A Sneak Preview of a chapter from Geometry

Chapter 15 - Strike Three

Stan never bothered to take the children to church. There was no use forcing it. He would take a bullet in the head for his faith, but he wasn’t going to stuff it down his kids’ throats. All he knew to do was model it and answer questions if they had any. Besides, of the three religious options available to his children within the Army, he didn’t like any of them. They weren’t Jews, they weren’t Catholics, and he didn’t want them Protesting. What sort of faith is “Protestant” anyway? Protesting isn’t what it’s about, fools.

He would give them instead Stan the Man’s Bible Commentary with Footnotes. He would do it silently, by his code that they knew applied to him as well as to them. It was the thread that wove through every fabric of his life. As a sworn-to-secrecy pilot within the Intelligence Corps, approached more than once with large sums of cash for information by shady civilians. Tempted? Not really. Sure, the money sounds good. But there are some things you don’t do. The code was there in his marriage, as a ‘Nam-based pilot on three tours, approached countless times by beautiful women for hire. Tempted? Of course. But there are some things you don’t do. And the code was there in his home, as a father, approached eternally by kids with questions and now teenagers with debates. Tempted to give them a lesson? Not anymore. He had learned to temper the lessons. Answer anything they ask, but don’t try to think for them. Guide them by your walk, don’t strangle them with your leash. There are some things you don’t do. If God is God, then he will work in me and through me without my having to work at it at all. And my kids will see it and come to embrace it.

Before deciding on a career in the military, Stan had other plans. He wanted to be, in fact became, a minister. It was his calling, he was certain, when as a boy of 18 he entered Bible College in Georgia. He was good at the preaching part. He could hold the floor like some 19th Century raconteur, everyone listening attentively, afraid to miss a possible veiled joke or witty aside. The Reverend Stanley Shelby held a church in the hills of Tennessee for a year. It opened his eyes.

The people, he was sorry to learn, wanted to be ignorant. They didn’t want to think for themselves. He got a few to come around, but the grind of pastoral baby-sitting was not what he’d envisioned while at Bible school. He wanted to change the world, to light a torch. To pass that flame from the pulpit and watch it spread like an out of control grass-fire. He didn’t want to pray with sister Deborah about her most recent hangnail. He didn’t want to decide for the Dixon family “which car the Lord would have them buy.” He didn’t want to keep repeating the same sermons to the same old faces who never seemed to tire of the milk meant for babies. He was ready to deliver the goods. The meat. The hidden things. The keys to the kingdom. But they couldn’t get off the tit. And they sucked him dry. He was debating getting out of it altogether. He was starting to hate his flock.

“Help me out here, Carol. I don’t want to seem like some cruel shepherd, but these sheep are either dwarves or they’re diseased! None of them are growing! Do you see it?” Stan was pacing with his tie undone.
“Honey, how many pastors have come through here before you?” Carol put her book down.
“Too many, and that says we’ve all failed,” Stan tossed his keys on the coffee table.
“Or have they failed to mold you pastors into what they want?” Carol resumed her reading, knowing that Stan would get it.

It was his first confirmation. He had thought the same thing. They like it like it is. They were all really saying,
“Don’t mess with it, sonny. We’ve gotten rid of better paid and better preachin’ preachers than you that didn’t fit the mold. You’re an outsider. Don’t come in here with anything new. We like it like this. It’s religion, for Chrissake. What are you tryin’ to do? Turn it into some kind of danged revolution?”

But he would need a second confirmation.
“Thanks, Lord, for this woman you gave me who knows what’s in my heart and can see the truth a mile away in dense fog, but I still need to hear from you,” he said to him whenever it struck him to. And he answered.

Sister Hazel weighed more than her dead husband. Probably twice as much. As he delivered the sermon graveside in the rain, Pastor Stan could tell she was going to be the screaming widow type. It always starts with sobs, of course, and that’s to be expected. You’ve lost a dear mate, your life’s partner. If you don’t cry a little then you are either some sort of giant pillar of faith or a complete callous-hearted dog. But when it starts evolving into great gasps of audible grief that are jolting the other mourners and causing the sermon to be halted, then something has to be done. It pissed him off, really, that those who should have the most hope in death would treat it like the end. Period. To Stan, it was just a comma. Why do you have to carry on so? Do you have any hope? Do you have ANY faith? I can recite these words up here all day long in this Hemingway-like rain about hope in the resurrection and promise of eternal life and the glory of the world to come and you won’t believe it. Or you’re too selfish to hear it. Who are you crying for? Him? Why? He’s got it made! He’s just getting off that chariot or however he got there and he’s standing there with his mouth wide open in child-like wonder and he’s looking around and screaming “WOW!” in total ecstatic rapture as he’s meeting his parents again and seeing colors you can’t imagine and sights you can’t fathom and wonders you may never know if you don’t start believing! You’re crying for HIM? C’mon! You’re crying for YOU! Because you miss him. That’s fine. But did you love him? Do you want what’s best for him? Then be quiet and quit thinking about your loss. You’re selfish. Be quiet.

