Traditional Gravity

by Stephen Armstrong

  Chapter Eleven

  “Tonight's service is supposed to be a very non-traditional Good Friday service," my mom informed us on the way to the church. "There are going to be interactive prayer stations, and you get to move around. It's supposed to be very postmodern."

  "What does postmodern mean?" I asked.

  "It means they're going to light a lot of candles," Jordan said, a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

  They did light a lot of candles. Candles blazed atop two rectangular tables in the foyer, and rows of candles, precariously placed on the floor, dotted the hallway leading to the fellowship hall. Numerous glowing candelabras lit the sanctuary. Somber instrumental music played softly in the background.

  We were each given a rather bulky program upon entering. A Celtic style cross, with the words 'redeem' on the left side of the cross and 'Restore' on the right side, adorned the cover. I paid particular attention to the word 'redeem'. My mom chose this same word to describe the way her father opened up to his family again after the war.

  We sat in our usual pew, four rows from the front, right beside a window. I glanced to the back of the sanctuary, just like I did at my grandparents' church. Samantha wasn't walking through these doors.

  Glumly, I surveyed the rest of the sanctuary to see if I recognized anyone. The congregation had grown by at least a hundred since I last regularly attended in high school. Most of the people from my day no longer came. Thus, I could only identity a handful of people.

  Five or six silhouettes walked across the stage. A slowly played piano broke the meditative silence. After a few notes from the piano, a lovely female voice began singing about God was the remedy for broken people. Eventually her voice and the piano were joined by the quiet back-up of the guitars and drums. The song retreated back into the verse, climbed to new heights for the chorus, quieted down for a bridge, and then nearly reached rocking out status on the final strand of the song. The female singer proceeded to pray as the final strains of the guitar sounded. She invited God's presence into the room that night, and asked for a deeper vision of who He was.

  I braced myself to endure another church service. Though a veteran at sitting through church services, I was a little out of practice. I had reached the dreaded status of being an Easter/Christmas church goer. My kind confounded Pastors and church leaders, forcing them to search for new ways to bring us into a more faithful relationship to the church. Actually, there were times when I wanted the message to compel me. I was not a hardened atheist, and my intellect and personality were up for grabs. Even that night, though I didn't think Jesus was the answer I was longing for, and hoped He wasn't, I would have at least listened if given a reason to conclude otherwise.

  The Pastor took the stage. He held a wireless microphone in one hand and a Bible in the other. I didn't know him; he had just been installed in January. He seemed really young, probably just a few years older than Jordan, though it was hard to tell in the dim light. One look at the Pastor made me think maybe he could tell me something I didn't already know. Not because he was young, but because his eyes seemed sharp, like they saw through the endless complexities of life.

  "Normally on Good Friday, we look to the cross and contemplate the awfulness of our sin and the awesome love of Jesus Christ, who died in our place. It is a night for us to mourn for things we have done that have injured the heart of our God, and repent of those actions so we can live lives more pleasing to Him. But tonight I want us to look at something else that lies at the heart of the cross - redemption and restoration."

  He paused for a moment, then walked to a different part of the stage. The words 'redemption' and 'restoration' were projected on a large screen next to the stage. I contemplated their meaning as the Pastor started speaking again.

  "Tonight we're going to consider the ways that we need to be redeemed and restored - from sin, death, brokenness and emptiness, the traditional gravities we find at work in our lives. We have four prayer stations set-up, beginning in the foyer area and continuing in the fellowship hall. You do not have to do the stations in order, and you can come and go as you please. All of the directions you need will be found in the program in your hands. But if you do have some difficulties, there is an attendant at each station who can provide you further direction. After twenty minutes, we'll reassemble in the sanctuary to close in worship. Let me pray for us as go into the presence of Christ tonight."

  After the Pastor prayed, I followed the crowd of people back toward the fellowship hall of the church. I would rather have listened to a sermon. My singular goal was to remain inconspicuous, and anonymity would've been easier to attain seated in a crowd.

  The first station was already packed. Jordan walked past that one and stopped at Station Three, where the fewest number of people clustered. I decided to follow Jordan to whatever station he went to.

