But, of course, like there always are in any group, there were some people who didn’t completely get the assignment. Like the guy who started writing about his long-term childhood dream. Dear Linda, This is what I want to do for me: take early retirement and apply to Clown College. This is what I want to do for us: go to Clown College with you. He kind of pissed his wife off when he shared that.
Somehow, though, by the end of the session, when Margo got up and did the closing remarks, people felt really good. And when Margo read some of the statements people had written to the whole assembly, there was a lot of applause, from the participants for each other and for themselves, and a lot of hugging, because really, they had come through this all together.
I distributed dendrobium orchid leis, and sitting at the white-skirted table, Margo and Harrison thanked each other, and everyone gave them a standing ovation. And then Margo and Harrison stood up and clapped for all the participants, so in the end, everyone was giving everyone else an ovation.
We all checked out of the hotel, with me facilitating, and I got paid, and while Harrison was going out front to tell the valet guy to bring their car around, Margo told me I’d done a superduper job and she hoped I’d do it again next year. And that would have been the perfect time for me to speak up about Harrison, but I was still so overwhelmed from being reborn, and now having this weird rejection, or reaction, to the whole experience, that I didn’t say anything.
WELL, the next few months a lot of praying went on for me, a lot of concern and pleadings from not only Mr. and Mrs. Liu, and Julie and Geoffrey, but from people I didn’t even know—for example, all the people at Greater Love, who even formed a prayer chain on my behalf and united to ask the Lord to bring me back to that holy state where I’d been at for just a few short hours after the revival service. And it wasn’t just them, I prayed too; I prayed for my soul, and I studied. I went to Bible study every single day, and I studied on my own at night, and highlighted just about all of the Gospels, as well as Ephesians, and Paul’s Epistles in their entirety. I met privately probably five times with Pastor McClaren, and he told me he knew I’d get there, but I wasn’t sure. I was in the clutches of this horrible doubt. Because I just couldn’t get back to that feeling I’d had before; that unbelievable feeling of joy and ecstasy. And I’d been so close; it was like I’d finally pushed over the crest of the hill, and then all of a sudden I’d rolled back to where I was.
One night I poured out my heart to Baron and T-Bone. We were sitting in the living room, and I was in the La-Z-Boy, which was forest-green Naugahyde with some rips in the back, and I had my feet up on the footrest and my Bible in my lap. Baron was having a few beers, and T-Bone was doing a few reps. I said to T-Bone, “Hey, you’re Christian, right?”
“Yeah,” T-Bone said.
“And you’ve been saved, right?”
“I was already saved when I was a baby!” T-Bone said. He curled his arm, up and down. He was very focused on his biceps.
“How did you do that?”
“I was baptized!”
“Oh,” I said. “But it didn’t wear off, right?”
“Sharon,” T-Bone said, “it doesn’t never wear off!”
“You believe?” Baron asked T-Bone from the couch. He sounded surprised.
“Yeah, I believe.”
“Not!” said Baron.
“I’m a Christian,” said T-Bone. “What?”
“I don’t believe,” said Baron sadly.
“How come?” I asked.
“Because,” he said, “I feel like Jesus forgot about me.”
“He never forgot about you,” T-Bone said.
Baron just shrugged. I guess he felt bad because Jesus hadn’t come down and healed him from his injury so he could have a shot at a football career.
“Well, if you’re really saved, it won’t never wear off,” T-Bone told me.
“But it just lasted a few hours,” I said. “It’s just like for a few hours I was up there and I was flying, and I could see everything so clearly. It was like my brain was on fire.”
“What were you doing?” Baron asked.
“I was in church!” I said. “What do you think I was doing?”
“Coke.”
“Oh, c’mon,” I told him.
“Eh, Baron’s right,” T-Bone said. “That’s not religion you’re talking about.”
I said, “Then what is religion?”
“Church,” said T-Bone. “Gospels. Catechism.”
“What’s catechism?”
“You don’t know what catechism is?” said Baron, incredulous.
“Just what is it?” I demanded.
