You want details, right? Of course you do. And I’ll get to them in a moment. But first a word about tricksters.

The archetypical trickster is as common in human stories as the hero. Some religions even incorporate tricksters into their various faith traditions. The Caganer of medieval Spain comes to mind. The Lakota people recognize a backward spirit called Heyoka. This spirit does the opposite of what you might imagine. When everyone else is crying, it is laughing. When they laugh, it might cry. Certain people in communities are said to have the Heyoka spirit. Their calling is to be delightfully inappropriate. They shake things up, bringing insights and truths to light that might remain hidden if if things unfolded comfortably and according to plan.

We don’t have official trickster roles in American Christian traditions – televangelists notwithstanding – but the Heyoka appears now and then unofficially. Like it did with me Saturday night before Easter.

I was eagerly looking forward to my first Easter Vigil experience with my friends at Saint Francis. We met outside the sanctuary as the sun was going down. Our Paschal Candle was lit from a brazier and we solemnly filed into our darkened sanctuary, led by its dim light. We used small candles lit from Paschal Candle to read the scripture portions chosen for the service.

There were a lot of passages to read. So many that our candles burned down to stubs. People moved back and forth in the community, providing fresh candles as needed. In my weakness, my attention began to wander a bit. At that moment, some sort of Episcopal Heyoka decided to have a little fun with me. It had to be Heyoka, because the irony is too rich. For you see, I started looking around and wondering if anyone ever accidentally lit their hair on fire at the Easter Vigil.

Hey, it could happen. Someone gets a little sleepy and starts nodding, some hair dips into the flame, and there you go. I got a little concerned and checked the people around me to make sure everyone was okay. Walter and Joyce Baker were sitting in front of me. I decided if Joyce’s hair caught on fire I was going over the pew to help put it out. I totally would would do that too. I would. I looked at my hands and wondered how badly they would get burned if I had to help put out a fire on someone’s head.

Okay, here’s the second-most embarrassing thing about the evening. The “penultimate embarrassment” as scholars call it. I started feeling a little proud about the hypothetical scenario I had created in my head, wherein I would dive over the pew and save Joyce or Walter from serious injury. Because, you know, that’s just the kind of guy I am. If I imagine your head catching fire, I will also imagine myself saving you.

And that’s when the ultimate embarrassing thing happened. I was so busy looking around at people’s candles that I forgot about my own. I leaned forward to look down the row and make sure everyone was safe. There was a sharp hiss and a little puff of smoke, followed by the unpleasant smell of burned hair. Also a little spot on my chin suddenly felt kind of warm.

Yeah. I set my own beard on fire at the Easter Vigil service. I did that. That would be me.

I brushed the ashy bits of hair off my chin and looked around. No one else noticed. Probably because they were paying attention to the worship service. And I can promise you that I paid close attention from that point forward as well.

I did laugh a bit later when I realized how ridiculous I had been and what it took to pull my mind back to our worship. I think I zoned out during the Ezekiel reading, set my beard on fire, and was completely back in the swing of the service well before the triumphant first allelujah of Easter.

Unexpected things happen in worship services all the time. Babies cry, people pick their noses during prayers, mobile phones go off at the worst moments, preachers say things that could be and are interpreted sexually – leading to snickers from the teenagers and naughty glances between husbands and wives, and occasionally someone sets his own beard on fire, pats it out, looks around to see if anyone noticed, and then goes right on worshipping as if nothing happened.

We church people try to put together rituals and practices that are high and mighty and point to cosmic truths that exist on exalted planes, far above us. We are also silly creatures prone falling into the exact opposite of what we intended.

The Heyoka has a strong, if unofficial presence in Christianity, is what I’m saying. And I suspect its presence may be particularly strong in me. So I smiled as I trimmed my beard on Easter Sunday morning. And I’m counting the Easter Vigil service as my richest spiritual experience of 2013.

