Didn't It Rain, Children

I’m thinking of investing in an Ark, the rains in California being so biblical these many days. But then I lean in that direction. I’ve always been drawn to the myriad ways cultures engage with the deep questions. Wherever I go, I look for local expressions of transcendence, hoping to unearth some connection, some proof, that we are all searching for the same ultimate answers. In El Dorado county, most of the places of worship seem to be evangelical churches in down-at-the-heels mobile homes. They are about as far from St. John the Divine or even New England white clapboard Congregational churches as you can get, as if God were coming down from a vaulted ceiling to mingle with the people by the side of the highway. Whatever form it takes, it grabs me by the throat. How people, all kinds of people, reckon with the rain, the human condition, the living and the dying. How people go about shopping for cut-rate tickets to eternity.

Photo by Jessica Knowlden on Unsplash

I’m always on the lookout for unusual spiritual encounters and am often overwhelmed when I stumble upon them…because that’s what happens. I’m wandering around minding my own business when I bump into divinity at the dentist’s office. Years ago, I went to a charismatic service in a thatched hut in Tobago, but was unprepared for the speaking in tongues which wasn’t so much speaking as babbling. Worshippers ran out of the beach shack ranting and gesticulating, scaring the bejesus out of me. Another time in London, we tried unsuccessfully to convince a throng of Muslim men in ankle-length gowns and what looked like kippot on their heads to let us into their mosque. No dice. We were unwelcome Americans, gawkers. Even synagogue can sometimes feel foreign, men shuckling back and forth as if entranced, women on the other side of the room. But my all-time favorite incidence of religious anthropology was the time we went to church in not very exotic Kennebunkport, Maine on a chilly day when Frank was wearing a multi-colored woolen pancho and was misidentified and embraced as a beloved South American padre. And maybe he is, who can say?

Last week at a Methodist/Presbyterian church in Placerville, we attended a Tibetan Buddhist Empowerment ceremony. The building housed two different denominations, there not being enough regulation Methodists or Presbyterians to support a church of their own. People have abandoned the mainstream churches like Trumpers deserting the sinking ship of the Republican establishment. People want more action. This sanctuary was papered over in red and gold banners and Buddhist figurative art. At the front of the room, two robed monks, one in sunglasses, sat at a table facing the considerable and diverse crowd. The monk in the shades was speaking very softly when we first walked in. It went on for quite a while and I thought I wasn’t going to be able to hear a word. But then the second monk spoke more clearly in English and I realized he was translating for the first monk who was whispering in Tibetan up the road from the local Denny’s.

It turned out that Empowerment was all about longevity. We had shown up yearning and clueless at a ceremony intended to increase the life-span of the participants….Not it was explained, to avoid disease, or to promote more pleasure, but to have more time to serve all sentient beings. My interest was peaked, so I strained to listen and understand up to the point where the speaker pointed to a second table laden with food and flowers. To partake of the ceremony, we were invited to eat a piece of the ritual cake or swallow the ritual pill. Really? Jonestown in the Sierras? What’s in that pill, we asked ourselves? That’s when we left to get pizza. You can’t go wrong with pizza.

Even if we hadn’t been wary of the ritual pill, you can’t just appropriate other people’s devotional practices. You can’t take communion if you don’t identify with the sanctity of the wafer. You can’t bring the fringes of the tallis to your lips before touching the Torah scroll. You can look, but you better not touch. Each group of people plows its own fields, bulldozes its own roads through the dark forests of fear and confusion to get to the light as it appears to them. All we can do is hold to the hope that all roads lead to the same clearing in the woods, but we can’t be sure. All we can do is watch, listen, learn from one another, and pray that it stops raining.

Copies of my 2019 essay collection, Twilight Time: Aging in Amazement, are available directly from me (signed) or from Amazon or your local bookseller.