People are falling all around me. Every time I turn my head, someone else is hitting the ground. I'm very confused and can't stop thinking, "What the hell is going on?" I couldn't understand what was happening. What was the meaning of all this?
I stare at this overly-dramatic recovering drug-addict as he's on the ground shaking and convulsing. He's mumbling and I can't help but wonder, "Is this guy for real?"
I turn my head again. This time my mother is the one that drops. I'm even more confused at this point. I look at my youngest brother and he's as bewildered as I am. He runs over to my mother and starts screaming at her to get up.
"Mom," he screams. "Get up! This is stupid! I want to leave!" As my brother stood over my allegedly unconscious mother, angry and confused, a lady walked over to us. "That's the power of God," the lady said.
The lady was trying to explain to my brother that those actions were normal and should be celebrated. My brother looked at me with a look on his face that only read, "bull-shit." I was just as confused as he was, but I was older, 13 or so, and I realized these people were different from me and that's how they chose to express their beliefs. I had no problem with that, but it wasn't my thing.
I noticed a lot of the people in the audience that were close to my age. We went to the same school and I knew a lot about them. The strange, dramatic kids were dancing or shouting in tongues with their parents, and the laid-back kids were just looking at everyone else with a blank face.
I even had the priest hit me on the forehead, just like he was doing to everyone else. I wanted to experience whatever everyone else was feeling. "The power of Christ," he shouted. The only thing I felt was his palm slam against my forehead. No holy spirit, no act of God, nothing but his palm.
I took a few steps back, but that was because he hit me pretty hard. I walked out disappointed that I didn't get that sense of connection with God. "Is this my fault," I'd ask myself. Later that day, I asked my mother to describe to me what she experienced.
Her description was very bleak, so bleak that I can't remember exactly what she said. The only thing that comes to mind when I try to recall what she told me, is "bull-shit."
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This is great, Graham. I like the action and ambiguity of the opening line and, really, the first several paragraphs. I feel genuinely interested as I read, and I like that I have to be a little bit of a detective to figure out where you are and what's going on. The final line of the fourth paragraph -- "'That's the power of God,' the lady said" -- clears everything up in a subtle, effective way. Yay, dialogue! I also really like the third-to-last paragraph. It illustrates your curiosity -- your 13 year old willingness to believe -- and the emptiness you felt in place of the intensity all around you.
ReplyDeleteThe opening line of the final paragraph is beautiful; "bleak" is such a great word. If you choose to revise this, try to dig into your memory and emotions to give us something more than "bull-shit" in the final line. It feels to me like a tough, vague word covering up real complexity and tenderness. How can you articulate for your reader some of what lies underneath it?