So far…

Gordon Atkinson

I was hungry and decided to see what La Vernia had to offer. I wasn’t interested in franchises. I wanted something local. So I drove from one end of town to the other to see what my options were. There was a Mexican food place, an Italian restaurant, another Mexican food place, and two steak houses. One of the steak houses looked fancy and new. The other advertised barbecue and steaks and was in a white cinder block building that looked like it had been there for decades. Also the parking lot was full. It was called Witte’s and that’s where I went.

The sun was going down and there was a red neon light in the window flashing on and off that said, “Open.” I stood just inside the door and looked around, getting the feel of the place. Every man except me was wearing a hat or a cap. Fifty years ago they would have taken them off indoors, but that’s optional now and generally people leave their hats on. Most of the tables near the door were filled with people laughing, drinking beer from bottles, and smoking. The smell of cigarette smoke in a restaurant – something you never see in large cities now – made me feel like I had gone back in time. I almost sat near the front just to enjoy the ambiance, but the truth is I like a few whiffs of a cigarette and then I get sick of it. So I passed through the crowd to the back where there were families and no one was smoking.

Back section of Witte’s. Photo from the Witte’s website

The back of Witte’s looked like it was added later. The roof beams were supported by rough cedar posts, so rough that some still had branches on them. There was a large basket on my table filled with saltines and packets of butter. Maybe people snack on buttered saltines in La Vernia, but I left them alone.

My waitress was middle-aged and friendly. She had dark hair that was piled up high on her head. I asked her what was good.

“The barbeque is real good. People come here for that. And the chicken fried steak is good too. Lots uh people come here to get that. It’s a rib eye steak. Chicken fried rib eye. It’s real good.”

“What about just the steak? A rib eye steak?”

“It’s real good too. People like it.”

“Okay, I’ll have that then. With a baked potato and some green beans.”

“How you want that cooked?”

“Medium I guess.”

It wasn’t the best steak I ever had, but it wasn’t anywhere near the worst. It was so thin there was no way they could cook it medium. There was no pink in the middle. There seemed to be three sections to it with lines of fat dividing them. There was also fat all around the edges, so I had some trimming to do. But it was tender and flavorful.

Papaw

While I ate I looked around at the people. Most of the men were thick around the middle. Seventy years ago they would have looked like my grandfather. He worked for the Humble Oil company after a childhood in a sharecropper’s family. In photos from those years he stares solemnly at the camera from beneath the brim of his hat. He looks lean and hard and sunburned. He looks like a man who has not had an easy life and is not expecting it to get any easier. Food was expensive in those days, so working men often struggled to replace the calories they burned during the day. Papaw looked like he didn’t have an ounce of fat on him.

Things are different now. Some of these men sell insurance or work at the Walmart. But the biggest change is the cost of calories. Fatty foods and carbohydrates are cheap and plentiful. The men in Witte’s eat like their grandfathers, hoarding calories as protection against lean times. But there will be no lean times in La Vernia, because you can buy 5,000 calories at Walmart or the Dairy Queen for less money than a worker makes in an hour.

But of course, worrying about calories, your waistline, and your heart is for city boys. The crowd at Witte’s didn’t seem too concerned. And on that night neither was I. I heaped butter and cheese on my baked potato and relished every bite of my steak. When I finished, all that was left was the fat I had trimmed. And looking at it lying there on my plate, I realized I couldn’t remember what pure fat tastes like.

As a kid sometimes I’d take a bite of roast or brisket or, occasionally, a steak and be surprised to find it rubbery and soft and slick. A chunk of fat, burned dark, had slipped into my mouth incognito. But as we get older we learn fat’s camouflaging tricks. I’m 51 years old and don’t get fooled by fat anymore.

But from what I read, people in my grandfather’s generation were not so averse to eating fat. My grandfather’s favorite salad dressing was bacon grease. He would also spread hardened bacon grease on a sandwich instead of mayonnaise or mustard. When you’re struggling to consume enough calories to get you through the next work day, the fat is the most valuable part of the animal, since a gram of fat has more calories than a gram of protein.