  Station Three centered on death. A laptop on a small table cycled through a slide-show of images of people looking like they were facing death, combined with different Bible verses about death. A large sheet of white paper lay on the floor in front of the table. The program instructed us to write the fears, concerns or anxieties that death evoked. Though that seemed simple enough, I chose to watch and not partake.

  Jordan knelt on the ground, writing down word after word on the paper. I half suspected that he was doing this intentionally because he didn't want me following him around the entire night. What was he worried about death for, anyway? He wasn't the one going to hell. Annoyed with Jordan, I moved on to the next station - brokenness.

  A mass of wooden blocks lay scattered across the table, as if a giant tower had been toppled. The foundation of a new structure seemed to be rising next to the rubble. We were supposed to ask God to fix what was broken in our lives, while we added blocks to the building - an act of faith that God could repair us. I picked up a block and thought about my life. Everything in my life was broken. In fact, in my eyes, life itself was broken. I didn't need a prayer station to tell me that. Then I considered Samantha; her life had been broken by a decision she could never change. I thought of Wendy too, maybe because Samantha brought her up the night before, or maybe because Wendy had never completely left my thoughts. If these blocks represented Wendy's life, I was the one who broke her. I tossed the block back on the table.

  I meandered over to the next station - sin. Of course it was. This was Good Friday, the high holy day for manufactured Christian guilt. While I agreed something called 'sin' existed, I didn't believe it could be found all of the places Christians pointed to. If not for the middle aged attendant, I would have sidestepped the station completely. Unsolicited, she handed me a pair of plastic, novelty hand cuffs. The cuffs were intended to symbolize my slavery to sin. I must have looked like an egregious sinner to her, because she didn't hand out cuffs to anyone else.

  Remembering my prime directive to be inconspicuous, I smiled begrudgingly and clasped the cuffs around my wrists. I bowed my head for a token few seconds to express remorse for my pride, sloth, dishonesty, lust and whatever else I was supposed to feel bad about.

  After what seemed like an acceptable amount of fake contemplation, I presented my wrists to the attendant.

  "Be free in the name of Jesus Christ," she declared quietly, while jostling the key in the cuffs to unlock them. They didn't unlock. A look of mild panic formed in her face as she struggled with the cuffs. I did my best to remain patient by avoiding eye contact with her.

  As I watched people mill about the prayer stations around me, a strange unrest grew in my soul until it birthed a subversive revelation. I was a sinner. And not just an ordinary, "Nobody's perfect" kind of sinner, but the kind that destroyed other people. I treated the women in my life terribly, especially Wendy. Freezing her out with no explanation or compassion never seemed ideal, but I managed to explain it away with the idea that life was meaninglessness, and that we were enveloped in some greater entropy outside of our control.

  The station attendant finally managed to u
nlock my cuffs. "Be free in the name of Christ," she repeated, flashing me a triumphant smile.

  I meandered over to the final station - emptiness. Again, the attendant forced me to participate by handing me a cup filled with confetti. These bits of papers represented various ways people attempted to fill their lives. For me, this meant women. Relationships and sex seemed to be the only things I earnestly sought after, yet they never brought lasting significance. I dumped the paper out of the cup, symbolically renouncing building my life on such an empty foundation. Playing along, I presented the cup to the station attendant, who filled up the cup with water. This represented living water - the eternal life offered by Jesus - which I was supposed to drink as an act of faith that Jesus would fill me with His life.

  I stared at the cup and considered all it symbolized - that life had meaning, Jesus could make me never thirst again, and that I could actually feel fulfilled. It seemed sacrilegious to drink when I didn't even believe one of those things was true. A drop of water cascaded down my arm to the floor below me. It was coming from the cup. More beads of water dripped from the bottom. Apparently, the cup had a hole in it. I smiled slightly and shook my head.

  I placed the cup back down on the table and wandered away from the fellowship hall, back to the education wing of the church so I could be alone. The education wing housed children's classes, as well as the church's small youth group. The same thin, brownish carpet covered the floors, and the walls were painted an institutional off white color. When I reached the intersection of two hallways, I turned right, where my High School Sunday School class used to meet. I flicked on a light in the darkened room, expecting to see the cheap, second hand furniture that had been donated to my sometimes rowdy, frequently messy class. I did not expect to find the adult man who sat in the corner, and nearly jumped.