So he may have closed the Bible a little too firmly or he may have tightened his lips a little as he walked over to sister Hazel who was now making great arm motions and pacing beside the open grave. He put his arm around her to console her. It was the only way to do it. The sermon was pointless. Sister Hazel was too distraught. He wanted to give her time to unwind before he explained to her how easy it could be to hope. The family remained behind, but the rest of the mourners, unsettled by her loud demonstrations, began to slip away. He walked along with her as she looked at the casket, then looked at the open grave, then threw herself on the casket, all the while screaming and wailing. He allowed her a moment of casket pounding and then began to gently pull her away. As her enormous weight shifted toward him, his foot slipped. He dropped his Bible in the mud as his arms instinctively went out to catch Hazel, who was now coming at him as he fell. She let out a sad “oooohhhhhh” as she landed on top of Stan at the edge of the grave in the mud. Her weight was just enough to provide the extra push Stan needed to finish the slide. Like a golf ball teetering on the edge of the cup, or a billiard ball hanging at the edge of the corner pocket for one suspended millisecond just before dropping, Stan and Hazel hung there and both knew in that fraction of a second that this was a funeral for the record books. Stan suffered only two broken ribs in the fall into the muddy grave while Hazel’s landing was virtually painless as she used Stan for a cushion.

Perhaps that’s God speaking to me, Stan thought later. But the schedule was always full. There was a baptism on the books for Sunday night.

Brother Chuck, as he liked to be called, was easily two Hazels in size. And Stan loved the old guy. He was one of the few that got it. He was a listener and a believer. He was what Stan wished he had a church full of. Not you pew-warmers with your sour faces and your dusty bibles and your mandatory potlucks and pig-roasts. Chuck was the real thing, Stan knew. He had the fire. He had the keys to the kingdom and it burned in his eyes. And he wasn’t a fool. He knew you don’t beat anyone over the head with it. You just live it. And he wanted to be baptized.

“Members of the congregation, it gives me great pleasure to be standing here in this water tonight. Moments like these are the rewards of my work. To be here in this tank tonight with Brother Chuck is an honor. Chuck has asked to be baptized, and I am pleased to oblige. Chuck, would you like to say a few words to the people?” The two of them stood in the waist-deep water of the baptismal facing the sanctuary. Chuck and Stan switched places so that Chuck could now be near the microphone.

“Thanks, Pastor Stan. Well, I been comin’ here since I was a boy and I been listenin’ to all this talk for years and years, and it finally dawned on me that I can find joy right here right now. That it ain’t ‘some sweet pie in the sky by and by.’ That it’s today and it’s now. I don’t even have to try anymore. And I wanna be baptized like he said,” Chuck shuffled in the water back to Stan’s side as Stan called out “Amen!”

The silence in the sanctuary discouraged him. They don’t even get it! A man has had the light turned on and you act like it’s just another boring Sunday evening service! Hurry this up and get us out of here by 7 o’clock so we can get home and watch the Wonderful World of Disney. The only ones in the church besides he and Chuck who seemed to possess any joy at all were a few kids who were going away soon to college and Carol. She echoed his “Amen!” as some of the old-guard ladies looked at her suspiciously.

“And so, Chuck, based on your profession of faith, I now baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”

They had rehearsed the maneuver before in Stan’s office. Stan was counting on the big guy’s natural buoyancy to take a little of the weight off as he lowered Chuck backward into the water. Chuck pinched his nose with his hand and closed his eyes as Stan supported him with a hand on the back, the other hand holding Chuck’s massive wrist. Stan waited until Chuck’s face was completely covered before he began the lift up and out of the water. He strained under the weight of the man as he pulled him back to a standing position. As he pulled with the hand that held the wrist and pushed with the hand that supported the back, he pulled Chuck’s fingers away from his nose. The flow of water into Chuck’s nostrils caused him to reach out for Stan’s shirt in a splashing moment of panic. It was enough of a moment for Stan to be pulled face-forward into the tank as Chuck scrambled for air. The two of them looked like alligators wrestling in the Nile, all bubbles and splashing and waves. When he finally got up and back to the microphone, drenched and laughing, Stan was smiling. He laughed into the microphone and was greeted by barely veiled scorn on the faces of the congregation. He wanted to say,

“You don’t see that as funny? A big fat guy and his pastor just made church history and you can’t even smile? You are so religious that you aren’t even real! Become as children! Get your eyes opened to the world around you and start living life! Full tilt! Pedal to the metal and balls to the wall! Yes, I can say balls! It’s OK! Get out and live! Get up and laugh! Never mind. Get out and go home. Go watch Wonderful World of Disney.”