My plate

So there I was, looking at the fat on my plate and listening to the laughter and the buzzing conversation of the good people of La Vernia. I started wondering what fat tastes like.  Seventy-five years ago I assume I would have eaten it along with the meat and been glad to get it. But now I cut it off and shove it to the side of my plate as if it has no value.

I pushed a few pieces of fat around with my fork and poked at them.

And then I decided to eat some

Part two coming as soon as I figure out where this thing is going.

I don’t recommend the latter.

I have experienced spiritual ecstasy myself many times. I don’t actively seek it and am a little suspicious of overly demonstrative displays. But I cannot deny the power of such an experience and the intense intellectual and emotional pleasure that comes with it.

For me these moments of spiritual ecstasy are mysterious, in that they cannot be planned or controlled. It seems to be a gift that comes when you are not expecting it. The feeling is an intense and emotional sense of connection to God. The rush of joy is as powerful as anything I’ve experienced in life. Some part of you – a part that may be pre-verbal – becomes convinced of a reality. It is a purely intuitive feeling of rightness. It’s as though absolute truth was just around the corner and barely out of your grasp. I can’t help but think of Moses in the Exodus story, who was put into a cleft in a rock when God passed by. He only caught a glimpse of God’s robe, but his face shone brilliantly afterward. He had the Shekinah glow about him.

As a side note, C. S. Lewis described this sort of experience in his autobiography “Surprised by Joy.” He called the feeling “Sehnsucht,” which is translated as longing and further refined by Lewis when he named it joy.

I think that love may be the best common human experience I can compare spiritual ecstasy to. Do you know the feeling of falling in love? Do you know that rush of attraction that is so powerful you feel caught up in something you cannot control? You may be aware of very good and logical reasons why you should not be with the person you are falling for, but it doesn’t matter. You want him. You love her. The deeper part of your mind that we sometimes call the heart ignores your pitiful pleas that love should make sense to you.

The idea of God does not always make sense to me. If I pay close attention to how reality unfolds in this world, the idea of a cold and impersonal universe, driven by chance and natural selection seems a rational conclusion. Such a point of view certainly solves a lot of logical problems. No wonder all this awful shit is happening. No one who cares about us is running the show.

But here is a crazy thing. The more I’m convinced that there is no loving Creator watching over us, the more likely I am to receive an emotional epiphany during worship. I will be sitting in church somewhere – often a powerless and humble church without much money or influence – and some little thing will shatter my heart. Often it will be a small piece of liturgy or an ancient symbol that points to one of the crazy, backwards, upside-down gospel truths that Jesus was famous for proclaiming. The call for us to become like children, the thought that the least important person might be the greatest, or the impossible idea that we should love our enemies.

Suddenly I will be filled with a crazy joy that drives out any other thought or feeling. I shiver and tears come to my eyes, though I often don’t know why I am crying. Something tickles my reptilian brain and it becomes absolutely convinced that there is more going on in the Cosmos than we can see or know with our meager five senses. And in that moment, every small thing I perceive seems aflame with God.

In those moments I have powerful and tender feelings for Christ’s broken church, wobbling along these 2000 years, still bumbling and stumbling and confessing and promising to do better. What a silly bunch of dreamers we are. Ridiculous, really. We stand together in our collective absurdity, somehow managing to catch – in the rich depth of our liturgy – truths that are beyond our understanding but accessible to our simple hearts.

Lately, when a moment like this comes over me, I have found myself uttering a short little prayer, inspired by a delightfully common game that many people love.

“I’m all in.”

Gordon Atkinson

Greetings.

You can call me Pilgrim.

In 2012 I wrote a series of essays at the Laity Lodge website, mostly about my spiritual journey in the months after I left the church I had pastored for eighteen years. If you read any of those essays, you might have wondered how Pilgrim was making a living.
And that would be a good question. When a seminary trained, professional minister decides that he or she no longer wishes to be employed by a church, what is it like to move to the world of secular employment?…

Read the rest of this essay at the High Calling.

