SUNDAY SCHOOL
Nobody…
Nobody went to church in my house. Not even on Sunday.
Not while I was growing up. Not ever.
My grandmother had been placed in a convent when she turned thirteen. It was a few days after her first period ended.
Her stories about how she was treated by the nuns chilled me.
She spoke in an awed whisper about Jesus and her personal Bible was a beautiful miniature book made of polished ivory and the figure of Mary was carved into the cover - it emerged upward (bas relief).
My fingers touched her face and she seemed to smile.
Grandmother sat me in her lap and read her favorite Bible verses aloud when I was a small child. Her finger pointed as she read word by word…slowly…
This is how I learned to read while still very young.
As Jesus spoke the strangest thing occurred - His words turned red!
“Why don’t we go to church?” I asked.
Oddly enough, I got my answer through personal experience. I’ll tell you about that now… …
(1953)
In my front yard, hanging from the limb of my favorite tree, listening to a hundred cicadas scraping away in the hot summer sunshine, a rumbling came. I must have been six years old.
A large yellow bus rolled under the shade trees and squeaked to a stop.
A burly stranger emerged. He stalked straight over to my tree as though he meant to startle me. This he surely did!
I had been cautioned: never talk to strangers!
His bright yellow bus wobbled with cantankerous children whose clamors now reached me clear across the grassy patch of yard.
Black letters stenciled along the vehicle’s side read:
VACATION BIBLE SCHOOL
I slipped off the tree branch and landed like a spooked cat on my feet as the large man approached and spoke.
"Which church do you attend, son?"
It was unthinkable that I not answer. "None!" I blurted.
I wasn't sure why a sense of shame crept over me. I had a vague notion everybody probably ought to go to church. Maybe I'd heard kids at school talk about whatever church they attended. Yet, shame it was that welled up inside of me. I trembled.
The bus driver blotted out the sun. I was standing in his shadow as he spoke in a low, gentle voice.
"Your parents don't make you go to Sunday school?"
There was wonderment in his tone. I felt fevered heat welling up in my cheeks.
"I don't have a Dad. My parents divorced." I whispered.
My entire world was revealed in one nervous sentence! Why had I said it?
In my sullen imagination, I was a child both inferior and defective. A boy without a father may be thought of as a bastard, you see.
I was confessing the last thing I wanted any soul to know or suspect!
The school bus man studied me the way kids peer at spiders using a magnifying glass and an attitude of detached concern.
"I need to speak to your Mom. Do you live in this house?" He gestured.
His voice left no room for anything but the truth.
"I live here, uh-huh."
I pointed at my grandparent’s hand-built house resting on concrete blocks behind him.
The dark shadow of a man loped over to the door at the top of three steps.
Before he could knock, I noticed my grandma positioned behind the screen door. She spoke a greeting to the man.
I really didn't want to hear anything they said to each other. If I didn’t move or listen or think about what was being said. It. I wished to be invisible; like hiding under the bedcovers from a monster.
Their adult conversation was brief. I hadn't moved even half an inch.
He returned to my side.
"I spoke to your grandma telling her all children must attend their Creator’s house on Sabbath. Listen, I'll pick you up next Sunday. See that bus over there? I’ll arrive at 9 am sharp; unless I’m early or late. Be clean. Be ready.”
No smile. I was his captive.
He gave me a look that seemed to say, 'Do you understand English?'
I just shrugged and nodded.
"I'm called Brother Branch." He continued staring at me expecting something.
I determined to hold my breath and slip from notice as soon as possible.
"And, what is your name?" He finally asked with quiet exasperation.
"Oh, um - Terry."
He cocked his head a bit allowing my words to slide into memory. Then, he nodded, turned, and left.
As abruptly as the incident began he was back on the bus. A rude sound ground away at the gears until every part of the yellow mirage vanished in a shimmering puff of dust and smoky sunlight.
Immediately I let out a lung full of pent-up air in a slow whoosh, trembling as though a big dog had wandered onto the property and opted not to bite me.
I felt a little relief.
I was surrounded by a copse of rustling green branches overhead whispering warnings in the wind. Under a canopy of trees. My world.
Something still bothered me. A sense of dread welled up.
I realized for the first time - I was obligated to God. I was obligated to God…
One week to the day, I stood on my front porch, eyes scanning the highway.
I was a five-year-old boy all slicked up in an uncomfortable white shirt and slacks; I nervously waited. Inside my pocket was a rolled-up dollar bill my Maw-maw offered, which she explained was for contribution or the collection plate sure to come.
Inside my head felt like a hive of angry bees.
All I knew is I was obligated. No escape. God was coming for me in a rickety yellow bus.
Until now, my Sundays were good for swinging on a long rope and yodeling my Tarzan yell. Not today. My life no longer belonged only to me.
I had no notion of what to expect or what was expected of me.
Bashful around strangers and without charm or guile, I was the very portrait of a pathetic child who, it seems, somehow appears to beg to be teased.
Photographs of me until the age of eighteen portray a hang dog countenance.
Most adult strangers greeted me for the first time with “What’s wrong; are you okay?” I seldom was. I was a wild child with no brothers, sisters, or playmates.
Vibrations in the air preceded gear torture as the manhandled yellow vehicle coughed into view. I trudged forward; a prisoner to the gallows.
The mouth of the beast opened and swallowed me whole.
The bus ride to Brother Branch’s church was merriment for the kids who were teasers and bullies. I was taunted for having a “girl’s name.” Terry. I had been named after a comic strip character. He was a jet pilot in TERRY and the PIRATES, supposedly my father’s favorite. In the early 50s masculinity was the most important trait a boy was expected to possess and exude. Now suddenly, I was being told my name belonged only to girls!