Stan was pretty sure he was hearing from him now. His discouragement had increased after the baptism incident and he was ready to call the denomination headquarters to resign. But he kept putting off the call.

“I hear a river!” Stan had turned it up an extra notch, encouraged by the rain. He hadn’t chosen the river theme because of the rain outside. He’d been thinking about it before the rains hit early this morning, but the rains confirmed it for him. Preach the river today.

The people appreciated a good preacher and Stan could call it up. He could bring out phrases and impromptu tangents that had them alternately laughing and crying. He was a master pulpiteer, and they saw it as theater. And they knew their roles as they called back when he got fired up.
“I hear a river!”
“Amen!” they called out, with as much enthusiasm as their conservative denomination would allow.
“A river in my home! It’s flowing from the throne!” Stan was pacing the platform. He had tossed aside his notes. He knew they were getting what they had paid for. He just hoped, as he walked the edge with his tie undone, that some of them were really getting it.

“And it’s right here right now and it can flow in you! That riverrrrrr!” his last word a battle cry, drawn out and hanging in the air like a trumpet blast.
“Preach it, Pastor,” a few remarked politely.
“It’s pure! Yes, pure as gold that has been so refined that it is translucent in its purity! Pure as the day you were born and the day you will die! Pure as the plan that was set into motion from the beginning of time!” Stan wasn’t acting anymore. They may have still been enjoying the theater, but these lines weren't coming from the actor; they were being fed to him off camera by the director.

“It holds the cure! The cure of cures and the end of all death! Yes, the cure to your broken heart, the cure to your sleepless nights! The cure, my friends, the cure!”
“Yessir,” the older men coolly confirmed.

Stan had a feeling building inside. I may be reaching them. I may have struck a chord. I may be able to get these babies to try some meat.

“Get away from the river with your little cup! I say don’t even come with your buckets! No! Don’t just test the water with your toes and then get a little wet! NO!” the words were punctuated by increasing rain and distant thunder, the typical Tennessee summer thunderstorm meandering through. The people were caught up in the scene.

“Dive in! Dive in! Dive in!” Sam pleaded with a huge smile. He wanted them to taste it.
“And when you feel that current! It’ll sweep you!” he glided across the platform as he said the word “sweep,”
“And not like that dangerous current of this world’s rivers that can turn on you and take you under,” Stan paused and turned on the platform and stepped down onto the floor,
“No, the current will envelope you and you’ll learn to ride the wave,” Stan’s voice became softer, his last words an invitation. He looked at the faces of the people. They were not just spectators anymore, it seemed to him, but appeared to be active participants. They were involved in this play. They wanted the secrets. The keys. He had to bring it home. To the final scene. The curtain call.

With a huge crack the windows were lit up and the dark of the morning storm outside was transformed into white light for one brief second. Where every feature on the landscape, every car in the parking lot, every tree and every blade of grass seems frozen for a moment in lightning’s intense flash bulb. Like being shown a beautiful picture in black and white, but only for a second. Close strikes are beautiful. Direct hits carry their own special significance.

The little church’s steeple was on fire and the blaze was not dying by the water from the sky. It seemed water had no hope as the battle of rain and flame sent the congregation rushing and screaming to their cars.

Carol and Stan stood at the smoldering heap that was their church and home for the last year. The rain had died down and a light sprinkle made a hissing noise as the drops hit the charred beams and pews.

“Well, I think I have my second confirmation, Carol,” Stan nodded his head.
“Or third or fourth, buddy,” she held his arm.
“Should’ve listened to you, babe. That’s one of the lessons here,” Stan laughed.
“Well, what can you do? I think that church’s time had come,” she felt free in the rain with the water cooling her face.
“Plan B, honey,” Stan pulled the car keys from his pocket and turned toward the parking lot.

Carol walked beside him backwards. She wanted to see the scene one last time. It was too perfect, too fitting.
“That was quite an exit, Pastor Stan,” she laughed as she spun around to join him.

Carol knew he wasn’t upset. Because she knew what he knew. That sometimes the current sweeps you through areas you have to go through to get to the calmer waters. And it’s a downstream ride all the way. You don’t even have to paddle. She wanted to dance. She grabbed Stan around the neck and gave him one of those hugs that speaks of too much love. Of overflowing love that has to come out. The kind of hug that when you give it you can feel an energy released. And the giver is always the one that feels it the most.