quinn esq's picture

    Luke 4

    By quinn esq on Sun, 04/19/2009 - 2:45pm |
    I first preached in church when I was 17. Wore a light blue polyester suit. I had never spoken in public before. Never. Not even in school. Every year, my English teachers would insist that I go to the front of the class, and do some public-speaking. Every year I'd refuse, they'd give me a zero, and that'd be that. I was happy to crack jokes from my seat, but go stand up front of everyone? No chance. Same thing kept me from answering the phone, or buying things in the store. I had to get other people to do it for me.

    However, I felt seized of a topic. A message. Couldn't sleep. Knew what I had to do. I talked to my father - a Deacon - and he arranged it. We were the kind of Baptist Church that tried to live out that "priesthood of all believers" thing, so we let members of the congregation preach from time to time. The Deacons ok'ed it for me. After all, I was a pretty conservative, clean-cut kid. Never drank, had never had sex, and my career path was to become a lawyer, and maybe someday, the next local Conservative MP. None of those things changed 'til I was 20.

    The Sunday came, and I stepped up to the pulpit. Terrified. I remember I gripped the edges of the wooden pulpit and did not let go. Through the entire sermon. I knew what scripture I wanted to read. I say "wanted to," but truth was, it felt like "had to." The scripture was just a couple of verses from Luke 4. The ones where Jesus preaches about healing the brokenhearted, bringing sight to the blind, release to those in prison. But especially, about bringing "Good news to the poor."

    After that opening verse, I basically just called it as I saw it. Said that "poor" meant just what it said - poor. I talked about how our village (480 people) was split into the reasonably well off, and those who had nothing at all. I stated what we all knew, that the poor were easy to find, because they all lived on the dirt roads. That was the boundary. They had houses with dirt floors, outhouses and broken windows. I was polite when I described this, because I liked the people in my church - the paved road people. They're weren't rich, just better off. Their houses were well kept, they taught school or ran the post office or had a gas station or owned a functioning farm. They sang in choirs, and organized free bricks and labour to build our school, made a baseball field for us kids. My people.

    But I knew - we all knew - that we didn't cross that line onto the dirt roads. Unless you were after bootleg liquor, or women maybe - "running the roads" as they called it. Or maybe you needed extra hands for picking apples, or maybe some welding done. We all knew what went on in those homes. There was no way to say this all directly. But this is what I knew, what I saw.

    A family with 13 kids in a two room shack. The kids were called "the grubs" they were so dirty. Filthy. You'd hunt them, with rocks. Hit 'em - and hit 'em hard. Grubs. Another family, the father's name was exactly the same as that President you lost in 1963. Really. This guy drove truck. They lived in the top of an old chicken barn. The dried chicken shit still there, inches deep. That was their floor. With a big color tv set up on it. Both kids were his, a boy and a girl. They say he fucked 'em both. The boy used to drool out the window of the bus. The girl went to college. Second year, jumped out a window in her residence. A different kid, from down the road, used to come up to the farm a lot. Told my Dad he liked it at our place, asked if it was ok. Dad said sure. A few months later the kid comes up to our place with a gun. Goes out behind the barn and blows his head off. Another time, my Dad gets a call, this guy, 50 maybe, had been on a bender for a week. Was out of control. Everybody phoned my Dad when stuff like this happened. We drove down. The guy came raging out of the shed where they fixed equipment, screaming. Dad walked up to him, and the guy bit him. Tore a chunk right out of his arm. I drove with Dad to the hospital afterward. This other guy, I worked with him when we built the ball-field. Old guy. Nice. Sweet. Just never bothered much with fixing his place up. Tough as nails. Except, you let your house slide too far, and hit a real cold night, you might not make it. He didn't. Froze. And the really badly off families lived on the dirt roads that went up the mountain. The cops broke one incest ring up there, dozens of adults involved, going back generations. They gave this one kid 7 years in the Pen for incest. Billy. We knew him from school. He used to stand and bang his head against the concrete blocks. He wasn't really retarded, just slow. Spoke in a real soft whisper. Anyway, the whole thing's in the national papers, tv. Judge says to him, "I'm giving you 7 years because you have shown no remorse. Do you have anything to say for yourself?" Billy says, "What's remorse?" He meant it.

