One.4 - Angels and Bombs

The air is cool, fragrant with the smell of wet leaves. I walk slowly toward the church, although by nature I’m more inclined to running or fleeing depending on who’s chasing me.

I walk slowly but still find myself gaining ground on my destination and as the church tower clock winds on before my eyes I think of how my life is passing before me and that it’s going so slow. At this rate I’ll live forever. Once again I find myself on the edge of that life-questioning cliff—a lamenters paradise really, where you can walk along the edge and gaze deep into the abyss but you never have to jump. Yes, always stepping out onto the ledge and then, as if someone is really holding me back, I decry the fact that I cannot jump. Yes, that my fate is to live and only the lucky ones get to leap.

I attempt to rein in my feelings, to pull myself together but all I can think of is this feeling of impending doom or worse—an impending sense of nothing.

The church itself is a beautiful building made of pale stone and it looks more Catholic than Protestant in design. To me, most Protestant churches resemble barns or some kind of out buildings scattered about the farmyard. Something of a “sheep to the slaughter” kind of thing that makes me nauseous with all the blood and guts. I would have never made it as a doctor. My high school biology teacher exempted me from dissecting a frog after I passed out from the smell of formaldehyde.

However, Saint Olaf rises boldly toward the shadowy sky like a fortress with its peaks and arched windows. It amazes me when I see a church that seems to contain all of the spirituality of its congregation within its walls and how it can articulate that reverence to the masses that pass by it each day. Even when you walk in the nave of Saint Olaf it has that heavy Catholic silence—the kind that hangs over the pews from the high, arched ceiling and almost breathes. My grandmother was Catholic and I can remember that brooding stillness whenever she brought me to Mass with her; it felt as if God Himself was floating above you and breathing heavily; or perhaps it was a bored sigh.

When I do finally make it inside of the church, the receptionist and niece of Pastor John, one Sarah Beckett, greets me coldly. She’s a lovely little number who’s either an angel or a bomb depending on how you interpret the ticking noise you hear when you walk past her desk. She disregards me in a way that at first I mistook it for attraction. Ah, yes one of those relationship fantasies that drifts in and out of my cruel brain like the tide, yet only threaten to drown me. However, I have since learned through various forms of non-verbal communication that it is simply disregard. Not only does she not like me, she avoids me whenever she can. She is an attractive young woman with her high cheekbones and blonde hair that creeps about her neckline. She has a classic look. I imagine her coming straight from a F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. I also imagine her being shot from a cannon—ah, to see her flaming figure fly. She puts the boot into beauty and the cut into cutey and her perfume lingers just long enough for wanting, although I do temper my desire for her with a song as I approach her desk:

“He’s feeling naughty in his patent leather boots

He’s a playboy with a handgun that never shoots

She’s an eastern European with a figure that could kill

And he’s hoping she’ll molest him but he knows she never will…”

Ah, yes I forgot to mention that I’m currently at work on a songbook as well: Songs for Dictators and Lovers. Indeed, I keep plenty of irons on the fire—now if I could only find a match. The songbook is inspired by the war in Iraq but will also draw from other world conflicts and be spiced up with a heavy dose of the many flavors of love. It’s difficult not to get caught up in the spirit of our country’s newfound spirit of colonialism, although I’m somewhat uncomfortable about the armbands for our Muslim citizens. It’s like the crusades all over again and I wonder each time I pass by a Muslim woman if she’s wearing that veil to hide her laughter or contempt. In the end it’s up to God I suppose to decide who gets in and who stays out so I should remember that I’m in the business of religion and not politics.