When I was a professional Christian, my job depended on me being spiritually engaged with the faith. And since I abhorred the idea of hypocrisy, I always found ways to stay in the game. But now, with no one paying me to be spiritual, well, it’s a whole different thing. If I don’t want to pray I just don’t. Sometimes for a long time.

And I can’t lean on service to others – the classic liberal saving throw – because I’ve developed an almost paranoid fear of anyone needing me. I fear any such obligations. I fear the anxiety and guilt that obligation brings to me. In my mind, I never ever ever loved people enough or cared about them enough to be a good pastor. It’s my problem. I’m sure I was fine at the job. People say I was. But that’s the point, isn’t it? I have a bit of a problem with this. So now I mostly just stay in my house, where I work. Or ride my bike. There are four women to whom I am greatly obliged, and that’s all I want.

Also the cold, uncompromising voice of Reason, my ancient foe, has been whispering in my ears again.

The universe has no interest in you. Celestial systems, of which you are a part, pay homage only to greater forces of gravity, circling them obediently while the cosmos expands with energy from a source we cannot comprehend. Your value in this unthinkably vast reality is exactly in keeping with your size in it, just as you’ve always suspected. A galactic moment or two from now, humanity will disappear, along with your solar system and perhaps your entire galaxy. When that happens it will be as if you never existed at all.

But by all means, Gordon, make sure you don’t miss Sunday school tomorrow.

So I think you can understand why I stared blankly at someone the other day when he asked how I could become an Episcopalian, since Episcopalians practice infant baptism. I blinked a few times, trying to understand the meaning of his words. They were vaguely familiar words. I myself might have talked about the cosmically important question of whether or not one should put water on a baby’s forehead when I cared about such things.

The other day I was writing at McDonald’s – I prefer it over the Starbucks down the street – and I saw a bird in the parking lot pecking at a scrap of bread. I leaned forward until my forehead was touching the window and stared. The bird plucked a bit of bread from a dirty place in the concrete and flew away, soaring over Loop 1604 where the cars were slogging along in rush hour like blood squeezing in spurts through a capillary.

“That,” I said out loud, “is a thing that happened.”

So that is the state of me. Not giving a shit about baptism conversations, not praying very much, becoming Episcopalian, muttering about birds at McDonald’s, and trying to hang onto my beloved theism.

So now you understand why I cannot afford to miss a single Sunday at Saint Francis Episcopal Church. Not one. Because the humble offering of a parishioner in attendance on a Sunday morning might be the only thing I have to offer God this week. And my only chance for some sort of epiphany. I will be there at 10:10 for the Spiritual Formation hour, to hear Walter or Brian or Cristopher read from our Book and make observations. I limit myself to one small comment a week in this hour, since I used to talk so much in church.

And then forty steps away and one hour later I will be in the worship service. I prefer the late service without the modern music. Who gave these nice Episcopalians guitars, I want to know? I will sit and stand and kneel, assuming I can figure out in what order those things should be done. And then I will move softly to the end of my aisle, bow, and head for the railing. A small wafer will be given to me. Yes even me. Even this doubting wayward boy is welcome to the source of our deepest mystery.

It’s funny. No matter how deep my doubts, one thing has always seemed clear to me in its paradoxical absurdity. It is entirely possible – I believe – that all the wisdom of our feeble species, in the moments before heat death takes us, might fit nicely into a single wafer of bread.

I rise from the railing, the taste of Jesus in my mouth.

And I say, “That is a thing that happened.”

Gordon Atkinson

One of the first things you’re going to notice at an Episcopal worship service is all the people processing up and down the aisles. That’s how you know the service is starting. The music begins and everyone stands up, like before the bride comes down the aisle at a wedding. Then all the worship leaders come marching down the aisle. Children with crosses and fancy candles, people wearing robes and carrying banners and staffs, a person holding aloft a Bible with a golden cover, the entire choir, and all the ministers decked out in their vestments bringing up the rear.

