Sunday Morning Service One and Two
I was going to attend Sunday morning service at the North Bend Church of Christ,
The idea: write a poem about the experience of attending my first Church of Christ Sunday service since 1981 when I accompanied my invalid grandmother and missed the greatest moment in NFC Championship Game history when San Francisco 49er Dwight Clark snagged a touchdown catch out of the sky to beat my beloved Dallas Cowboys in the final seconds.
And here’s why I missed that game, written later that day:
…as we stand and sing…
Reverend Jim Bland had just finished his usually unceremonious sermon. He descended from the pulpit and stood directly in front of the communion table waiting for some poor soul to repent. Bland looked somewhat tired, almost distraught. His lesson on the evils of greed had run overtime and he was hoping, as all the other men, that nobody would come forward today; the NFC Championship game was starting the second half!
Bland’s face suddenly stiffened with attention. Within seconds, he would have to administer sound religious advice without any preparation or previous knowledge. I turned around and saw what triggered the rigidity in Bland’s face. A wormy, black-haired, middle-aged man ambled up the aisle with everybody’s probing eyes searching for clues. He was attired horribly in a checked polyester leisure suit that was no doubt sacrilege in The Almighty’s eyes. The song ceased rather abruptly and the song-leader whispered boringly into the mike, “Please be seated.”
Bland sat the man down in the first pew and conversed with him for what seemed like an eternity. Dammit, the game! I prayed the man would be brief with the explanation of the crisis.
Finally Bland broke away and climbed the steps to the pulpit. He nearly tripped on the plastic foliage surrounding the elevated platform but managed to get their intact.
“Friends,” Bland droned, “today Ed Wilson has come forward with a special problem. He would like to say a few words. Ed.”
Bland disappeared quickly from the podium and collapsed on the first pew. Ed started up the stairs, bypassing the mic located at the communion stand which was usually used for people addressing the congregation. Obviously Ed was really hurting since he ignored this custom. His trembling hands seized the mic violently. Wilson wanted everyone to know that he was in command. After 30 seconds of restless silence, Ed spoke. His voice had an Irish quality about it. The tone was nervous yet deathly serious. C’mon you broken-down man. Spill your guts, repent and get the hell out of there—the Cowboys are battling San Francisco.
“Everybody. I have sinned.”
So I was romping down the beach with Elmer three hours before Sunday service began, thinking about what this former Church of Christ preacher’s kid might see and hear.
Still bad suits, cheap dresses, wooden pews, myrtlewood collection plates, silver communion trays, grape juice for blood, unleavened wafers for body, a life-size, blue-eyed, blonde Jesus hanging crucified from the rafters, overuse of the verb nourish, classic hymns like “Blessed Assurance” and “The Old Rugged Cross?”
Were boys playing with army men,
girls playing with dolls,
old women knitting,
teenagers feeling each other up in the youth group room,
the preacher committing adultery,
the preacher’s kid hitting plastic golf balls into the baptismal?
A seal paralleled our course
Translucent waves teal and tall broke 30 feet away
The antediluvian choir roared
I saw the seal swimming and spinning in the waves
The holy pinniped playing
I clapped
Elmer saw him, began barking, howling, dashing in the surf
The seal disappeared
Ocean’s sermon over
My Sunday service concluded
I drove by the North Bend Church of Christ wondering how many bubbling variations of green-bean casseroles sat warming on hot plates in the basement kitchen, waiting for congregants to devour them at the potluck once the windbag in the pulpit perhaps named Silas Shotwell mercifully ended his peroration against sins of the flesh and promotion of the new Jesus app.
Sunday Morning Service Two
On our way to Horsfall Beach I saw a beaver gliding through a pond.
It never gets old.
(Note: go to Reedsport this week, pick up your order, sculpture of a beaver, chainsawed by an 85-year-old woman.)
We walked south, Coos Head in the distance.
Three-quarter moon fading in the sunshine.
A flock of 200 gulls integrated
with pelicans and one osprey.
No, make that two!
Another one flew by, fish clutched in talons.
I shored up two driftwood forts.
Waves rolled ashore, trying to turn green.
Cumulus clouds hovered low on the horizon.
They never do that.
No boats.
No one else around.
My dog panted in the sand
as I wrote this.
Many will attend church this morning.
We drove past an evangelical complex our way here,
American flag flying,
LED sign scrolling salvation.
It somewhat saddened me to imagine
Christians sitting in pews,
stewing in sin,
recrimination,
righteousness,
praying for mammon,
when they could be
gallivanting at Horsfall Beach,
gazing westward,
not to heaven,
not to hell,
gazing upon limitlessness,
pondering that it rained a million years to fill the oceans,
our creation story of primordial water
so much truer, richer than Genesis.