Communion

11-6-2011

            One part in this book caught me off guard. Well, it changed the way I read the rest of the book the instant I saw it. I don't know what religion you follow, believe, or associate yourself with but I was raised Lutheran and this style of paper will be based around it. In addition to being a Lutheran, I am also a preacher's kid, an escaped preacher's kid. In a way, I ran from it by paying to go to college in Lincoln versus my hometown of Kearney, Nebraska where I had a supportive family.

             Reading, The Coffins of Little Hope, by Timothy Schaffert, I was hit with a sense of homesickness. It has been a few years since I've been back to Kearney. A surprise hit with how quick an emotional reaction I had only a couple chapters in. I almost stopped reading it all together a few pages later. This response is more about how a few words can build and destroy the reader. They can help a damaged conscious bask in pain and rest the effort to heal something from the past. How it can make you homesick and sick of home.

            For starters, I grew up in a church that introduced me to world just as my dad got there to take over. My dad succeeded in adapting to the congregation of about seventy people, a small church by any standard under Christian morals. He took the reins two months after I was born, so I grew with it. Everyone became family for me. They pampered me as an infant. I loved it, my mom told me. Teased me as a child, telling me how handsome I was for being five years old. I loathed it.

            Sadly, I continued to grow older with that resentment, I avoided God because of the people under him. I hated the attention that my real family received versus the others within the congregation. We saw everyone once a week where we were the perfect family under a house of God. We worshiped, lived and sang together, and everything was fine for the day. Outside of the one day where every family sacrificed their free time to repent, everything went back to normal. Their jobs returned on Mondays and family time was unimpeded with dinner or a movie night. If they had any problems of some sort they would call their pastor. Or if it was a more private matter they might show up at his house to ask for help. It was his job after all.

            I was raised to think that it was selfish to complain about not getting to play with my dad. So I grew up silent—waiting for him to be able to play. Sitting here, three hundred miles away, I can only love him for the dedication he has shown for his family.

            Schaffert hit this nerve of mine in a small segment. I stopped reading and stared at it. It stood out like an evil figure in the storyline. My nostrils flared at one point. It was Abby Most and her migraine. The significance so miniscule, I practically dropped the book. Another character, Daisy, had shown up at the church. She was torn emotionally and physically to pieces. She needed help and she would receive it,

            “I'm up here because I have a migraine,” Abby said. As she reached up to rub her temples, she hesitated, wondering if that gesture was just a touch too much. The devil's in the details. “I have to keep...well, I'm up here because I have to keep elevated.”

            “The elders are all in the church, but we need a woman right now,” the secretary said.

            “You're a woman,” Abby said.

            The secretary sighed. “Mrs. Most,” she said. She shrugged her shoulders and took off her glasses to clean them with the cuff of her blouse. “You and your husband have run roughshod over this church since the second you darkened our doorstep. Now you have a chance to redeem yourself, and I'm trying to help you.” (51).

A few paragraphs above this incident and into the quote shows the adversity of being related to a pastor, it's a pressure that each sibling feels. The secretary exposes several things in addition to this small attack on the wife's job of being a wife to the pastor.

            She has no privacy. They have no privacy, especially in a parish house. There is no luxury of hiding. No time to let down your guard and be somewhat intimate. The house is bought and paid for by the church—the congregation—and therefore there is nothing unethical, immoral, or unjust of walking into it and asking for attention. It is for their use. Daisy is brought into it after Abby takes her under her forced care and before her husband, the secretary, and the elders of the church she is forced to do her job. It is a job that she doesn't know how to do and everyone expects her to do it—even her husband, “Her husband had never called her Mrs. Most, and on his tongue the name sounded like a scolding. Abby blushed. She hated his tone and the unspoken condescension of the old men in her house.”(53). Move the situation to a house that the pastor does own, and it becomes a bombing of phone calls and door bells at any time, day or night. Everything takes priority to a pastor when a member of the church goes out of their way to come and receive counseling. Every. Time. So I waited.

            Also, as previously mentioned, it is a job to be: married to, child of, or siblings with the pastor. You are held in a different light and it isn't Holy. There is no right or wrong that can be done, only moral or immoral in a follower’s eyes. The religious ethical judgment allows free shots at judging another human is seen in the secretary's attack on the pastor. From a business side, that's in short, busting into the boss's house and verbally assaulting his wife or significant other. Christianity preaches to 'turn the other cheek' when it comes to situations like this and Abby perfects it. There is no skin tougher than a pastor’s family. She lets sting of the words subside as her duty, her job, takes priority to how she feels. Her migraine will have to wait.

            Turning the tables a bit, I was also touched by the previous chapter. Schaffert's small summary of the Lutheran-Nebraskans was spot on from the many churches that I have seen. The placid style of how they keep their passion in a polite manner hit home. He describes the perfect appearance of the audience on Sundays, “The members of the choirs not only don't dance, they don't sway. That's not to say no on is ever smacked hard with God's love or filled up to the eyeballs with the Holy Spirit, but when you are, you keep it to yourself.” (48). Their concealed experiences are what keep them coming back. That power of God within them that sparks their courage to come, before and after Sunday to seek further enlightenment. They don’t seek forgiveness but instead a connection to the apparent innocent holy man. A connection of family to the pastor and his communication of everything you’ve done is okay as long as you’re here. Not his own nor his family's.

            And so I watched and waited. I waited for them to have their words, communion, to have their fill of the spirit; whether it be Holy or that facade of making them feel better after family squabble. I feel bad writing it, I was raised to bury these feelings and not disclose them. It was devilish to allow them inside. Hide them away, away from the rest of the family and show a cheeky smile or affection. Finally, I moved away and never looked back. I showed no cheek, I didn't burn any bridges in my escape. I just turned away and left with more luggage than I thought.