And Baron said darkly, “Theology. How else can religions get around without theology?”
Then I sighed. He’d put his finger on it right there. In two seconds Baron had got to the heart of the matter. The thing was, I didn’t really get theology. Pastor McClaren had been working and working with me, but it was almost as if my mind didn’t go deep enough to understand the theology of Christianity. Pastor McClaren said my faith and God’s deliverance would carry me through, but apart from that vision I’d had on the whale watch, and that one rebirth I’d had at Greater Love, my Faith seemed to be nonexistent, and God’s deliverance way behind in coming. It was just that coming from such a secular family, and never having any religious instruction as a child, I was so ignorant. The Trinity with the whole three-in-one, one-in-three thing went whoosh right over my head. The more I thought about it all, the more confusing it became. And actually, the truth was, I didn’t want to think at all. I just wanted to feel it happen again, God putting out His rays to me, just lighting me up, my soul all charging up with His holy fires. I just wanted to skip right to the ecstasy and the voices, and Saint Joan, and Saint Teresa—as if they hadn’t sat and studied so much before they could get to the level of sainthood they achieved! But needless to say I was in a rather deluded frame of mind. I was just taking up all these real Christians’ time when what I was really after was becoming some kind of dervish, rather than a permanently saved citizen soldier in the oncoming army of Christ. Definitely I was hung up on a lot of the bride-of-Christ imagery I had read, and just being his lover, like in Solomon’s song, just having Him come to me in my tent, and wanting it to last on and on. I think I was a little bit mixed up between grace and orgasms.
So the upshot was I spent so much time venting to Baron and T-Bone that they couldn’t stand listening to me anymore about wanting to get back there to that place I’d been. “Sharon,” Baron said, “you know what your problem is?”
I nodded. “I’m on the verge of—”
“No,” said Baron, “you know what your problem really is?”
“What?”
“You need a fix,” he said. He looked at T-Bone, and T-Bone agreed. The guys went into their stash and got me some incredible stuff. But at first I wouldn’t accept anything. I said, “No. No. I’m clean.”
They said, “Oh, come on.”
And I said, “It won’t solve anything.”
And Baron said, “Oh, yeah?”
And Thad said, in joking pidgin, “Why your brain wen’ so uptight?”
Which you had to admit was a lot of my problem, an uptight brain. Still, I told them, “This is the kind of stuff you have to do on your own, guys. This kind of stuff you have to figure out on your own.”
“You aren’t getting very far by yourself,” T-Bone pointed out.
Finally I sat back in my La-Z-Boy and relaxed. I lay back and started dropping acid. Just lay back like that, tripping out. And it was the most amazing thing, because I started to feel all those theological conundrums loosening in my head. It was the most spectacular thing, they were untying themselves and flopping all around me like noodles in soup, and I was watching.
It was just such a show. It was all this light pouring from my inside windows, in all these gorgeous rays—like stained glass, and sectioned pineapples. It was like fireworks gone all soft and juicy. It was
like this whole synesthesiatic sound system, because there were so many dimensions to it. I was all of a sudden seeing in stereo all my former preoccupations, so I could taste this incredibly smooth Bible music. O that I could kiss you with my lips. O your lips are sweeter than sunshine! I saw right there in the La-Z-Boy chair leaning back with my feet up and all my neurons set free—I saw all the ideas I’d been struggling over. And I could see them fully. It was like the proscenium arch was crumbling down, and the fourth wall blown away, and I was actually in this theater in the round. And every single person in the audience was in the round, too, because everyone was flies with just hundreds and millions of these lovely iridescent eyes. So of course I saw then that three in one was no biggie at all and actually three in one and one in three was fine, and all the other numbers too. It was just like, hey, any number can go into any other number as many times as she wants.
And I saw loaves and I saw fishes, and all of them multiplying. And I saw my bird teachers—they were there, too, and they were flying upward with their slender beaks and their crimson feet, and actually I realized for the first time what they were, and I couldn’t believe it had never occurred to me. But those bird people were actually angels dipping into the wind and sky—and they were laughing, because I’d never noticed before. I’d never seen the glory of their wings.
