Life Goes On

by Philip Gulley

  After supper, I walked down to the meetinghouse to check on things. It was very quiet, the temperature had dipped, and there was an icy sheen on the streets, so I picked my way carefully, staying to the snow so I wouldn’t slip.

  I let myself in the back door and walked through the meetinghouse, turning on lights as I went. I sat in the fifth row, on the right side, where I had sat with my parents and brother, Roger, in my growing-up years. Just behind Ellis and Miriam Hodge. I lifted a hymnal from the rack in front of me and thumbed through it, reading the words and singing a few songs to myself.

  Then I set the hymnal aside and closed my eyes, letting my other senses take over. The feel of the worn pew cushions, the smell of the meeting room—a mix of library smell, Murphy’s oil soap, and the little blue discs Asa Peacock had been hanging in the toilets for the past thirty years.

  The first things I learned about God I learned in this place, and at such an early age they had embedded themselves in my mind, like a child’s handprint in fresh cement. I’d since learned other things about God, but it was those early images that were the most firmly entrenched. The God of my childhood was a tribal God, the personal God of Harmony Friends Meeting, who busied Himself tending to our wants and concerns, most of them involving safe travel, gainful employment, good health, and, failing that, a quick, painless death in our sleep.

  As a teenager, it occurred to me that praying for God to do things that could be achieved with a little common sense and initiative was a misuse of God’s talent. Though Pastor Taylor had always encouraged us to stand during the silence to share our insights about God, this was one revelation I kept to myself, having discerned that most folks, once they’ve made up their minds about God, tend not to appreciate further enlightenment.

  Growing up, I had other thoughts about God, none of which I felt led to share with anyone else for fear of upsetting people. Like why, if God were so loving, He hated Communists and anyone else we happened to be against. Or why, if God were all-powerful, He allowed Dr. Neely’s little boy to die. Or why a God who cared for the sparrows sent a tornado to tear down Stanley Farlow’s barns, destroy his crops, and have the bank seize his farm. But I never asked these things, preferring instead to toe the party line and have the Friendly Women tell my mother what a fine young man I was.

  Unfortunately, once you get in the habit of forsaking your convictions in order to be liked, it’s hard to stop. I still catch myself nodding my head in agreement to things I haven’t believed in years, then later despising myself for my cowardice.

  Before I became a minister, I thought the hardest part would be writing a sermon every week. And at first it was, but then I built up a sufficient arsenal of clichés I could string together in a few hours’ time and deliver something that seemed profound. The hardest part, I was learning, was telling the truth, when telling the truth meant losing your job, uprooting your family and moving them two states away to a church that hadn’t heard of you. It added a whole new meaning to the biblical proverb that the truth would set you free.

  I heard the creak of the front door and turned as Miriam Hodge walked in, stamping her feet clean on the floor mat.

  I called out a greeting and asked what brought her into town.

  “I’m on a milk run,” she said. “I drove by and thought someone had left the lights on.”

  “Nope, just me.”

  “Well, sorry to disturb you, Sam. I’ll let you be.”

  “No, that’s fine. I was just woolgathering. Come on in.”

  She shrugged off her coat, hung it on a peg in the vestibule, and came and sat beside me. “So what is it that causes our pastor to be sitting in the meetinghouse all by himself at eight o’clock on a Sunday evening?”

  I smiled. “Oh, just the usual things.”

  She looked at me, a mix of curiosity and sympathy on her face. “I’ve been worried about you, Sam.”

  “How come?”

  “Well, I’ve known you all your life and I can’t ever recall you storming out of church.”

  “Is that what I did?”

  “You tell me, Sam.”

  I thought for a moment, watching tiny rivers of water run off Miriam’s boots and onto the hardwood floor. “Yes, maybe I did.”

  “So who are you upset with?”

  “The usual suspects—Dale and Fern and Hester and every other narrow-minded kook in this town.” I told her about the Finchum daughters breaking into the meetinghouse and Dale’s thoughts on the premillennial rapture. “What’s wrong with these people? Why can’t they think?”

