Sarah doesn’t believe this, but asks, turning up Damell Road, “Do they really know we’re coming?”
Rainey leans forward from the backseat and places her hand on my shoulder.
“No,” she says and gives Sarah are assuring smile she does not see.
“Not really.”
By my willingness to attend, I have earned some points.
She and Sarah know I am more curious about Shane Norman than his message, but women have been trying to reform men so long it is almost a genetically programmed response.
“I met Pearl Norman the other afternoon,” I say to Rainey, risking her newly reacquired goodwill, “and if I’d struck a match, we wouldn’t be worrying about a trial. Does she have a reputation for getting snookered, or is this a recent phenomenon?”
Sarah groans (here I go again), but Rainey reluctantly admits, “I hear it’s a problem that’s persisted for most of the marriage.”
I wince, feeling a degree of sympathy. I might get drunk too if I had married a saint and my daughter was about to be tried for murder.
“That’s tough,” I say sincerely
“She seems like a very warm person.” Unlike her daughter, I don’t add.
“She’s warm all right,” Rainey says, her voice cold with disapproval.
“I’ve been told she gets out of control on occasion.”
Out of control enough to waste her son-in-law? I doubt it. Damn, women can be tough on each other. For a social worker, Rainey isn’t showing much empathy.
Pearl isn’t pulling her weight on the road to the kingdom so a pox on her. Chet didn’t mention Pearl Nor man. Nor has Rainey. The party faithful always want to hide their warts.
“How’d she handle her daughter’s murder charge?” I ask, knowing Sarah will revolt if I keep pumping Rainey too much longer.
My girlfriend shrugs.
“About like you’d expect. Poor Shane has a lot on his shoulders.”
I square my shoulders to the seat, so my daughter won’t explode at me. Shane, you saint, you!
To give the man his due, Norman does not disappoint. For all our fears, the service is hardly exotic, though a little unusual for a Catholic fed a more formal diet. Sarah is instantly captivated by the music and amazes me by singing out from the printed song sheets as if she were Amy Grant. An electric guitar, drums, and a trumpet accompany the songs, which are up tempo with soaring melodies that even I can follow.
There are, of course, no hymnals, no official dogma to choke down. The words (on the order of “You Light Up My Life”) don’t matter as much to the two song leaders a boy and girl barely older than Sarah, as the enthusiasm with which the audience sings them. The first fifteen minutes of the service are given over to this couple, who seem right out of the cast of “Up with People which performs occasionally in Blackwell County.
Seated in comfortable theater seats toward the back, we are too far away to see faces (I wish I had brought my binoculars, but I didn’t have the guts at this point it feels a lot like a concert). The mood of those around us is happy, even joyful. The men in our section are wearing suits or sports jackets and the women suits or dresses (we are, after all, in affluent west Blackwell County), but I see a conspicuous absence of furs and lavish jewelry. The rare times I’ve been in an established Protestant church in Blackwell County, many of the women looked as if they were auditioning for a fashion show.
Though at this distance I can’t tell if Shane Norman has contributed to his daughter’s spectacular looks, the man impresses me with his apparent humility. I had expected him to come strutting out like some superstar.
Instead, he is restrained, even perhaps a trifle shy, as he stands with his head bowed while the youth minister, a kid in his twenties, prays and then reads from the Old Testament. Dressed in a dark business suit, Norman comes forward and reads the familiar text from St.
Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth. ” “Though I speak with the tongues of Angels …” ” There is none of the pleading, almost whining, tone of the TV evangelist in Norman’s voice, which has a tenor’s pitch. It is pleasant, sincere, and without the heavy-handedness I feared. Rainey, to my left, whispers, “Don’t expect a stirring sermon. That’s not what this is about.”
Indeed, it’s not. Norman gives us a brief account of his just completed mission trip and impresses me by how much credit he gives to the crew of Peruvian workers that assisted them.
“They worked themselves silly, a lot harder than we did….”
The formal sermon, taken from the Scripture, is on the power of love. It is the love of God, Norman asserts that makes faith possible.
“We Christians have difficulty believing the Bible is the word of God,” he says gravely, standing beside the pulpit, “because we haven’t grasped God’s commitment to us. We don’t feel it; we’re scared to death of it. We want to live free of God’s love as if it doesn’t exist, because we don’t want the intensity and the personal challenge of a relationship with God. We want to live floating on the surface of life, avoiding risk and pain. But it is God’s love that makes all things possible….”
I cut my eyes to the right and see that Sarah is so focused on Norman’s words it’s as if he and she were the only ones in the building. Ever since Sarah began to write me letters from the campus of Hendrix College where she attended a summer program for gifted and talented high school students, I have begun to notice an intense desire for some kind of spiritual bond. The Ro man Catholic church may have just lost a member, I think, as she twists at a lock of her hair, a characteristic sign of anxiety. What will I do if she joins? Norman’s words, which have an appeal even to a hard-bitten agnostic like myself, don’t make sense. If there is a God, where is the evidence that He, She, or It loves us? I know Norman’s answer. It’s in the Bible. Free will not withstanding, my eyes and ears tell me a different story.
So does my brain.
Norman goes on to talk about the kind of love that is supposed to exist in each “church family,” and I feel a grudging interest in what he’s saying. The “family” at Christian Life replicates to some degree the extended family Americans no longer enjoy. Deliberately, each family has been given older members, children, “aunts,” “uncles,” etc. All are taught to care about each member, and each member learns to care about the group. I can tell by her expression that Sarah is eating this up. Our two-person family must seem impoverished to her. With only a grandmother and some aunts and uncles in Barranquilla, Colombia, no brothers or sisters, and my sister, whom I rarely see, Sarah has no close relatives.
Norman asks those three families to stand up who made the trip with him to Peru. Approximately forty people stand up, including women and children. With the Shining Path on the loose, I can’t imagine why they would risk sending children, but Norman anticipates my question by explaining that Christian Lifers, once they truly understand what it means to be in a Christcentered family, no longer fear death. We, he preaches, were dead before we began to live in relationship with each other; heaven will be a community, centered around God. ” “In my father’s house, there are many rooms, and I go to prepare a place for you….” ” Norman recites, describing heaven.
Having heard this passage repeatedly trotted out at funerals to comfort grieving family members, I concede that it is a nice touch. Norman uses it to build enthusiasm for a committed and shared lifestyle. Christian Lifers practice on earth what will be made perfect in heaven. Family transcends biology. The Apostles were Jesus’ real family…. I turn to Rainey, who is seated on my left, and whisper, “Does he split families up?”
“Sometimes for a while,” she says, her warm breath against my ear.
“If it’s one that’s really dysfunctional, they can learn from others who are in sync.”