Lutherans in Paradise

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 Lutherans in Paradise 

Sunday morning.

     Uncle Albert has piles in every room, piles of clothes, piles of books, piles of bric-à-brac; but all the piles are small: everything he has out will fit easily into his steamer trunk.

     I’m awake. I’m dressed, lying on top of my cold bed. I hear him get up. He sticks his head in as he maneuvers toward the bathroom: “You could go to church, if you want,” he says. I say, “I don’t know.”

     “I’m not going,” he says, “but one of us ought to.” “Okay,” I say. He plans instead to spend the morning on the john. “Go to the Lutheran,” he says. “Then tell me about it, when you get home.”

at the corner of Uriel and Pichon

The john flushes. I roll off the bed. I straighten the bedclothes. Uncle Albert sticks his head in again. “The service starts at eleven,” he says. “It’s on the corner of Uriel and Pishon.” Do I want to shave before he takes a shower and gets back on the john?

One of the problems of depression – even at this low level that has its hands only lightly around my neck – it isn’t squeezing so I can’t breathe at all, but its face is thrust up so close to mine that I have to breathe its reechy breath – one of the problems of even this mild “case” is it turns the depressed inside out: he shuts his eyes not to see the face; he tries to breathe from his lungs into the air instead of taking air into his lungs.

The service begins with confession and pardon. Then we sing and we pray. The Scriptures are read. The sermon is preached: The Fall is fortunate if it leads to salvation, but some are not saved. (I think: For them, it can’t be so fortunate, then; but it is all the more fortunate for those that get to point and shake their heads: “There but for the grace of God . . . .”)

Since Ash Wednesday service was canceled for snow, there are ashes for those that wish them.

     I decide I do, but then not wishing to wear my ashes home, to arrive my face disfigured like the hypocrites do, I will stop on my way at the school, a place to pull out of the road, and wash them off with snow.

The “sending song” is “On Eagle’s Wings,” and I can sing the verses, but I cannot, I find – for tears – sing through the refrain:

And he will raise you up on eagle’s wings,

Bear you on the breath of dawn,

Make you to shine like the sun.

And hold you in the palm of his hand.

This happens often that I cannot sing for weeping and often of that often with these evangelical songs that are not part of my childhood, little part of my religious experience at all. Whence the spring that feeds this well of tears – much less the source of the spring – I have no idea.

     Nor, am I pretty sure, do I want one.

After lunch - I heat up some chicken noodle soup out of a can and make lettuce and tomato sandwiches with mustard and mayo – after lunch, we begin putting the piles into the trunk. Or I put them in at Uncle Albert’s direction.

     He doesn’t ask me about church.

03.05.17

posted 03.10