  Miriam chuckled, then let out a brief sigh. “So you stormed out of church because you’re mad at them?”

  I don’t recall that I had ever been exasperated with Miriam Hodge, but her questions were starting to irritate me. “Well, of course I’m upset with them. Who wouldn’t be?”

  “Has your annoyance changed anything?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, Sam, do Dale and Fern and Hester appear to be changing their behavior in order to please you?”

  “Not so I’ve noticed.”

  “Then being upset with them isn’t working, is it, Sam?”

  “I suppose not.”

  We sat quietly, listening to the steady ticking of the Frieda Hampton memorial clock.

  “I don’t want to hurt your feelings,” Miriam said after a bit, “but could I make a suggestion?”

  “Sure.”

  “Why don’t you stop trying to change them and work on changing yourself instead?”

  “I’m not the one with the problem” I said, slightly peeved.

  “Sam, how old are you now?”

  “Forty-two.”

  “Don’t you think it’s time you started being the person God created you to be?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean it’s not working, Sam,” she said, pointing to the pulpit. “You stand up there and say things you don’t believe, just to make certain people happy, people who will never be happy anyway. Why not, instead of hiding your beliefs from everyone, just be who you are?”

  “It isn’t that easy,” I said. “I could lose my job.”

  “Sam, you know what I think? I don’t think you were mad at Dale and Fern and Hester last Sunday. I think you were mad at yourself. I think you’re ashamed that you’ve spent sixteen years in ministry kowtowing to everybody and his brother and caving in and never taking a stand on anything important.” She stomped her foot. “Grow up, Sam. Stop your whining and stop walking around like you’re the only one with a burden. Give up the illusion that everyone is going to like you and just grow up.” With that, Miriam Hodge rose from the pew and walked toward the front door. “Oh, and yes, Sam, I’m glad we had this little talk. Please give Barbara my love.” And then she left.

  If, when I had awakened that morning, someone had asked me how I believed my day would unfold, getting chewed out by Miriam Hodge would have been the last thing on my list.

  I wanted to chase after Miriam and tell her she was mistaken, but inwardly I knew she wasn’t, so I remained seated, angry and ashamed of myself. I was angry for having surrendered to spiritual mediocrity, for neglecting my obligation to speak the truth, insofar as I understood it, and ashamed for caring too much what others thought of me and too little about what God might think.

  I forced myself to reflect on Miriam’s words in spite of their sting. It was not the kind of sting I felt when Dale rebuked me for failing to toe some arbitrary religious line, but a rarer sting—the one I felt when the lash of truth ripped my soul. And in those moments, the fifth pew became for me a seat of revelation: I had forsaken the gospel. Not Dale’s gospel, miserly in its application, rigidly defining whom God loved and whom God didn’t. That kind of gospel merited forsaking, and it was time I said so.

  No, the gospel I’d forsaken was the one that served notice to the world, that refused to stay silent when people were crushed down and robbed of dignity and hope. I had learned about this gospel i
n seminary, but had abandoned it at the first sign of resistance, back in my first church, sixteen years ago. Now I was paying the price in self-contempt.

  “Starting now,” I promised God, “it’s full steam ahead.” I said it out loud, so God could hold me to it. “But Lord, if I get fired, You’ll have to provide for my family.” I said that out loud too, so I could hold God to it.

  And sitting there, in the fifth pew, I was baptized. Not the dunk-in-the-water kind of baptism, but the sense that I was immersed in God’s presence. A deep peace flooded over me, a calm assurance that all would be well, that the Dales of the world would not prevail.

  “Lord, fill me Your truth and grace,” I prayed. “And help me not be a jerk about it.”

  Then I rose to my feet, my loins girded for battle, ignorance and apathy my enemies, grace and truth my arms.