The little morons of the Sunday School bully squad were good little Christians one and all. Which is to say - my first impression was no different from any of the mean kids on my block in my neighborhood. What was that scripture my Maw Maw read?
Suffer the children.
I grasped the passenger strap standing as close to the bus driver as I could manage.
Brother Branch completely ignored all screaming and horseplay as no adult I’d ever witnessed! One bellow from his barrel chest surely would have quelled the riot and sent the flock scattering as lambs fleeing a bolt of lightning.
No such luck. Brother Branch drove furiously across every terrain as though testing the aptitude of guardian angels.
All passengers were disgorged and shepherded into a crowded Sunday school classroom upon arrival. The interior room revealed itself as ordinary and secular in every way…
Except for one jarring detail…
Sunday school’s walls stood littered with dozens of badly colored Bible characters tacked everywhere. Helter-skelter assaulted my wondering eyes!
Religious-themed coloring books got passed around our table with boxes of ill-treated crayons heaped into a community pile.
This bounty was swiftly set upon by filthy hands and nimble fingers. Purple and green Bible heroes from tiny hallucinating Christian boys appeared the norm.
Floating halos suggested Jesus’ head was the object of a celestial ring toss!
I recalled the shortest verse of scripture in Maw-maw’s Catholic Bible:
“Jesus wept.”
My drawing of Daniel in the den of lions wore a sympathetic expression of confident woe.
Our Lady of the Blue Hair and twinkly glasses proclaimed to us that our talent was miraculous. Then, as wretched swine, she herded us squealing into the main Church auditorium for adult services!
Blood of the lamb
My first interior glimpse of the church slammed into my brain; stained glass and candles, numinous artifacts, and solemn faces in service to Almighty God! I sniffed the acrid mixture of old lady perfume, cheap aftershave, and little boy sweat. Bedazzling pearl necklaces, beehive hairdos, cheek rouge makeup like portraits in a fevered dream.
Impressions were clear and direct: these people were unhinged. Why spend a perfectly good Sunday posed in uncomfortable clothing standing and sitting and standing again? Why would God need this or expect it of us, I wondered.
An adult beside me offered to share her Hymnal. I was not familiar with such a masculine word! I rolled it around in my mind: Him Null.
Opening the gilded songbook, a row of serious poetic verses proclaimed an endless caterwaul of Praises.
Organ music made me mindful of Grandma’s radio soap operas. Pepper Young’s Family, Search for Tomorrow, The Guiding Light.
These TV shows were sponsored by Ajax, the foaming cleanser. (Wash the dirt right down the drain.) I could sing that.
The collection plate passed like a bucket brigade at a fire. I tugged the sweaty dollar bill from my pocket to quench the flames of hell. All the while, up at the lectern, a voluminous voice volleyed praises while admonishing goodness and forbearance from sin.
Thoughts dulled and somehow I drifted until I beheld the entire congregation rapt in intense scrutiny of the floor! No. It was a moment of prayer!
“Why look down when speaking to God who is surely up?” I wondered.
Church folk screwed their eyes intensely shut. Some gripped the Bible in their wrinkled hands as thrumming energy caught the air.
What was coming?
The mood changed ominously. Spindly arms waved about, then, a swaying of bodies, gibbering voices: calling, answering, rattling. Soon, lowing noises erupted as shivering folk dropped to the floor.
“(Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?)
The Saints smiled gravely and they said: “He’s come.” (Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?)
Walking lepers followed, rank on rank, Lurching bravos from the ditches dank,
Drabs from the alleyways and drug fiends pale— Minds still passion-ridden, soul-powers frail.— Vermin-eaten saints with the moldy breath, Unwashed legions with the ways of Death—
(Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?)”
What kind of weird song or poetry was this?
My head was pounding! A dizzy fear suddenly engulfed my soul.
A strong hand pulled at me, jerking me out of the pew and out behind a curtain.
The next moment I found myself alone in a small, cramped cloakroom. Someone entered. Brother Branch was removing his cassock, shirt, and trousers. All the while, his voice thrummed and wavered as the organ swelled. The congregation moaned.
Now, the echoes!
(General William Booth Enters Into Heaven, music by Charles Ives, lyric by Vachel Lindsey.)
What sort of religious group could this possibly be? Flabbergasting utterances, weird movements of body twitching all around me …
It was almost a snake pit of writhing movement, ululations, and wide-eyed frenzy.
Tambourines clattered fast staccato rhythm and clapping, feet stomping, and singing clattered against stain glass and volleyed against hardwood pews.
Was I standing on a battlefield? Am I a Christian soldier now?
Is this the reason nobody in my family ever went to church? Now at last - I understood1
Are you washed? Are you washed?
Are you washed? IN THE BLOOD?
On the bus ride back to my house I was still shaking. What in the world was that all about? I knew one thing for certain; I would not return to Church! To me, the Sabbath was a kind of vile Halloween. I solemnly understood those three words: Fear-of-God.
The bus ground to a stop.
God roared off spitting gravel and smoke while I stood stunned at my own curbside. My neighborhood did not look the same one I’d left - but it was. It was me. I had suddenly changed.
Inside my house, Maw-maw softly inquired of the day’s experience.
I shuffled a bit and squirmed as though my skin were clothed in nettles. If I lied and said it was okay, surely the whole ordeal would be revisited upon me.
If I said I hated it, I would offend God.
“I’d much rather spend the day with you, Maw-maw!”
Her face flickered with surprised pleasure.
It would be another six years before I’d enter another house of worship.
It wouldn’t be a church - it would be a Kingdom Hall …
My one trip to Sunday School was nothing like I’d imagined. There was no white dove descending out of heaven for me. I didn’t realize what had actually occurred.
