Patient & Ridiculous

I like that it's in our nature to count up and count down: the nights getting shorter, the days getting longer; resolutions for the new year, reflections on the old. On a slip of paper, write a wish, walk it to an elder tree, secure it to a branch, and wait till Spring wakes up. Hope is like that. Patient and a little ridiculous.

Ignorance is Your New Best Friend

An Exploratory Essay written in bits:

On Feb 18, 2014, Kentucky pastor, snake-handler, faith-healer, and TV personality, Jamie Coots, died from a snake bite for which he refused treatment. 

He believed (as I understand it) that he was following scripture by handling venomous snakes during his service.

In no way do I believe in or support his ministering practices; in fact, I have a hard time refraining from—pffff—a typical response.

I was listening to the song, “Ignorance,” when I found out.

If I really want to make fun of him, though, I should know the facts. But making fun seems too easy. Maybe I’ve got some ignorance to wrestle with as well. With a little wondering, how close to understanding, even respect, can I come?

Only two generations back on my mother’s side, the family has a branch of Christian Scientists. They don’t believe in modern medical intrusion, either. My great-uncle died from an illness easily-treated through medical attention. (But then, he lived into his 90’s as well.)

“And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.” (Mark 16.17-18, KJV)

Apparently, mainstream Pentecostals keep their distance from snake-handlers, because they are simply bad for PR. Pentecostals focus on the Speaking in Tongues aspect of the previous passage.

Coots congregation, now run by his son, has only 20 members.

Snake-handling does sound like a traveling-circus act (two bits to see the snake charmer, come on in). At least two documentaries made  him their focus. He also had a television show.

It does take skill, though. Practiced skill. A lifetime’s full. Under undeniable threat.

When I came close to sliding off a mountain road in the dark long ago, I have never felt so focused. I rose to the challenge and did everything I knew how to do. But that’s all I could do. (Well, that’s all I knew how to do, wanted to do.)

Snakes are a deadly threat. Coots had already been bitten at least twice before. According to his faith, handling snakes plus recovering from the bites made him Holy.

There aren’t many animals more threatening in appearance or actuality than snakes.

The snake is a powerful religious image. It is also a fantastic metaphor: filled with Evil (or poisonous venom), the snake injects that Evil (or venom) into the body, corrupting (systemically damaging) it.

The snake can be avoided, but like my driving experience, clarity (or faith) doesn’t truly get tested until it meets a worthy challenge. After the crisis, we feel thankful (or Thankful) and uplifted.

I respect faith, but not blind faith. Except that blind faith, now that I think about it, is faith. Not always pleased about flying, the one moment I dread takes place on the runway when the plane begins to accelerate beyond the speed with which we’re familiar. (And for some reason, we can feel everything.) At the point, I realize I have absolutely no control. The only solution is to let go and trust in (the pilot) something other than me.

As a child (innocent?), I loved the taking off part.

Blind faith. Jonestown? When you follow a leader and not the faith itself? How do most people do that? Drink the Kool-Aid (handle the snakes?). What? Why? Who are you, anyway? Faith is hard for me to wrestle with. I certainly don’t feel that Coots was a cult leader, although many of the signs might be there.

So is this Institutionalized Crazy or (even remotely) a legitimate expression of faith? I think Jamie Coots believed. His followers and his son, too. I am always suspicious of the Bible as literal truth (which passage do you mean?). But I think I get it on a really basic level. It doesn’t threaten me. People do die, apparently; but if they know what they’re getting into, that doesn’t seem horrible.

And what about me? I don’t have that kind of faith or that kind of focus. I believe I have a purpose and a meaningful path, but it doesn’t necessarily connect to many other people. I don’t think that’s too healthy. Yet I’m not searching, other than to wonder about a guy who recognized God on the other end of poisonous snakes. He had more conviction than I do.

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Its lyrics and video are not necessarily profound—or even applicable through anyone else's eyes, but Paramore's "Ignorance" stuck in my head throughout this process.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH9A6tn_P6g&feature=youtube_gdata_player

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Image credits: wbir at news.softpedia.com 

Sabotaging Speed-Dating

A while back, a coworker kept pestering me to go to a speed-dating session with her. Five minutes to assess and be assessed. Across a table. A cup of punch. Fidgeting with a golf card. A "Hi, My Name Is" sticker attached to your breast of choice. Why? She was in a long-term relationship; and I take more time than that to compare ingredients at the supermarket.

"It'll be fun."

I told her that if she ever convinced me to go—say on a low-sugar Monday after an encounter with an angry customer—I would be forced to use questions that would instantly derail any decent speed-dating session. "Why would you want to do that?"

That's a good question. I tried to answer her with some of my own.