  Nineteen

  Dolores Makes a Break

  The month of December sped past. To my deep disappointment, Christmas came and went without a hitch. I had been hankering for the opportunity to be more bold and to speak out against ignorance wherever I found it. Unfortunately, Dale chose that month to be perfectly appropriate. He made no mention of reviving his annual progressive Nativity scene. He didn’t stand the Sunday before Christmas and ask people to raise their hands if they believed in the Virgin Birth. He didn’t declare that Santa was the Antichrist, that if you moved three letters around Santa spelled Satan.

  In fact, he had been unusually subdued the past several months. He had scaled down his salvation balloons ministry, cutting back the launches to once a month. Where he had once released hundreds of salvation balloons at a time, preferably when the wind would carry them toward Episcopalian strongholds, he now limited himself to a few dozen balloons and didn’t seem to care where they landed. He offered no explanation except that being around all that helium made him talk funny, but I suspect that was just an excuse.

  In the weeks before Christmas, he was curiously reserved during Sunday school. He stopped loading the hat with questions and for the first Sunday in memory didn’t bring his chart showing the time line for the Lord’s return.

  I worried he might be dying, but the more I thought about it, the more unlikely it seemed. Dale isn’t the type to slip quietly into the night. If he were dying, he’d want everyone to know. He would encourage everyone to reflect on the frailty of life and urge them to be saved, even though we’ve all been saved three or four times. He would boast about fighting the good fight and finishing the race and keeping the faith, how he was looking forward to the crown of righteousness. He would make his death the focus of our church, so that when he died we would be secretly relieved.

  When New Year’s passed and he remained unusually passive, I went to visit him. I didn’t call first, which I usually do. I was driving past, saw Dale’s car in their driveway, and on a whim pulled in behind it. In the four years I’d been their pastor, I’d never visited the Hinshaws. Seeing Dale at church was enough fellowship for me; I didn’t crave more.

  A variety of concrete animals were arrayed across their front yard, along with a wishing well, a windmill, and a plywood cutout of a man leaning against a tree fishing with the phrase “I will make you fishers of men” painted down one leg.

  I rang the doorbell and from deep within the bowels of their home I could hear the faint strains of the Doxology. When I was a teenager, a man from the Good News Doorbell Company of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, had come through our town selling doorbells guaranteed to inspire the saints and convict the wayward of their sins.

  The speaker for our annual revival had fallen ill when the doorbell salesman happened along, which the elders at Harmony Friends interpreted as a sign from God, so they invited him to preach our revival. He spoke about the thousands of people added to the Kingdom through the ministry of the Good News doorbells. He read several stirring testimonials, one from a Fuller Brush salesman trapped in a life of sin, who happened to ring a Good News doorbell, hear “Just as I Am,” think of his sainted mother, break down in tears, give his heart to the Lord, and become a missionary serving in Africa among the headhunters. It was a stirring account, leaving grown men reaching for their handkerchiefs.

  In addition to the Doxology, extra doorbell hymns could be purchased each month, with appropriate hymns for Christmas, Easter, and the Fourth of July. Dale had bought the entire set, which had resulted in children all over town ringing his doorbell each month so they could hear the tunes. Several of the children made up alternative lyrics that were less than godly, driving Dale to distraction. He would charge out of his house and try to catch them, but I always got away. I was young and nimble and, though he says he’s forgiven me, I sometimes wonder.

  Now the only hymn that still played was the Doxology, Dale’s least favorite hymn because it smacks of Catholicism. It ran through two verses before he opened the door. He hadn’t shaved that morning, wore wrinkled clothes, and was bleary-eyed. He looked like Uly Grant’s father used to look after an evening at the Buckhorn bar.

  His appearance so startled me, my pastoral tact deserted me. “What’s wrong, Dale? You look terrible.”

  His grizzled chin began to tremble. “It’s Dolores. She left me.”

  “She what?”

  “She left me. I woke up this morning and there was a note on the table and her suitcase is gone. Her sister came and got her.”

  “Just to visit though, right? She didn’t leave-you leave you, did she?”

  Dale nodded his head miserably, then began to weep.

  My pastoral instincts kicked in. I put my arm around him, steered him into the living room to the couch, then sat down beside him. “Dale, let’s start at the beginning.”

