I’ve discovered I can fly! I am flying now. After a lifetime of fear, it turns out that none of my inadequacies matter. I soar over and under the backs of clouds.
The New C. of C. convened. The shop was packed. I wavered, cold and numb, on a ledge. The crowd below blurred to a pattern of colors; their voices rose, then fell silent. I took a breath, my mind shut down—and I jumped. But instead of plummeting, I floated. My hands fluttered and words spun from my mouth in fanciful loops.
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I’m not sure how long I spoke or what I said. But it seemed natural, or no, supernatural. As if the reason I was born really was to say what I said!
Who would have guessed?
Well, Carlos.
Carlos guessed against the odds. I mean, what could be more unlikely? Coax me from the boat and I’ll walk on water. Toss me off a cliff and I’ll sprout wings. Shove me in front of the microphone and I’ll sway the masses. It was only a guess, though.
When I finished speaking, Carlos was astonished, overjoyed, waiting behind the swinging doors. He slapped my cheeks and pounded my back. We leaped together, trying not to shout or laugh, tears streaming down both our faces.
Then Maggie slipped in with us, and when Stephanie joined, we danced in a circle. Embracing in the kitchen, the four of us mouthed the words: “We did it, we did it, we did it!”
But I especially did it! I went out there and talked for two straight hours about how unsavory the old master-slave forms of worship seem in modern context. About the dangers inherent in spiritual ambition, which can set us running on roads that no longer connect with anything. How we are taught routines that thousands of years ago may have evoked an experience of God, but which—since we have done nothing new with them, nothing to make them our own—no longer apply.
“If you currently practice a formal religion,” I said, “chances are, no matter how fervent your feelings, you end up just going through the motions. Be honest. Who’s familiar with genuine spiritual uplift?”
No one answered.
“Okay, no one. Though some of you,” I shouted, “may think you do. A shiver, a moment of déjà vu; a trembling desire that out of the darkness of your soul a flowering of hope might bloom? Isn’t that—” I claimed as undeniable, “as close as we ever come? The stray tear for no reason? The frisson of joy or fear that cuts through the static?”
“These are indicators,” I said. “But nothing more. Shadows of shadows. And those of you who’ve renounced the cheesiness of modern life? Who’re leery of manufactured sentiment? Sick unto death of cartoon evangelists, commercials and news segments, this week’s recorded idiocy? You know who you are. Are you here?”
“Are you?”
Silence. But nothing fazed me. Nothing. More silence. I raised a palm, stopped, and whistled softly, opening my eyes wide, casting pale lightning throughout the room.
“This is not a rhetorical question,” I said. “I’m asking you about wonderment. Some of us are prone to visitations, even though we’re all-too-familiar, as subjects and witnesses, to pain and suffering. Be brave,” I said, lovely ripples running over my body, the swell of my flesh buoying me along.
“We’re bereft of faith because the forms are old. They no longer refer to us. And yet,” I said, “there is a world apart from this. We still believe in Omniscience and Omnipotence. We still even worship It. Or we would if we could figure out how to do so without groveling.”
“It’s something we do to our bosses, for money, for job security. But treating God with the same smarmy self-abasement we use with the district manager seems gross, don’t you think? We need new forms if we’re going to talk about God; if we’re going to give glory to God.” Spreading my arms, I said, “How lost are we? We need to pray that purity will come to us. An untarnishable song, a perfect logic.”
Scanning the patchwork of colors, I dallied among the subtle but intoxicating ether. Buoyed by the wonderful expanse of my body under the great fluid white gown Carlos had talked me into wearing, my head back, hair streaming, I said that in much older cultures than ours, people take solace in visits from the apparitions of their ancestors. But when they begin to adopt Western culture, they no longer receive such visits, experiencing instead headaches and back aches, ulcers and colitis. Voices, visions, unaccountable aches and pains are manifestations of the same thing. What the manifestations mean—spectral ancestors or migraine headaches—is impossible to fathom.
“But haven’t we all experienced momentary dislocations, flickering existential confusions of life everlasting. Haven’t we?” I thundered. “Haven’t we all?”
Evidently we had: the room erupted; the crowd cheered, their hands clapping, feet stamping as I surged here and there.
“What we need,” I said, “what the doctors, the patients, all of us need are new forms!”
I alighted back on the platform, the rippling white gown settling against my damp skin. Applause rang out and I closed my eyes against pinpoints of sweat. With everyone still cheering, I dove through the swinging doors, straight into Carlos’s arms.
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