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SPEED-DATING QUESTIONS

Guaranteed To Derail the 5-min Limit

(& Just Maybe Make Things More Interesting)

1. Within a month of starting a new relationship, which one of us do you expect will be driving your car?
2. Which is worse: saying too much or saying too little?
3. “I worry that I am turning into my parent.”
4. How much should men know about being a woman (or, vise versa)?
5. What would it take for you to visit a nude beach? an asylum? a retirement home?
6. My friends and your friends will naturally become Our friends.
7. There is a right way to disagree.
8. When is it acceptable to ask for alone time?
9. How much do you value left-overs?
10. “Used” or “Pre-Owned”?
11. At what point in a relationship will it be okay to leave the bathroom door open?
12. I am attached to my family name.
13. List conditions under which it’s okay for men to wear pink.
14. Running away from Boredom or running toward Fun?
15. In this day and age couples should expect to divide all the chores 50-50.
16. If we both liked radically-different types of music—rap/opera, for example—how hard should we try to listen to the other type?
17. Fairy tales should be rewritten to tell us more about what happens Ever After.
18. When is it okay to accept failure?
19. When is it okay for a woman to act like a woman, and a man to act like a man?
20. Presents are better when they’re wrapped.

Snapshots

At the Kitchen Table

It's late at night when somebody finds the photos in the back of a kitchen drawer. Most of them aren't worth the time it takes to explain them (and a few I snatch up before anyone tries). But some have stories. Clear a spot on the kitchen table (or wipe up the condensation), and we'll take them one at a time. (Interesting, someone says, how much photos have to say about their photographers. I pretend not to hear.)

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KC Masterpiece (Jim)

Appearing for karaoke every night (they told me), Jim was a big, smiling man with Down’s syndrome, wearing an immense Kansas City Chiefs jersey. He must have shaken half the women’s hands on his way to the machine, where he sang “New York, NY” (with some of the words but all of the heart). On his way back up to inspired applause, he visited with the rest of the women, table by table, and shook their hands, too.

DJ Zeek

Zeek lost his car and his overnight freedom to DUIs but entertained my kids with incomprehensibly-clean freestyle rap and storytelling as we drove him "home" to prison, always ending the session with, "Remember kids, this is what happens when you drink & drive."

Bagger Jan

Jan was a kitchen staffer at my college dorm when I worked food service with her. She called me "College Boy" as though I might be useful as a paperweight someday, but taught me how to snug-tie a plastic bag to a garbage can, prefacing it with, "Let me show you something useful…"

Jennifer Lee

Jenny flew Deep South like a mockingbird after high school graduation to rediscover her roots. Every day, on her way to work just outside Atlanta, she passed an elderly man, walking slowly along the road. One day, she stopped to walk with him and hear his story. It was not quite a mile, she wrote to me.

Steve's Voices

Steve's inner collegiate demons would see him ripping up Boulder Canyon in his old Audi, seatbeltless, radio station blasting songs he hoped would guide him in his desperation. "God's in the lyrics," he told me one time back at the dorm, exhausted. He never revealed what he’d learned.

Advil Girls

The Varsity soccer team I coached years ago held nothing back, went body on body at speed, waived off substitution, argued with everyone, gained a scrappy rep, and let me in on their mystical gender-kept secret: Advil. 

People's Fair Ted

Ted, who was filthy and smelled of vodka sweat, approached us at the Capitol Hill People's Fair. My two kids were still at hand-holding ages and hadn’t learned to avoid eye-contact, so they greeted him. Rather than hitting us up for change, though, Ted talked to them about the weather and his own family before politely turning, taking two steps back and vomiting on the grass well out of range. “Excuse me,” he told us and moved on.

Alex the Arbiter

It was one of those moments when you forget who and what you are and just express yourself. I was experiencing a frustrating home improvement moment, and I said,  "F--k this house!" as my 3-yr-old son came around the corner. He got a thinking look on his face, and before I could explain, he said, "No, Dad, it's a Love house."


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Afterthoughts

A few of the Snapshots deserve some updating.

Recently, I found Steve on Facebook. I still remember him telling me about the drunken canyon drives. Sometimes I could tell when he was leaving for a binge up the canyon, confused & reckless. Although I tried to divert him at first, I just had to let it happen eventually. In that way, he forced me to find a little backhanded faith of my own. His Facebook page shows him in the cockpit of his own private plane. I suspect there's a decent sound system in there.

Jenny was always a Southerner (with her rounded accent & thick makeup), although she took pains to tell everyone she wasn't. Just before graduating, though, she came in to tell me about this wonderful plan to go back to Georgia, where she'd been raised "long ago." It surprised me, because she had always made fun of how backwoodsy  Southerners seemed to her. Now, without being able to explain it fully, she was as enthusiastic as anyone who's ever left one life for the promise of another. When her letters started coming in—including the Mile in My Shoes one—they were full of her eye for detail and reverence for the littlest signs of life (although she still referred to people outside of Atlanta as hicks). The letters dwindled over time, as they should, but I have to raise the glass to Jenny (with eyes wide open). Maybe I'll use Southern Comfort.

I'm pretty sure Zeek is dead now. I finally accepted an invitation to one of his parties: music without dancing, collecting without conversation, and a mysterious migrating punch bowl of pills, some of which I recognized, unfortunately. Here came Zeek, yelling, "Dan the Man!" I knew he had diabetes, and when we were through with one of the many versions of that hug thing, I noticed he was was halfway through a beer. Just then, he wavered briefly—like a Looney Toon's character that hasn't discovered he's run out of land—then dropped hard to the floor. That was how he lived in general: huge & personal, then buried under his own mistakes. He had respect for life, I guarantee, just not necessarily his own; and the worst part about it, like any tragedy, is that he knew it.

But these are all just photos from a drawer. Best shared when rediscovered. Then back they go.