  "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know anyone else was here," I apologized.

  Then I realized it was the Pastor. He blinked as his eyes adjusted to the light. When they did, he regarded me sternly.

  "Don't worry, it's no problem," he replied in a muted tone. The intensity of his eyes suggested he was trying to identify me. "Aren't you Mary's and Charles' boy?" he asked, before I could excuse myself.

  "Yeah." My mom probably told the Pastor about her apostate son Evan. I imagined they interceded for me frequently at prayer meetings - "God we pray for Evan. He seems so lost lately."

  "Please call me Tim." He held his hand out to me. I guess he preferred not to attach his title to his name. His informal attitude matched his casual attire - a graphic tee, and jeans.

  I completed the handshake. "Evan."

  Tim sat back in his chair. He didn't smile pleasantly or say anything further for the moment. Finally, after sweeping his short, but unruly hair off of his forehead, he asked me, "What was your experience like going through the prayer stations?"

  "What has my mom told you about me?" I demanded, a tad too aggressively.

  "Nothing that I can remember. She might have talked about you before, but since I'm new around here, I've had a lot of names and faces to learn. I've haven't spoken much with Mary or Charles."

  "I guess the service was pretty good," I answered, after convincing myself Tim harbored no hidden agenda.

  "But what did it mean to you?"

  "I'm not sure," I replied. My ambivalence seemed certain to prompt a follow-up question.

  "Did you learn anything? About yourself? About God?"

  Under normal circumstances, I would have never touched that question, especially not at the behest of a Pastor. However, in that moment, feeling so conflicted about everything, I said much more than I would've to Jordan or my mom.

  "I guess you could say I learned that I'm not the person I thought I was. I'm much more broken and flawed than I realized." I paced the room a bit. Disclosing these thoughts, though out of character, was cathartic. No one had heard any of these thoughts before. So I kept talking. "Recently, I came to believe that life had no meaning or purpose. Now I think that maybe I was the problem all along. Or maybe both things are true - I don't know."

  Tim could have moved our conversation forward in so many different ways after that revelation. I struggled to discern his opinion of me from his blank face.

  "We are often our own worst enemies," he said, after a period of silence. "Tell me Evan, do you want life to have meaning?"

  I shrugged. "Sort of. If there isn't, I feel like I'd be okay, after I got used to the idea." I had already committed to revealing everything, so there was no reason to stop now. "I'm just afraid there is some kind of meaning, but I can't find it." Last Sunday night, it wasn't meaninglessness that caused me to count the steps to my back porch door. The threat of an unknown purpose that always eluded me was the specter that haunted me most.

  Tim gazed at me thoughtfully, and then smiled wanly. "For God has put eternity in the heart of man, but he cannot grasp what God has done from beginning to end." He looked as though he had said something profound. The words felt familiar. "It's from Ecclesiastes. I thought of it now when you were talking. It was like the writer of Ecclesiastes was haunted by meaning, by the presence of God, but he couldn't grasp it, couldn't comprehend it."

  I nodded. I could have written that verse myself.

  Tim's eyes grew razor sharp. "What would convince you that there is meaning in life?"

  Good question. After all this time, what did I hope to find anyway? A relationship with a woman that actually worked out? No, I wanted more than that. Finding a transcendent love that defied death itself? That seemed more like it. Even then, I was uncertain it would be enough. For starters, I wanted something smaller that I had only just realized in the last half hour.

  "If I could change," I said softly. "That would be a good start."

  Tim nodded. "Change is hard to come by - much harder than you'd think. But when it does happen, it begins with realizing something about yourself - usually something you don't want to admit. So maybe you're on your way Evan."

  "But I'm not sure I can change unless I can know for sure that life is more than just an endless cycle."

  "What do you mean?" Tim asked, raising an eyebrow.

  "You know, you meet someone, fall in love. But gradually over time all of the passion fades, and you either break apart, or spend the rest of your life pressing on and trying hard to make it work, even if doesn't bring you joy anymore."