The first time I saw this I didn’t know what to make of it. Everyone stood up, so I stood up too. And then all these people came down the aisle. And they just kept coming. A whole mob of them. I didn’t know the difference between a choir robe and the celebrant’s vestments, so I didn’t know what I was seeing. I assumed the fancy golden book was a Bible, but I didn’t know why the girl was holding it up in the air like that. I wondered if her arms were going to get tired.

And the opening procession isn’t the only one you’ll see. A few minutes later they come down the aisle with the Golden Bible and the choir singing allelujahs for the reading of the gospel portion. After the reading, they process back to the altar – with more fancy singing. I like to think they are escorting the preacher to the pulpit for his or her sermon. Later, the entire congregation processes down to the front to receive the sacrament of communion. And then, at the very end, all the leaders recess out the back of the sanctuary to close out the service.

In between all of the processing and recessing, there is a good bit of kneeling, standing, and sitting going on. The ministers say things and the congregation responds. A lot of people know these responses by heart. The first few times you go, you aren’t going to be able to keep up with what you should be saying or when you should be standing or kneeling. And there won’t be enough time for you to flip frantically through the Book of Common Prayer for help. You’ll try, but the BCP isn’t exactly user friendly.

Now for some reason, the experience of not knowing what’s going on seems to bother some folks. I’ve even talked to people who were offended by it. They said the Episcopal service is too complicated. They said they felt left out because everyone else seemed to know what to do and they didn’t. And some of them never went back again after their first Sunday, which is very sad to me.

Because here’s the deal: do you really want to go to a church for the first time and understand everything that’s going on? Do you really want to walk into the most sacred hour of the week for an ancient spiritual tradition and find no surprises and nothing to learn or strive for? Do you really want a spiritual community to be so perfectly enmeshed with your cultural expectations that you can drop right into the mix with no effort at all, as if you walked into a convenience store in another city and were comforted to find that they sell Clark Bars, just like the 7-11 back home?

I do hope you’ll give this a little more effort than that. Because something wonderful can happen when you stop trying to figure out what you should be doing in a worship service. When you admit to yourself that you don’t know what’s going on, you’ll just sit and listen. Because that’s really all you can do. And that’s actually a very nice spiritual move for you to make.

I highly recommend a spiritual exercise that I made up myself. I call it, “Closing your eyes and listening to an entire Episcopal worship service without speaking.” Without your eyes to mislead you, the room will shrink to its actual size. Everything will feel like it’s happening right at the end of your arms. Which of course it is. And you might even begin to feel that God is at the end of your arms. Which of course God is.

Let the big people carry the service for you. Let them say what needs to be said. Let them kneel and stand in all the right places. In this humble, listening space that you have entered, every small thing can become sacred. Even the sounds of the kneelers popping back into place can break your heart as you come to see that God lives in these moments.

I first tried the eyes closed listening exercise at Saint Luke’s Episcopal Church here in San Antonio last year. All the things I’ve just described happened to me. At the end of the service, my mind heard a voice that said, “See with what beauty and grace my children are caring for these tender mysteries of worship.”

Gordon Atkinson

I don’t know anything about the confirmation service, by the way, except I hear the bishop puts his or her hands on your head. Beyond that I haven’t a clue. I’ll tell you more about it after I’ve been through it.

And that’s what this little series of essays is going to be like. One guy who doesn’t know much writing for people who know even less. I could study Episcopal polity and theology. I have a seminary degree and used to be a minister in another tradition, so I’m familiar with that kind of learning. I expect I could get seven or eight well-chosen books, read them, and sound like a cradle Episcopalian in a few months.

But I don’t want to do that. I’d rather learn about this tradition organically, the way most people do. You go to church. You read stuff the church people give to you – mostly pamphlets designed for beginners. You attend spiritual formation classes. And you keep your eyes open. If you don’t know what’s going on, you ask someone.

