Advent was just one of the things they didn’t
tell him about at the Baptist seminary. They also never told him about the
lectionary, liturgy, Epiphany, Lent, or Ash Wednesday. All the high church
stuff. It was too close to Catholicism.
When he first moved to San Antonio he saw a
woman with a black smudge on her forehead. He discretely let her know about it.
“You’ve got something on your forehead,” he
said softly.
The woman looked surprised. “It’s ashes.”
Foy was confused by her reply. “Ashes, you
know, whatever. I was just letting you know that something was on your
forehead.”
He learned about liturgical worship at a local
Episcopal church where he liked attending evening services and also sitting
alone in the sanctuary praying and sometimes dozing off.
That was before his own church had a building,
back when he used to study and read at Ben’s office. The Episcopal church was on
his way home, and sometimes he would call Jenny and tell her he would be late so
he could stop off for prayers. Thursday evenings were nice because Sam would
administer the sacrament of unction. On Thursdays there was sometimes twenty
people present. They would line up at the altar, and Sam would come by anointing
their foreheads with oil that smelled like flowers.
Foy had never seen anything like it. The only
healing services he knew about were the embarrassing ones on television, where
people threw walkers and canes down the aisles, and the ministers slapped their
palms against people’s foreheads. But somehow in the Episcopal church healing
seemed right and good. He loved kneeling at the altar. He felt like a regular
person and not just a minister. That was the nicest part of it, kneeling there
incognito, waiting for Sam to touch his forehead.
There was an special prayer for unction, and
Sam said it to each supplicant. You could hear his prayers from down the line.
At first a little baritone rumble like distant thunder, then a rolling murmur,
then words you could understand; then he was right in front of you. His words
seemed powerful because of the repetition. Like chanting. His finger would make
the sign of the cross on your forehead, and it was all done for you. It was only
for you. Yours.
Later Foy would touch the oily spot on his
forehead and smell his finger, breathing deeply the flowers and feeling it make
a difference inside his head.
Sometimes he slipped into the sanctuary and was
the only one there. He would sit about four rows back and stare at the altar and
the cross suspended above it by wires. The quiet was always a surprise. The
noises from outside seemed to be coming from another world.
There was another man who sometimes came to
pray. He seemed capable of extraordinary concentration and would sit, lost in
his prayers for long periods of time. Foy was always looking around to see what
everyone else was doing. He didn’t like that about himself.
After seeing each other five or six times, the
man came over and introduced himself.
“Hi, my name’s Robert. I’ve been seeing you
here a lot lately, so I thought I would come and meet you. You’re not a member
of the church, are you? I’ve never seen you on Sunday.”
“No,” said Foy. “I just like stopping by to be
alone and pray. It’s so beautiful, you know?”
“Yeah. Well, you’re always welcome here.”
After that they always nodded at each other or
said hello.
Sometimes Robert would play the organ, and the
music would fill the room so completely that it felt like you had left the earth
altogether. Foy loved these times and would close his eyes and let the music be
the only thing in the world.
The day came when the polite nods and hellos
turned into a small conversation. Foy told Robert that he was the pastor of a
local Baptist church. Robert said that he was the music minister and invited Foy
to his office near the vestry. There was a keyboard, a table covered with sheet
music in neat piles, and nothing silly at all on the shelves. It was a very
serious and nice office. “It feels like Robert,” he thought.
On that day the conversation turned in an
unexpected and intimate direction. Robert told Foy that he was gay, a thing
that surprised Foy greatly. He didn’t know there were Christian churches that
would have a homosexual person as a minister. He didn’t know what he thought
about that either.
Once Douglas came by the church to see Robert,
and Foy happened to be there. They seemed peaceful together and had been
partners for a number of years. They were in their 40s.
“Thank Christ I don’t have to make decisions
about Robert and his life and the church and all that. I’m nobody here, so it’s
not my problem.”
Time passed gently for awhile, slipping along
with no bumps or surprises. There was morning and there was evening, day after
day. Months passed and Foy became familiar with the Book of Common Prayer and
the quiet ways of what he now called his Episcopal church.
About half a year after he met Robert, Foy
became aware that Jenny was deeply unhappy and on the verge of leaving him. The
awareness of this came like a flash of inspiration. One day he knew nothing of
it, and the next day he knew everything. There followed a frantic time where he
tried to salvage things with frenetic energy, but it was like scrambling for
receipts the day before taxes are due. It’s too late and there is too much.
The best you can do is not enough.
His depression was raging but still unnamed in
those days. He sunk down to a place where he was numb except for the constant
feeling that something very bad was about to happen and the feeling that there
was no chance in hell that all this religious stuff was true.
He dragged himself into the sanctuary one
afternoon and was glad that no one was there. He sat in his favorite pew and let
his head drop down almost to his knees.
“I don’t have to do this, you know? Just say
the word. Hell, I don’t even know if you exist. The truth is, I’m pretty sure
you don’t exist, but I can’t stop talking to you. You can’t have someone like me
being a pastor. You can’t. It’s not right. I mean, the pastor does
need to be sure about some things, doesn’t he? There is a bare
minimum of belief, don’t you think? Yeah, me too and I don’t have it.”
He tried some of his prayer tricks. He listened
close and then let his hearing go all the way out past the church to the freeway
where he could faintly hear the trucks going by. It didn’t work. Staring at the
cross didn’t work. Breathing deeply and letting the relaxation begin behind his
eyes didn’t work. Nothing worked, and his agitation grew.
One of the bad times started happening.
“O God, I have fucked up my life. I’m in the
wrong job; I don’t know what’s going to happen with Jenny and the girls; I don’t
have any money. I can’t just quit or I would. You can’t possibly want me. You
find some way of letting me know that you want me out and I’ll go. I swear I
will. I’ll just find a job and be a regular guy if I can figure out how to do
that.”
There was the clicking sound of a door behind
him and to the left. Foy opened his eyes to find Robert standing by the end of
the pew.
He was apologetic. “I’m sorry to interrupt you,
but I’ve been meaning to give you something and I keep forgetting, so I wanted
to make sure that I didn’t forget the next time I saw you.”
He paused for a second, then continued.
“I was talking with Sam and the other staff
about you, and we all agreed that we should give you your own key to the church
so that you can come and go whenever you want. We like having you around here;
it’s nice. It feels right.”
He held out a little silver key which Foy took
with a trembling hand just as he burst into tears. These were racking sobs that
made him ashamed so he put his face down and into his hands. Robert put his hand
on his back and leaned over a little.
“Hey, are you okay? Well, I guess you’re not,
but is there anything I can do?”
Foy looked up with his eyes blurry and his nose
running.
“No, I’m sorry. Please don’t worry about me.
This just means something…it’s big for me right now. Important. I can’t explain
it; it’s too much, but thank you. Tell them It helped me more than they could
know.”
Robert looked hesitant to leave, but
respectfully withdrew. Foy got up and walked to the back of the church. It was
the season of Epiphany and there was a picture of the magi on the literature
table beside Sam’s sermon manuscripts. Foy gazed at the picture with intense
longing and it seemed like a voice came from the ceiling.
“Even the pagans were called in their own way,
to His presence.”
He wiped his nose on his finger and then wiped
his finger on his jeans. He looked up to the ceiling and whispered.
“A gay man just gave me a key to his church and
said that I was always welcome. A gay man welcoming a Baptist minister to
church. Ain’t that some backwards shit? That is hilarious.”
There was the smallest ray of hopeful feelings
born of a rogue giggle that popped out the side of his mouth. He looked up to
the ceiling again.
“Okay. I understand. I’ll try.”
rlp
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