  "Seems like a catch twenty-two to me. Maybe you never get to that point until you become the kind of person who can make the relationship work."

  I frowned. "So then which I do work on first?"

  "Both - one feeds the other. The more you believe life has meaning, the more you'll change for the better. The more you change for the better, the more meaning you'll find in life."

  I found Tim's words surprisingly reassuring, though I still waited for him to wield the "Jesus hammer". He had shown remarkable restraint so far, considering I gave him the perfect set-up to use it.

  "For the meantime Evan, even though you're not sure this meaning you're looking for really does exist, it would be better for you to live like it does. Maybe you just need to keep moving toward the places you do see meaning."

  "How do I know where to move?" I asked. "Where do I look for meaning? And please don't tell me Jesus, because I've heard all about Him, and don't tell me what the Bible says, either."

  "So no Jesus and no Bible, huh?" Tim seemed amused by my demand. "Are you familiar with Victor Frankl's work on the meaning of man?"

  I shook my head. He sounded like some kind of theologian.

  "Frankl was a survivor of Auschwitz. He wrote that there are three things everyone needs to find meaning in life. The first is deep, loving relationships, and not the romantic kind."

  My life had somehow become bereft of relationships, and not just of the romantic variety. I possessed no real friendships and my bonds with my family were all substantially frayed.

  "The second is meaningful projects that improve the lives of others.
"

  I definitely didn't have that. No one could have mistaken my job for a 'meaningful project'.

  "The third is a redemptive view of suffering. People need to believe there is a reason and a purpose for the bad things that happen to them in their lives. Otherwise, their sense of purpose will break down, because bad things invariably do happen."

  Compared to someone who survived a World War II concentration camp, I hadn't suffered much. Besides, just about everything intensely negative in my life stemmed from my own doing.

  "I think Frankl was mostly right. If you have the things he's talking about, you will find meaning in life. I'll pray that you will." With that Tim bowed his head and closed his eyes. His lips moved slightly, though he didn't say anything audible.

  "What are you doing?"

  "I'm praying," he said tersely, not opening his eyes.

  Obviously he was praying. Christians said they would pray for others all of the time, but they usually didn't do so on the spot. I looked toward the door, planning my escape, but stayed out of compunction. For some reason, it felt extremely unsettling to stand by while someone silently petitioned God for me. Another moment passed. He lifted his head up and opened his eyes again.

  "Okay, I prayed for you," he said, as though this should have made me feel better.

  "What did you pray for?"

  "That you would find meaning."

  "In Jesus?" I asked suspiciously.

  "Just in general."

  I couldn't imagine Tim could speak or pray about life's meaning without implicitly including Jesus.

  He looked down at his watch. "I guess it's time to start wrapping up the stations. Please excuse me." Tim stood up and walked past me into the hallway outside. I followed him out after replaying our conversation for a few seconds. He certainly wasn't like most other Pastors I had met. Tim didn't qualify as the nurturing, gracious type. However, he didn't lecture me, even though I opened myself up for one. In my mind, that was a good thing.

  I emerged from the education wing. The candles still burned at the stations, but the crowd had left the fellowship hall. Even Jordan was finished. Alone, I revisited the emptiness station. I picked up an empty cup and filled it with water. Slowly I drank, an act of pure faith that meaning existed and I would do everything possible to move toward it. Maybe along the way, I would find the ability to change, as well as the purpose that always managed to slip through my fingers.

  As I rejoined my family in the sanctuary for the closing song, it felt like I needed to do something decisive to move toward the meaning. I could see at least two options of what to do next, but neither offered any guarantees.

  "What did you think of the service tonight?" my mom surveyed us on the way home.

  "I thought it was good. Very postmodern," said Jordan, as if he had told an inside joke. None of the rest of us understood it, or laughed.

  "What about you, Evan?" she looked at me expectantly, undoubtedly hoping I was now a saved man.

  "It was good." In a manner of speaking, maybe I was a saved man. Only time would tell.

  For the rest of the night I formulated what I would do next. I had resolved to live like life possessed an inherent purpose. The question was, would I be able to find a path in my life that offered significance, or would I merely descend back into emptiness?