So that’s how I’m going to learn what it means to be an Episcopalian. Slowly and one step at a time.

Now this next part is important. Because I’m going to learn as I go, I’m going to be wrong sometimes. I’ll experience something at church, make my best guess at what was going on, write to you about it, and then a more experienced Episcopalian will leave a comment and help me see that I was mistaken.

That’s okay with me. I like the idea of being a novice and getting mixed up or confused and having wise people help me out. It takes all the pressure off of me. Also I have an idea that the Episcopal Church might need to know how reasonably intelligent and willing newcomers are misunderstanding things.

So maybe my observations will be helpful to us all.

At the very least I hope it’s entertaining. I took myself entirely too seriously with my last faith tradition. This time I’m in the mood to laugh a little bit and enjoy the journey.

Gordon Atkinson

]]> http://tertiumsquid.com/beginners-guide-to-becoming-episcopalian/a-beginners-guide-to-becoming-episcopalian/feed/ 14 http://tertiumsquid.com/foy-davis/personal-savior/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=personal-savior http://tertiumsquid.com/foy-davis/personal-savior/#comments Fri, 07 Dec 2012 03:06:12 +0000 Gordon Atkinson http://tertiumsquid.com/?p=484 Continue reading →]]> The first part of this story was published yesterday here.

“Well, you gotta do it. You just have to say the sinner’s prayer. And then you’re saved for sure. And then we can just play catch and ride bikes and stop worrying about this all the time. Don’t you just want to maybe just do it? Can’t we just say it? It’s real quick. And I know it by heart on account of my family always goes to church and I’ve heard it a million times.”

“Yeah, you go all the time. I don’t like church. Do you just hate going but you have to, so you just go anyway and everything? And just have to sit there?”

Foy saw a stick and picked it up. He wanted to bang in on the fence the way Mickey did. He stepped in front of Mickey and whacked his stick along the chain link fence three times as hard as he could.

“No. Yeah. Well, kind of. No, church is okay sometimes. Big church is boring, but there’s these new Bibles with cool pictures in them, so I look at them if it gets boring.”

“Yeah?”

“Mickey, you gotta get saved. You need to say the sinner’s prayer. You know you’re a sinner, right? You know that, right?”

“Yeah, I guess. Well, what’s a sinner?”

“What? You don’t know what that is? Everybody is. Sinning is when you do bad stuff and… You’ve done bad things sometimes, right? Everybody has.”

“Yeah.”

Okay then, so you’re a sinner. That’s all that means. And Jesus died for you, right? You just have to believe that. That Jesus died on the cross for your sins.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard about that.”

“Okay then. Now you just say the sinner’s prayer. I can help you say it.”

Foy looked around. There was a small shed at the back of a yard they were passing. Foy pointed to a space behind the shed.

“Let’s just go back there and you can pray and get saved.”

“Okay.”

They went behind the shed and Foy knelt. Mickey knelt beside him.

“Just say what I say. Just kind of follow me. I’ll lead you just like the revival preacher does. Only you have to really mean it, okay? You do, right? Cause otherwise it might not count.”

“No, I mean it.”

“Good. Here we go.”

Foy put his hands together and bowed his head. Mickey did the same. Foy looked at him and was satisfied Mickey had assumed an appropriate posture.

“Dear God, I know I’m a sinner.”

Mickey didn’t say anything. Foy whispered, “Just say what I say, only you gotta mean it.”

“Oh. Dear God, I’m a sinner.”

“I know Jesus died for my sins.”

“I know Jesus died for my sins.”

“So….wait, I gotta remember the next part.”

Foy looked at the ground around his knees, frantically, as if the next line of the prayer might be found there.

“Uh…so Jesus, I just want you to come into my heart and live there, nicely, and be my personal savior.”

“I just want you to come and live in my heart…that last part’s long, Foy. Break it into littler pieces.”

