown away by a superlative musician, singer and songwriter like that?
“Well, “ she answers carefully, “there’s nothing wrong with that… specifically.”
It seems there’s nothing wrong with Keith Green himself, or his music, or his performance of it. At least that’s what she says. No, what’s concerning her, in this case, is what I’m getting out of it. What I’m making of it. How I’m reading so much “Truth” and affirmation into Keith’s Christian lyrics just because I love his music. She’s apparently concerned that I’m confusing my musical rapture with my still-uncertain and sometimes hesitant spiritual bliss.
Well… okay. I guess I can see where she’s coming from there.
But the ultimate message that comes through by the end of this late night conversation—and she never comes right out and says this herself—is that she’s basically terrified by all this “ledge-leaping” I’ve been doing since leaving home.
It’s as if, once I took that first precipitous step of shucking my old life and joining the military (which was hard enough for her to deal with), and then discovered how well I handled the plunge, now—suddenly—I can’t seem to get enough of these huge leaps of faith. First Basic Training, then Combat Control, then the church! It almost looks as if I’m throwing myself off every cliff if I can find—all at once, and just as fast as I can—just for the sheer nervy thrill of the plummeting. And I suppose I can understand why she might want to temper some of that ardor.
I suppose.
But still, this isn’t the response I’d been expecting all these weeks.
(sigh)
I return to Keesler, “talked down” from my every high, and wondering what it will take to push me all the way, the rest of the way—one way or the other—into full commitment or, more likely, total abandonment of each of my crazy new crusades.
Hmmm.
I back us both out of this uncomfortable realm by sidling “casually” onto a related subject: this guy I recently met named Keith Green.
It happened just a couple of days after my acceptance of Jesus as my Lord and Savior, as a matter of fact, which only made our meeting all the more providential.
Night had barely fallen in the barracks compound, and I was strolling back to my building from the nearby Airman’s Club, where I’d just downed an abysmal grease-burger, a basket of soggy fries, and a coke. As I was stepping out into the muggy darkness and crossing the street, I thought I heard a piano coming to life somewhere off among the drab concrete canyons of the barracks rows. And it was rockin’! Someone who really knew how to punch a rhythm out of eighty-eight black-and-white keys was just wailing away. Then an amplified voice kicked in—young, exuberant, powerful, and absolutely professional in its fiery delivery.
Whoa! Who the hell is that?
I tracked the echoing music for a block or two until, rounding a corner, I came upon… Keith Green.
In a small, empty, corner lot—just two buildings down the main drag from my own—someone had parked a flatbed trailer in the grass, and left it there as an improvised stage. In the middle of that “stage,” completely unadorned and without backdrops of any kind, they’d left a humble little upright spinet piano, its bench, a couple of microphones, and a cheesy little sound system. In front of all that, they’d also set up a couple of collapsible tables, from which they were apparently selling some LPs and cassettes. And they’d done all this in just the time that I’d been over at the Airman’s Club eating. Because I’d walked right across that lot on the way over, and there definitely hadn’t been anything there but scuffed grass at the time.
Now there was a full-blown one-man concert going on in the middle of the Keesler AFB student barracks compound.
I’d never seen the guy at the piano before, but he definitely wasn’t military. He was wearing low-cut hip-hugger bell-bottomed jeans, a gauzy white shirt unbuttoned almost to his navel, and an open vest. He was white, he sported a well-groomed Fu Manchu moustache, and atop his head was a massive globe of tightly curled hair that swayed and “flowed” with his every twitch.
But man, could that guy make a piano beg for mercy! I think that was actually the Airman’s Club’s backroom piano, dragged out of its little torture chamber and into the open air. And it sounded like it was experiencing its very first musical orgasm up there!
