Church Pew
Somewhere in my stacks of writings and memories, there sits a piece which includes my brothers and I sitting on a long, wooden church pew, several rows back, and we are scratching messages to one another in our chlorinated, by daily five-hour-swims, sundried arms. Even flesh becomes limestone living out in the promised lands of sage.
We are bored to death with whoever is droning on at the mic about the prophet’s admonitions or how fasting had offered them a testimony of how the devil had once been on their shoulder too and that their Uncle Mike, who is an alcoholic, was actually more angelic when they really took a good, hard look.
Even granite gives way to moth and dust.
My father sat close to my mother who held a wriggling, nursing baby who kept batting away the thin cotton receiving blanket, the privacy tent she constructed over his sweating head, to keep her boob away from the glaring eyes of circus mamma, or Jimmy the not-out Mormon man who took extra care with his wild socks and combed over do.
We snickered under our breath as we fashioned arrows, or faces, words of white in scratched flesh, the names of those we had a crush on, quickly erased by wiping away with just a little bit of spit. The benediction a plea for rains lest the crops whither.
When we grew tired of this game, we’d start to tickle one another’s arms for five or ten minute pie slices of the numbered, schoolhouse clock at the side of the chapel. The one most pious type’s only glanced at peripherally so as not to let others know they too were as bored as the bucking toddlers--the black hands moving slower then they did even at school.
Dad shoots us the evil eye for having too much fun, violent, held-low sign language to knock off the tickling.
And, this is how we’d pass the hot hour, the side doors open to let in a breeze someone imagined might come, but never did. Occasionally, the sermon would be interrupted, we’d hear a big truck speed by, or some lucky non-Mormon kid screaming his friends’ name in glee, one whom got to race his bike and burn his freckled nose out of dark doors, living freely, just like it was an ordinary day.
Photo credit: Kyler Nixon/unsplash
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Wow! Thank you :)
Was this your experience? There are no mormons in my country and tbh I don't know how mormons work but that service sounds very boring. I remember my sunday school times were fun and we had games and snacks and all
Yes, my experience during Sacrament meeting. I think a lot of kids are bored at church--especially three hours, which was how long all meetings took.
Not all was bad ;)
You touched my memories. And you captured the mood so well.
There are two voices in me.
One of them says: Yes, the Sunday service was an ordeal and I did not understand why I was sitting there listening to a sermon and taking part in ceremonies that I do not understand and that bore me to death. After I realized that no one obeyed the Ten Commandments, the whole thing seemed absurd and old-fashioned to me. It would have been different if all churchgoers had actually had faith and not only fulfilled their duty. It might then have been the case that I too would have recognised the value of these meetings. Since the Christians here were no longer true Christians long before my time and modernity had made them a minority, I thought that my family and the others went there every Sunday simply for the sake of good behaviour.
Another part of me remembers that those who found refuge and comfort in prayer and song were also sitting there. For those I didn't want to be disrespectful and quietly submitted to the ritual. I was a little proud when I received the sacraments after two years of confirmation classes. I have preserved a corner of what is called spirituality and I mourn the many who think prayers and songs are silly.
What a pity that this power of ritual has been lost. As a child I found that the church sang miserably and their voices did not even find the tone that the pastor set. Admittedly, the pitches were quite difficult. But it would have had a different energy if everyone sitting there had been filled with joy and confidence.
... And yet, and yet, the few who did, have deeply impressed me...
It seems that your dad was a scarry person for you ...
Thank you. Though this piece does catch the boredom and tedium of sitting through a service (which I have felt as a child), yet I have also felt very spiritually resonating moments within prayer, song, ritual and even the community of misfits who make up any congregation.
My dream teacher told me that people today are starved for ritual and in a modern day that poo-poo's the old fashioned and I have found in teaching my own classes by the responses of participants that what he says is the truth. There is a hunger and longing for community in which we can speak about and celebrate the ways in which spirit moves us.
I, like you, am very happy now to have had a religious upbringing, if for no other reason that it is a kind of language learned and one that makes those who know it more able to navigate the world of literature, art and film and even government and politics. Those who don't know the language aren't able to build on that and in a sense struggle to recreate a wheel.
But, let us all sing the hymns together, those with operatic beauty and those whose tone is like a dying dog, for where you, or two or three others are, "gathered together in my name, there I will be also."
Yes, you can see that in the movies. Besides all violence, I observe this hunger, too.
My way to get in touch with the missing Sunday ritual and to find refuge is to listen to Buddhist talks. I've collected through the years precious men and women whom I made my teachers. In case, you want any recommendations, let me know.
From them, I once heard to never talk about religion, politics, the neighbor etc. - I had to laugh out loud and immediately thought it's right.
... Sometimes I feel lonely as I avoid talking about superficial stuff. But then there is not much left ;-)
Let us create a wheel together.
:) Yes, let's!