“Sorry. Uh, so Jesus come live in my heart.”

“Jesus, come live in my heart.”

“And be my personal savior.”

“And be my personal savior.”

Foy paused, trying to remember if he had left anything out.

“I want to be a Christian and go to heaven, and I believe everything I’m supposed to.”

“I want to be a Christian and go to heaven. I believe all the stuff I’m supposed to.”

“Cross my heart.”

“Cross my heart and hope to die.”

“Amen.”

“Amen.”

They two boys rose and stood looking at each other.

“Well,” Foy said. “You did it.”

“I know.”

“So, you’re saved now. You’re going to heaven. Don’t let anyone tell you you’re not saved, cause you are all right. Once saved always saved. Wait, I forgot to tell you about that. There’s no take-backs. You’re going to heaven now, no matter what.”

“Even if I do bad stuff?”

“Well, you’re not supposed to do bad stuff. But you’re saved, so I guess no matter what.”

The two boys emerged from behind the shed and resumed walking to school. Foy skipped with excitement for a block and then fell back into step with Mickey.

“Mickey, do you feel any different inside, now that you’re saved?”

“No. Are you supposed to?”

“Some grownups say you’re supposed to feel different. My Sunday school teacher told me that after you’re saved, the roses look redder and the sky looks bluer.”

“Did they look that way after you were saved?”

“No, but that doesn’t mean anything. I asked my dad about it, and he was kind of mad. He said she shouldn’t have said that to me.”

Mickey looked up.

“The sky looks the same for me too I guess.”

Foy put his arm around Mickey’s shoulders.

“It’s okay. It’s different for everyone. But you and me are saved. We’re going to heaven.”

This scene from Foy’s life will make more sense if you read “Bearing Witness.”

Fort Davis Texas
1969

On Monday morning Foy cut across his block, through the neighbors’ yards, past Fort Street, to Davis Street, where Mickey lived. The Wallace family lived in a sagging home on a double lot. Buddy Wallace had erected a ramshackle metal building that served as his workshop and garage. Two small sheds about the size of outhouses were attached like hermitages to one side of the workshop. Indeed, they may at one time have been outhouses. Cars in various states of disrepair filled the workshop and spilled out into the yard, where their rust was slowly bringing them into harmony with the colors of the rocks, the earth, the washtubs, and the old tractor engine that also lay in the yard. On the Wallace property, things sat in the yard until they became part of the landscape, sinking into the ground and changing colors slowly over the years. Above these things flew the colorful flags of the Wallace laundry, flapping in the West Texas wind on two parallel lines that ran from the side of the workshop to a laundry pole set into concrete near the only tree on the property, a scrubby juniper that Alice Wallace watered and cared for as if it was the only thing of beauty in her life.

A caliche driveway ran from Buddy’s workshop to the street. On it sat Buddy’s pride and joy, a 1969 stretch limousine with a blown engine that he had acquired at an auction in Van Horn. “The interior is perfect,” Buddy often said. “Like no one ever rode in it.” When he had it running again, there was talk of starting a limousine service. “What kills the limousine business is the car payments,” Buddy told his buddies who hung around the shop. “That’s what they call overhead, and without overhead there’s no limit to what a man can make. It’s all profit.”

Foy knocked on the front door. He never rang the bell in the morning before school because once he rang the bell and awakened Buddy, who roared his displeasure so loudly from his bedroom that Foy heard it on the front porch. One of Mickey’s older brothers came and looked through the screen. When he saw Foy, he opened the door without a word and headed back into the dark interior of the Wallace home. Foy turned left instead of following him and went through two rooms crammed with furniture and debris into the kitchen, where he found Mickey sitting at the table finishing a bowl of Captain Crunch.

“Hey,” Foy said.

Mickey nodded.

Foy looked at the back of the cereal box while Mickey finished eating and put his bowl by the sink.

“Was there a prize in it?”

“Nope. Sugar Pops has a parachute army man. Did you get that one?”