It took several minutes of watching him buckin’ and rockin’ and stompin’ and ravishing those keys before I even realized that he was singing about the Heavenly Host. He was one of those newfangled “Christian Rockers,” one of those rare creatures who’d managed to bridge the gap between gospel and contemporary music, making God more palatable to a wider audience. I didn’t know any of that rare breed by name, and until very recently, wouldn’t have cared if I did. But clearly this guy was one of them. This was great music! I mean, here was this dynamic, driving, heart-pounding sound and rhythm (nearly all of which he’d written himself)—and played on my personal instrument of choice, no less, the one to which I could most closely relate—and it was propelling along the very same message that I had just accepted as Truth only last Sunday!
He was like a rock and roll angel, come to bolster my newfound faith… with music!
The timing alone was inspirational.
I stayed for the entire show, cheering and applauding with the loudest of them. Then I bought one of his cassettes (according to the bio-blurb on the back of its lyric sheet, his name was Keith Green, and he had once been a commercial jingle and TV theme song writer, before finding God and leaving all that behind). And when the last encore finally died down, I hung around to talk with him and shake his hand. The line of eager fans, though, was not only long and slow to move, but only seemed to feed into a growing crowd of admirers that wouldn’t leave once they’d paid their homage. And by the time I got up to him, he was nearly lost in the throng, the massive umbrella of his ‘fro bobbing alone at the center of all those buzz-cut heads.
But I was able to clasp his hand—a gesture he returned with both of his—and I think he might have even heard me when I shouted over the pressing tumult about how fantastic his performance had been. But that was as close as we could get.
Cool though, huh?
I look at Mom now, searching for the excitement in her eyes that I know is in my own… and again, there’s that strange, atypical lack of enthusiasm looking back at me.
Aw, come on! Now what was wrong with that story?
Okay, I can see why she might not share in my own vacillating excitement for Combat Control—it’s dangerous, it’s difficult, and when employed to its fullest, it deals in death, delivered with cold, precise, and downright vicious intimacy. So I can dig that.
And I guess I can dig how she might be discomfited a tad by the apparent fundamentalist Christian brainwashing that she sees as having been perpetrated on her impressionable firstborn, especially so soon after stumbling out of the safety of her nest.
But what the hell’s she got against Keith Green? What’s wrong with being blown away by a superlative musician, singer and songwriter like that?
“Well, “ she answers carefully, “there’s nothing wrong with that… specifically.”
It seems there’s nothing wrong with Keith Green himself, or his music, or his performance of it. At least that’s what she says. No, what’s concerning her, in this case, is what I’m getting out of it. What I’m making of it. How I’m reading so much “Truth” and affirmation into Keith’s Christian lyrics just because I love his music. She’s apparently concerned that I’m confusing my musical rapture with my still-uncertain and sometimes hesitant spiritual bliss.
Well… okay. I guess I can see where she’s coming from there.
But the ultimate message that comes through by the end of this late night conversation—and she never comes right out and says this herself—is that she’s basically terrified by all this “ledge-leaping” I’ve been doing since leaving home.
It’s as if, once I took that first precipitous step of shucking my old life and joining the military (which was hard enough for her to deal with), and then discovered how well I handled the plunge, now—suddenly—I can’t seem to get enough of these huge leaps of faith. First Basic Training, then Combat Control, then the church! It almost looks as if I’m throwing myself off every cliff if I can find—all at once, and just as fast as I can—just for the sheer nervy thrill of the plummeting. And I suppose I can understand why she might want to temper some of that ardor.
I suppose.
But still, this isn’t the response I’d been expecting all these weeks.
(sigh)
I return to Keesler, “talked down” from my every high, and wondering what it will take to push me all the way, the rest of the way—one way or the other—into full commitment or, more likely, total abandonment of each of my crazy new crusades.
1 comments:
Stevie, You are SOOO funny!I'm reading this at work and laughing out loud. Everyone keeps asking me what I'm reading. They want to read it too.(I wouldn't let them)You are the most TALENTED person I know! Music, art, writing...what else do you have up your sleeve? Why did YOU get all the talent in the family!! Not Fair!I want to talk to you about this. It would take WAY to long for me to put down in words.Call me when you can!uvya,Renee
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