  “She’s been real mad at me. I gave our anniversary money to the Mighty Men of God and then I burned the car, and now she’s sayin’ she’s made a New Year’s resolution to leave me.”

  I sat quietly, not knowing what to say. Dale continued to cry with phlegmy heaves and occasional snorts, pausing occasionally to wipe his nose on his shirt sleeve. I edged closer to him and patted his back. “Look on the bright side, Dale. People never keep their New Year’s resolutions. She’ll be back before you know it.”

  But she didn’t return that day, or the next. I stopped by Dale’s house each morning to fix his breakfast and encourage him along, but it wasn’t helping. He’d gone three days without shaving and hadn’t changed his clothes. He looked as if he’d been shipwrecked and washed up on the shore. He wasn’t eating, except for the tiny bit of scrambled eggs I forced upon him each morning.

  On the third day, at Dale’s request, I phoned Dolores at her sister’s house in the city and urged her to return, which she refused to do. “It’s been like this forty-one years, Sam. He thinks only of himself, and I’m worn out. It took me ten years to save that money for our anniversary cruise, and he gave it away without even askin’ me. I’m fed up.” Then she hung up the phone.

  “What’d she say?” Dale asked. “Is she comin’ home?”

  “Probably not anytime soon,” I said. “Dale, we need to talk.”

  I tried to think what I could tell him without violating pastoral confidentiality. “I have the feeling Dolores is very upset with you. Do you understand why she might feel that way?”

  He nodded his head glumly. “She’s real mad about me givin’ away our cruise money.” He let out a sob and wiped his nose on his sleeve, which, after three days of wiping, was rather unsightly. My stomach rolled.

  I decided to postpone our conversation and get him cleaned up. “But first things first,” I said, helping him to his feet. “Let’s get you in the shower and get some fresh clothes on you.” I helped him to the bathroom, turned on the water for a shower, then went to his bedroom, pulled a clean shirt and a pair of pants from their hangers and laid them on the bathroom countertop.

  “Okay, Dale, you take your shower and go ahead and shave and put on these clean clothes. And don’t forget to change your underwear. Trust me, you’ll feel 1
00 percent better.”

  I let myself out, then went to my office, and phoned Dolores again, pleading with her to return. “He’s really going downhill,” I told her. “He needs you.”

  “I can’t talk now,” she said. “My sister and I are getting massages today. I might call you later, but don’t wait up.”

  Three days away from her husband and she’s already letting some stranger rub his paws all over her, I thought. I was learning loads about Dolores Hinshaw, not all of it good.

  Then she hung up again, something I was getting used to.

  I sat at my desk, pondering what the extent of my involvement in the Hinshaw marriage should be. Counseling wasn’t my strong suit, and the idea of spending quality time with Dale wasn’t all that appealing.

  I stopped by each day that week to check on Dale. He wasn’t doing any better. Uninterested in all hobbies and activities, he confided that he hadn’t launched a salvation balloon the entire week. “I’ve lost my heart for the lost,” he said. “I just sit around and think about Dolores.”

  “She’ll be back,” I assured him, though I wasn’t persuaded myself. “She just needed some time away.”

  He came to church by himself that Sunday. He slipped in after the start of worship and left before it ended. He sat slumped in his pew, defeated and worn, a broken man.

  My phone rang early the next day. “How’s Dale?” It took me a moment to figure out who was asking.

  “Dolores, perhaps you should call him and ask him yourself. I’m sure he’d be happy to hear from you.”

  “Can’t today,” she said. “My sister and I are going to Louisville.”

  “What’s in Louisville?”

  “The riverboat casino,” she said. “I had a hundred dollars left in our cruise fund and it’s burning a hole in my pocket.”

  She was out of control.

  Ironically, scarcely a week after I’d worked up the courage to voice my liberality, I found myself reverting to the theology of my childhood. “Dolores, as your pastor, I must say that you’re on spiritually shaky ground. You need to come home to your husband.”