July 10, 2006

Signs. (There is creative reading as well as creative writing)

1. Somewhere last year in the middle of the night, northbound on the 405, i was listening to Los Angeles talk radio when i first learned of Universalism. The minster on the radio was explaining it and it's theological foundations. Like most broadcast religion i hear, especially in the middle of the night, - including this seemingly new-age trend- at best, leaves me mentally macabre. (Also Read: Notes on AM Radio )

2. Sometime last year I came this town and the first person i met was a man named Robert McManus. I was introduced to him upon my first visit here. He offered to meet me and show me around the town. So on a snowy saturday morning i took him up on the offer before catching a flight back to california.

Yesterday in the heat of july, i was walking down the street to the river. I saw this sign. Some signs are allegorical. some are metaphorical. and some are literal. St. Augustine reminded us that first we must determine the literal meaning in messages, then look for more. As if to say, some signs start with two posts stuck in the ground, with black board and white capital letters.

Two memories came back to me. Both of which I addressed at the time, date and place on the sign.

Unfortunealty, instead holding the service in the main chapel, I had to enter the side door into the air conditioned basement . There were 50 or 60 people there. They were sitting on folding chairs instead of wooden pews. Only a few folding chairs remained in the back. I sat in one of them. I listened to the service. I sang the songs. I listened to Rob speak.

Not everyone in the folding seats was christian. Not everyone in the folding seats was not. But Rob was.

Not everyone in the basement was gay. Not everyone was not. But Rob was.

Not everyone in that basement perhaps understood what Rob said. Not everyone did not. But I did. (or so i believed.)

You could hear a pin drop on the linoleum basement floor as he spoke. The son of a Baptist minster, and Ph.D. graduate from Regent University (founded by the christian broadcast network and Pat Buchanan), Rob spoke about his life and his morality as a gay man, and his decisions not to enter into a traditional marriage, the woman's hearts he broke, and the truths he has since told, and the jobs he then lost, and how he has done that in the context of his faith and principles. On each folding chair was silent stares; closed hymn books and mystified looks. it was unusual, i thought. or perhaps, i soon realized, only odd on the account of my ignorance of the matter.

After Rob's lecture, and the service concluded, he approached me and welcomed me again to town. I expressed my disappointment in not seeing the church upstairs to one of the members. He promptly took Rob, me, and two other visitors, both faculty members I met in the crowd, up a narrow staircase up into the foyer. The staircase turned again and rose into the dark with deep black walnut banisters. The railings were made by a slave who earned his freedom by carving the wood around the tight corners into the balcony. I walked out under the cathedral ceiling and looked to the far end of the pews at the pulpit where Emerson once spoke. I sat in the pews with names carved in them from the original 1857 congregation, and saw the giant fresco mural above the altar of Jesus weeping on a hilltop above Jerusalem. All odd perhaps, for such a church, i thought. or perhaps, i soon realized, only odd on the account of my ignorance of the matter.

Thoughts can grow thick in my head. So can assumptions. They both shade out the sun like the deepest of unseen jungles. They twist and spread like vines and thorns, like paradox and contradictions, obscuring my landscape. Every once in a while a small path is cleared allowing a glimpse of light to fall through the thoughts. The light is not a metaphor. it does not endow me with any wisdom. it is like a black sign with white capital letters; like a bare light bulb in a dark and empty room. it does not show me any direction. It is only a thin column falling down on me. Showing me in my singularity. Showing me and my ignorance; my assumptions, surrounded by a dark and tangled mess. The path i forge is always cleared like all underbrush is cleared; by exploring the forest, rolling up my sleeves, and slashing and swinging with a mental machete.

And that blade is always double edged.

And that path seems always wide enough for just me alone to fit through.

And that path is not straight, nor flat; and it always leads me deeper into the forest.

Posted by Todd Roeth at July 10, 2006 08:47 PM