“No,” Foy said sadly. “My mother doesn’t allow us to eat sugar cereals.”

“But you put sugar on your Rice Krispies, don’t you.”

“Yeah. Five spoonfuls if she’s not looking.”

Mickey grabbed a paper bag off the counter, looked around, and opened the pantry door. He put several items in the bag and rolled down the top. They went out the front door and headed down the street toward Dirk’s Anderson Elementary School.

“Watcha got for lunch?” Foy asked.

“A ketchup sandwich and five candy bars.”

Mickey Wallace had been making his own lunch since he was in kindergarten.

“You wanna trade one of your candy bars for some fruit cocktail?”

“Yuck. No. But I’ll give you one. I packed one for you cause your mom’s desserts are crummy.”

Foy smiled. “Thanks.”

They walked the block in silence. Mickey was immersed in his attempts to avoid stepping on the cracks in the parched dirt road. Foy noticed this and fell in step with him. After a few minutes he worked up his courage to speak.

“Mickey, do you think you’re going to heaven?”

Mickey didn’t respond so Foy continued.

“My dad says you’re going to heaven, so I thought I would tell you that. You don’t have to worry or anything.”

“I’m going to heaven? Your dad says so?”

“Yes. And he’s the preacher. So he knows about this stuff.”

“Neat-o. I’m going to heaven.”

They walked a block in silence. Mickey picked up a stick and began whacking it on a chain link fence as they walked by. He wore the bark off it. He looked closely at the frayed end and began picking at it.

“You’re going to heaven for now anyway. If you died as a kid. Have you heard about the age of countability?”

“No.”

“I hadn’t heard of it either. But my dad told me about it. There’s this age that you get to. And if you get to it, you know more things about God because you’re older. I think it’s maybe 14 but it can be different for different people. And once you get to that age, you’re not going to heaven unless you accept Jesus as your personal savior. You know about that, right? About asking Jesus into your heart and getting saved? They talked about it at vacation Bible school. Remember when you went with me that time? They talked about it. You remember that, right?”

“No, I don’t remember any of that. So I’m going to heaven if I die right now? But if I get older and learn stuff about God I have to do that stuff with Jesus? That seems weird.”

To be continued…

So this is the world without Bobbie. I don’t like the way it feels like the same world. Glen Beck was on the radio when I drove my brother-in-law’s car. The man at the gas station said I looked good, as if he somehow knew that I don’t wear a suit much anymore. I drank a Diet Coke on the way to the viewing.

There is definitely something missing in the Cosmos though. Bobbie’s unique view of the world. The filamented framework of how she understood life, built inch by inch with every breath and heartbeat, is no longer with us. You can’t save a worldview. It’s too much for saving. You can’t even understand it. She was the only one who saw the world through her eyes. And that particular view is no more.

It was the view of a woman born in the 1930s in Texas. She married a Baptist preacher in a day when they had no doubt that their view of life and God was righteous and good. The view of a woman who let her husband shine and loved the reflected glow. The determined look of a woman for whom duty was paramount and individual need a lesser thing, something that cowards or weak people fretted over. Essence first, given by birthright and religion, and then a hard existence, leaning into that essence with every blessed ounce of energy the good Lord gave you. Surety, faith, and fidelity as hard as you could and then death.

I’m telling you, she’s gone. Bobbie is gone. Her wit, her famous memory, her sharp eyes that could spot a deer or an elk before any man could. She’s gone and we really don’t know what we’ve lost. Because every woman is a private world unto herself. She shares what she can of her heart and the rest is mystery.

I keep looking for the ripples her passing must have left in the ether. Not the ripples of grief in her family but something in the world. Something to assure me that we all matter.

We Christians say that she went to be with the only one that can truly know our hearts. To the only presence that can perceive and duly notes the infinitesimal drop in the cosmic barometer that marks the passing of one good woman.

She was going to be with Jesus. That’s exactly what she said.

Gordon Atkinson