Road Show. An Epic Review.

Kept trying this in prose. Started last Tuesday. Kept failing. Hope this is better. But tha's why it took so long. Sorry.

postlude
Tuesday night she said
how long the weekend felt,
how luxurious
even with the busyness.
I agreed.

I. back
We left Wichita nine Monday evening,
following Stafford's deep rung bell
through rolling flint hills, a picture of Ireland,
green and elusive.
Sunset faded. We talked of art and Jill's future,
intersection without pretension?
What is an art? What is a future?
And before we expected,
we dropped down towards lights of Emporia,
oasis of vaporized sodium and halogen
nestled in the pre-horizon dark.
Vocal trance filled the best kind of silence:
the comfort of a warm lap laptop,
home without bustle, love without words.
And the whole drive steamed on lickity:
pee stop in Beto, shoes back on, smooth without socks,
up over Ottawa causeway,
where Jill's been home, but it's not home anymore.
As the sky grew bright with metropolis,
we corner-to-cornered through Johnson County,
a good 30 miles, I'd guess, but slowed by construction,
dark fields to dull concrete.
We cut the corner of Wyandotte,
nestled ourselves back home
just inside the Missouri border
just before midnight.

II. there.
We were in Wichita because Sam lost a kidney,
Tuesday morning, early, like losing his soul,
(how else can you find it?)
to his aunt, who needed one.
So we drove down noon Monday,
sat in his aunt's living room,
a whole wall with no pictures,
the blanket and pillow and bottle clutter of illness,
talking small-ly of dinner,
(Pizza or salad? Out or in?)
the pallid hunger of her dying kidneys
muffling the conversation.
What's on TV?

III. elsewhere
But before we could sup, we went to Brianna,
director of evangelism at a church
long as a city block,
winding non-Euclidean hallways,
four-story abstract stained glass in the shell-shaped sanctuary,
an institution among churches.
A building more than people.
The hospital decor welcome center
makes the membership, aging (long dead?),
feel right so at home.

As far I can tell, "Director of Evangelism" means
"Beat Ye Up On This Person,
All of Waning Faith"
or maybe "She's Just a Girl,
What Can She Do?"
It's been the the jobs of six people, at least:
Sunday School teacher,
middle-aged singles ministry director,
young adult ministry co-chair,
heck, girl, set up chairs for the men,
cook their meals
like a good girl ought,
a list long like a scroll,
bitter but not sweet.
I ask myself, does that hinder her real job,
as a lover of people?
And my answer feels obvious.

She preaches on Saturday, but.
Fancy Sunday, she's on camera singing,
"seen, but not heard
unless it's her place,
our place for her."
One wall of her private office,
name and title on the door,
is rows of someone's counseling pamphlets,
the shelves are stacked with
general church storage,
sheaves of dead trees stacked in tree boxes.

Sunday night, at the Church Basement Roadshow, a rolling revival,
a man said 70% of the people in the American church are traditionalists,
that they would cuddle continuously with the status quo,
if only if it were propriatous to cuddle these days
what would people think?
But there with Brianna,
the number's more ninety,
so, I guess I'm complaining here,
on her behalf.
Justice,
revival,
repentance,
all words for the same thing.
Why can't it come?

IV. before.
The Church Basement Roadshow rolled through our city,
and just off our driveway, 1909 in a 2008 coach.
Old-timey beards and hats and video screens.
We sat on the steps, ate bread and cheese and tomatoes,
cracked coconuts with a hammer,
scraped them with knives for the meat.
Inside, they were shilling for books that I'd like to read,
propaganda for the propagandists,
entertainment for faith.
Would you buy their snake oil,
if they told up up front
that it won't work,
and it's good on a salad?

Who do we follow?
Why, the man, Jesus of Nazereth.
Is his news good?
Aye, it is good.
Love your enemy, yea, I say verily.
But, should buy from your friend?

I want to enjoy this. I think it is funny.
I think I enjoy this. The message is clear.
But why do it for books, why do it for sales,
(I read one of the books. I thought it was good.
I've quoted it twice. But I felt dirty
for getting it as a bonus,
like a shirt with campus plastic,
you got from a a sheet on a clipboard,
(aren't Sallie Mae loans enough?)
for promising to help a boy in Africa,
whose name I've just learned,
whose face is a stranger,
eat.)
if it's good enough on its own?

V. again, almost.
At the institution, Sam parked in the heat,
waves off the pavement, across from a coach,
that we'd all just seen, just off our driveway, yesterday night.

We followed the Road Show in at a distance,
down to the basement, where they met Brianna,
she'd been cooking their meal.
She already knew Tony, as he mentioned in his blog.
and after she'd hugged them, we hugged her.
Brianna made dinner, the chicken and fruit kinds of salad,
for the Road Show Revivalists, and we carted it up
along with lemonade and water, the drinks of revival,
to the prison ministry room, the old library,
after our tour of the building.
Then Tony and Mark and Doug came up,
and stared at clean-faced pictures of pastors past,
none in 1909, alas.

We said that we'd been there last night. We'd seen the show.
And Tony asked me what I thought.
I didn't yet know, and so I said,
"It must be a hard line to walk."
He said, "What do you mean?"
I said, "Between being campy and being serious."
And he said, "See the thing is, people think
we're going to make fun of old time revivals,
but really we like them." Then we had to go.
Sam's Aunt was waiting.
I would have liked to say more, sit
and discuss what and why and how,
with these Emergent leaders,
and I think I came off rude,
having not helped set up
the chairs for the show,
because we'd been with Brianna,
loving her deeply and briefly,
and then that thing about walking a line.
But there were dinners more pressing.

VI. even earlier.
Jill asks me what I like to do when I'm swimming.
It's Sunday, and we're between church when we serve
and church when we're served. Sabbath is fleeting.
We sprayed sunscreen from our spray can
from our anniversary theme park splurge
I got Jill off te phone by threatening to throw her in.
Then I did anyway.
Eight years, still flirting.
If that's what you call it.
"I just like being in the water," I said,
"I find it relaxing."
When I was a kid, at Mill Creek Pool,
I'd hold my breath and ball up under water,
eyes tight, floating until my lungs felt like spilling the air out,
letting the sharp water spill back in, push to the edge
and then I'd push up,
grab the oxygen with my lips,
eyes smarting with chlorine and sunlight after darkness.
And it's like CDs, I guess, what is the intended venue?
When are you supposed to be listening?
What are you supposed to do in the pool?
Or, even, what are you supposed to do at a revival?
What if you don't change? What if your soul is untouched?
Is that something you can schedule?
Eight o'clock Sunday, your soul comes alive.
Don't be late.