I laughed, and I cried, and I saw all this wisdom I had inside of me, whole planets in my mind. And I could just taste all the joy I had locked within me, just these big pots and jars that probably for years had been bubbling and simmering, but now had a chance for the first time ever just to jell. I was now for the very first time getting to a place where I could fructify.
And I guess I was in that happy place where there weren’t any minutes or hours bugging me, so I can’t really put a fix on when I thought of it, but partway in I saw that I had this whole cathedral of spirituality right inside of me. And a little ways farther I could just touch all the abstract problems of theology and they would all melt before me and caress me and want to make love to me. And farther still I came on the biggest, baddest insight I’d ever had, and that was that Jesus Christ the Savior was actually me! And that I, Sharon, was the ultimate incarnation of the whole entire Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I in my womanness and my birdhood. I with my sooty wings. Then that understanding illuminated my soul and I heard the whisper of my own gentleness. I just wanted to touch every one of my creations with my feather tips.
I ended up staying high most of that week, and gave Baron and Thad all my money for the means of doing so, and also slept with them, which didn’t bother me at all, because I was so focused on my inner life. But other people I knew were wondering about me, since I wasn’t showing up anywhere they expected me to be. Pastor McClaren was trying to get in touch with me, but he never got through. Mr. and Mrs. Liu were looking for me all over, and in the end did track me down by coming to the door of the house. And I guess they looked inside when I answered it, the two of them in their glasses and their cute little clean clothes. They weren’t too thrilled when they saw me, who was supposedly their employee, and also their candidate for life everlasting. I told them I was back at the place that I’d been looking for. I tried to reassure them that I was unbelievably great and that I was on a journey, but inside my mind. I think if she hadn’t been so polite and self-effacing, Mrs. Liu would have slapped my face.
As it was, she and Mr. Liu told me they would keep praying for me, which actually really touched me, and made me just reach out to hug them. But the two of them practically ran down the street past all the mondo grass lawns. They looked scared to death. Or maybe it was the smell from the living room.
You know how the back of a bakery smells sometimes, out by the Dumpsters? Just this rancid smell of spoiled doughnuts, and grease poured off, and curdled custard. Weird to say, but that was what I got a whiff of when Mr. and Mrs. Liu turned tail and ran down my street. I got this little jolt of nausea there, and I went back inside and looked around our home for a second, and fogged as I was, I thought, Wait. I thought, Hmm. And a day later I stopped, by which I mean, all the substances I’d been taking, by mouth, and through my skin like an acid-loving amphibian. I didn’t stop because I was sated, but more because for some bizarre reason I could smell myself, and I reeked. Even now I couldn’t tell you whether it was my conscience kicking in, or just having a good nose.
I took a shower and cleaned myself off, and then I got into a clean T-shirt and shorts, and tied my hair back, and as best I could, began cleaning up. I scrubbed the putrid kitchen that we had there, and also the black mold growing in the bathroom. We didn’t own a vacuum cleaner, so I tried to borrow from our next-door neighbors, but they were very reserved people and wouldn’t open the door. They peeked out at me with their door opened just a crack. Oh, well, I thought, and I went home and sat cross-legged on the deep green shag carpet in the living room, and I picked out the crumbs and specks of dirt and hairs by hand, until Baron wandered in and wanted to know what the hell I was doing. “I’m picking up the rug,” I said. I still had that aura of heightened common sense. I was coming down just very gently, like a balloon you bring home that eventually starts sinking down below ceiling level, and then drifts down to the floor, sighing out its helium incredibly slowly, just shrinking and then dimpling up and wrinkling, and getting all soft and finally squishy, like the balloon equivalent of old age.