    I knew these kids and their families by name. In a village with lots of Anglos, but mostly Scots and Irish families, your name told it all. "Oh, the MacX's. They're a little touched in the head, y'know." Often, these labels held a lot of truth.

    But the church didn't really reach out to them. Not in any organized way. The best of our community helped, gave, did things worth respecting. Gave 'em work. Dried 'em out. Pulled shotguns out of their mouths. My Mum gave 'em clothes and sheets and took food for kids in her class, everyday. She wouldn't cook for us - not once in 18 years - but she'd make up extra lunches for the worst off. Even my Grandfather, miserable old bastard that he was, would drive around mid-Winter, hand out food, blankets, boots. One of these dirt-floor families decided to thank him by taking his last name and giving it to their new baby boy as a first name. When my Grandfather couldn't talk them out of it, he just sat and shook. His name... that family.

    We'd had one Minister a few years before, a genuinely great man. He'd tried to break this pattern. An Englishman. He was kind, educated, compassionate. Had this big swoop of black hair, curled up across his forehead. He'd spent the war bringing Jews out of Europe. A genuine hero. He and my Dad and a few others worked to erase the lines. But when the old guard in the church had had enough, the Minister fell prey to that odd thing our local Baptists do. He arrived one day at the church to find he'd been locked out. That was how we handed out pink slips.

    Anyway. I preached. Could barely look up. Said precisely what I felt moved to say. Had to say. I leaned on it fairly hard, but like I say, I wasn't a nasty kid. I knew how to talk politely, no pointing out people by name or calling anyone down. And though I'd never spoken in public before, I knew I could. Knew I was good. Just hadn't wanted to speak until then. When I looked up at one point, I remember seeing this one old woman, Bee, just crying and crying. Remembered that she'd come from the dirt roads. 

    I sat down when it was over. Relieved. Went outside after the service, and stood across from the Minister. Each of us was shaking hands with people as they passed between us. I remember noticing that he was shaking a lot more hands than me. Bee shook my hand though.

    My Dad got asked to stay behind for a quick Deacons meeting with the Minister. Later that afternoon, he asked me to go out for a walk with him. Told me the Deacons and the Minister had decided that I was never to be permitted to preach in our Church again. Never. Said it was all he could do to keep them from expelling me entirely.

    I was pretty upset. I asked him, "Don't any of them know the rest of Luke 4?" "No," he says. Which was pretty hard for me to take in. Because it had been Jesus' first recorded sermon. The one he preached in his hometown. The one where after he was done, his hometown congregation tried to stone him. And he said that famous line, "No prophet is accepted in his own country." Now, I was no Jesus, that was pretty clear. But I found it astonishing that the Deacons and the Minister didn't even seem aware of what they'd just done. So I asked my Dad again. He didn't look up for a while, and when he did, he just looked really sad. Said, "I don't know if they'll ever get it son."

    I stayed on at the Church. Showed up every week, for years afterward. Talked and and listened and worked along with them. I don't know why. It just felt like I'd said what I had to say, and that was enough.

    7 or 8 years later, that kid Billy gets out of prison. Found an old wreck of a car he wanted to fix up. Got a friend with a truck to tow him. Coming down the mountain, the brakes in the old wreck failed.

    ***

    Just like to thank everyone for the kind thoughts & condolences in recent weeks. I didn't have anything party political to say today, but it's been months since I posted, so thought I'd offer up this more personal/political piece posted earlier over at Billy's. 

    Not sure I'm into commenting on this piece - it's more just there for a Sunday read, if you're so inclined.

    But if you'd like more less politics and more ice buffalo stampede, trap-neuter-return, dead donkey art, all-you-can-eat pain meds, Anbarian archaeology and hand-to-hand combat over Marilyn and Wiki, it's over there. Along with a companion piece to this one.

    Thanks all.

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