Around evening of that day I took a walk around the neighborhood. I could smell all our neighbors cooking dinner, but I didn’t have my appetite back at all. I tried to think back over the past few months, and I tried to think way back to my rebirth and that joyous feeling I’d experienced. Then, I had to admit it to myself, on drugs, joy felt better—and so did peace and love and hope—at least to me. And I could see by that—anyone could see—I hadn’t been saved in Church at all. Because a saved person would never feel that way—closer to her God on acid. When you got down to it, a saved person would never have given up on Christianity’s teachings after only a few lessons either. So the truth was, I’d let Jesus down, not to mention letting myself down with my behavior. Essentially, I’d been offered eternal life, and I’d decided to go on roller-coaster rides and see movies continuously and eat Sugar Babies all day instead. So what did that say about me? I was not exactly the worthiest person in the world. Still, it did not once occur to me that God in his wrath would strike me down, or that Jesus would wreak vengeance on me. I just knew they wouldn’t. Despite Pastor’s teachings I felt, somehow, God and His Son weren’t those types of guys. It was true I’d been unfaithful to Jesus, and essentially run out on Him just after we were wed, but jealousy was not Him, not Him at all.
So I was decided about two things. One, I was not saved. Two, that was okay, because that was just not where I was at right now. I was going to find God again, I knew it. Plenty of other options were still out there. If one didn’t work, I’d switch. Visions, Bible study, hallucinatory trips. I had a fickle soul, but I couldn’t see it that way. The only thing I can compare it to is that time in your life when you’ll sleep with anyone, but you think you’re doing it because you so believe in love.
10
Speechless
I dedicated myself to cleaning, to the point that our shack of a house was the prettiest it could possibly look without repainting and ripping out the carpeting and furniture, and evicting my housemates. I took wet rags and filled the plastic wastebasket with water for a bucket, and I washed the glass louvers in all the windows. All the gray, linty dust washed away. The water in the wastebasket turned black with dirt. I washed the mirror in the bathroom and then dried it clean and sparkly with pieces of ripped newspapers. I even cleaned out the oven and the stove in the kitchenette, and it turned out they both worked, which was good to know.
Heading back to work at Paradise Jeweler was on the agenda, too, but after a while, cleaning house, I thought, You know what? Better give it a rest, and the theology too. I just didn’t want to disappoint any m
ore people, doing all that Bible study and then not going the extra mile. So I got a new job at The Good Earth, which was where I tended to buy my food anyway, and where people knew me, and thought I was a responsible person—I mean, on the day-to-day, if not the religious, level.
The Good Earth smelled like sawdust and wheat germ, and had every kind of vegetable grown organically on the island, and also bins of ancient grains, and refrigerator cases where you could get big blocks of rennetless cheese. There were vitamins, and powders, and protein mixes, and loose teas, and at the register for impulse buys we had honey straws for sucking, and garlic tablets, and carob-coated peanuts, and copies of The Herbalist, and Vegetarian Times, and Boycott Quarterly. I started working there full time at the checkout counter.
My manager, who was a semiprofessional surfer chick named Kim, actually lent me a yogurt maker and I bought yogurt starter and started culturing my own at home, because it occurred to me, maybe I should start working on my diet again. Since it’s practically a truism that whenever you clear up your diet you also tend to clear up your mind. And God knows I needed that.
I was still so fogged I didn’t know what I believed anymore. I hardly saw any of my friends—and didn’t even want to see them really—except I missed them in a hopeless sort of way. I barely had a chance to see Brian, what with his teaching and his marriage and all. I’d trudge to work, and then trudge back home again. On weekends my housemates would be partying away, but I didn’t join in. Music and drinking and getting high. None of it mattered to me anymore. In fact, the noise bothered me. At the age of twenty-six I was growing crotchety. Like how dare you party all night when I’m trying to sleep? How dare you trash this place yet again? Instead of a fun little haven, the house seemed to me like a druggy little dump. I felt so world weary. No, that wasn’t it. Actually I was afraid the world was weary of me. Could that happen? The world getting so tired of a human that one day it blows her away like a caraway seed? I wouldn’t have been surprised. I had imagined that once you have a vision you were set for life. I had thought once you were saved, you were saved. And if you were born again, then you would be better organized than you were the first time. So naturally when it didn’t turn out that way I was a little bit disillusioned.