Rural Free Delivery

From Zora Neale Hurston’s The Sanctified Church:

High John de Conquer came to be a man, and a mighty man at that. But he was not a natural man in the beginning. First off, he was a whisper, a will to hope, a wish to find something worthy of laughter and song. Then the whisper put on flesh. His footsteps sounded across the world in a low but musical rhythm as if the world he walked on was a singing-drum. Black people had an irresistible impulse to laugh. High John the Conquer was a man in full, and had come to live and work on the plantations, and all of the slave folks knew him in the flesh.

The sign of his man was a laugh, and his singing-symbol was a drum. No parading drum-shout like soldiers out for show. It did not call to the feet of those who were fixed to hear it. It was an inside thing to live by. It was sure to be heard when and where the work was hardest, and the lot the most cruel. It helped the slaves endure. They knew that something better was coming. So they laughed in the face of things and sang, “I’m so glad! Trouble don’t last always.” And the white people who heard them were struck dumb that they could laugh. In an outside way, this was Old Massa’s fun, so what was Old Cuffy laughing for?

Old Massa couldn’t know, of course, but High John de Conquer was there walking his plantation like a natural man.

You never know how or when the threads of your lives intertwine. I have written three books in recent years and, upon reflection, I see that they are inter-related: People Get Ready: A New History of Black Gospel Music, Reluctant Prophets and Clueless Disciples: Understanding the Bible by Telling Its Stories, and Jesus Laughed: The Redemptive Power of Humor. And now that I’ve begun work on Nothing But Love in God’s Water: The Influence of Black Sacred Music on the Civil Rights Movement, I see where they all connect. They’ve all helped prepare me for this moment.

I wrote Jesus Laughed in part because of the visits Mary and I had made to black churches in the course of writing People Get Ready. Black churches resound with laughter before, during, and after the services in a way that the white churches I’ve attended do not. Where did we lose that capacity to laugh?

I’m writing Nothing But Love in God’s Water in part because of the ways black sacred song — from the spirituals through the union movements through the Civil Rights movement — has continued to irrepressibly bubble up and envelope black people at their times of greatest need … as if this music is always there, always available, always waiting for a moment like this.

And now I stumble across Zora Neale Hurston’s essay on High John de Conquer, a mythic black figure who pre-dates John Henry and Stagger (or Stack-o) Lee. High John’s weapons are laughter and song. And speed. High John is fast, as Hurston writes:

Maybe he was in Texas when the lash fell on a slave in Alabama, but before the blood was dry on the back, he was there. A faint pulsing of a drum like a goat-skin stretched over a heart, that came nearer and closer, then sombody in the saddened quarters would feel like laughing and say, “Now High John de Conquer, Old Mass couldn’t get the best of him. That old John was a case!”  Then everybody began to smile.

It’s about story — a story that came from Africa that sustained the slaves and their descendents for generations. It’s about song — songs that came from Africa and enveloped the best of the Christian faith and withstood the dogs and water cannons in Birmingham. It’s about laughter — laughter that came from Africa and enabled blacks in the Jim Crow south to laugh secretly at those who spent most of their waking moments trying to figure out ways to crush High John and the millions like him.

It is no accident, Hurston writes, that High John de Conquer has evaded the ears of white people. They were not supposed to know. You can’t know what folks won’t tell you.

And so it is with Nothing But Love in God’s Water. I’m teasing out from the songs and singers HOW this music helped them get over. WHAT this music provided that enabled them to challenge the most powerful nation on the planet armed only with love and justice. It’s all there in those on spirituals and those unstoppable gospel songs — the stories, the laughter, the music. The trouble is, of course, is that I’m seeing (and hearing) through a glass darkly. 

And armed this knowledge, once again, I pray for strength every day to do that song, that laughter, that story justice.

“Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, the tempest-tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

“The New Colossus,” Emma Lazarus, 1883

 Man, when did we get away from that sentiment? You have to go back to the LBJ years to hear the kind of hate speech passing as patriotism and Christianity that’s spewing out of the mouths of orators and commentators and letters to the editor writers these days.

When did all of this hate begin?

Oh, I understand why so much of it is aimed at illegal immigrants. They’re an easy target. They’re defenseless. They can’t answer back. You can accuse them of anything and hardly anybody rises to their defense anymore. Because once you do, you’ll get the hate mail and hate e-mails and hate phone calls.

I know my history. I know a certain segment of the population goes through these spasms of anti-immigration sentiment periodically. I know about the Know Nothings and the other groups that targeted aliens. I’ve seen the signs that read “No Irish Allowed.” Or Poles. Or Chinese. Or Colored.

Doesn’t mean I have to like it.

I’d like to believe that it’ll pass soon, like the squalls in Leonard Cohen’s wonderful song, “Democracy:”

 Sail on, sail on

O mighty ship of state!

To the shores of need

Past the reefs of greed

Through the squalls of hate

Sail on, sail on, sail on.

 I’d like to believe that we’re still capable of that as a nation. But it is very hard right now. I believe we’re in for a rough time.

And here’s why. In no case have I seen any attempt by these talk show hosts to understand the poor souls trying so desperately to reach the United States that they are walking through a desert through the bleached bones of thousands of Mexicans and Salvadorans and Hondurans before them to get here. They’re willing to sacrifice everything for a chance. Even a slim chance.

Are they breaking the law? Yes. But there is a good chance that so did your ancestors (unless, of course, you’re a Native American or an African American).

Are they taking American jobs? Not according to the people who grow most of America’s food, butcher most of America’s pigs and cattle, or roof most of America’s roofs.

Are they the terrorists of 9/11? No. Not even close.

But Lou Dobbs will never know because he’ll never get to know these illegal aliens.

You know, Jesus was real big on feeding the hungry, visiting those who are incarcerated, clothing the naked, and loving the stranger, the alien, the unloved.

You’re supposed to feed ‘em, visit ‘em, clothe ‘em, and love ‘em, if the New Testament is true.

In short, you get to know them.

That’s the key.

It was the Rev. Raymond Bailey who first brought Frederick Buechner’s novel Treasure Hunt to my attention. In it, the narrator (Antonio Parr) has been away for weeks. When he returns, his young son has made him a sign. It reads, “Welcome Hone,” with the last leg of the “m” missing. Antonio studies the sign for a moment, then smiles:

 “It seemed oddly fitting. It was good to get home, but it was home with something missing or out of whack about it. It wasn’t much, to be sure, just a minor stroke or serif, but even a minor stroke can make a major difference. ‘Welcome Hone,’ the sign said, and I can’t helping thinking again of (Abraham and Sarah and Jacob and) Gideon and … Samson … and all the rest of the crowd … who, because some small but crucial thing was missing, kept looking for (home) wherever they went till their eyes were dim and their arches fallen. In the long run, I suppose (that’s how) we would think of everybody if we knew enough about them to think straight.”

 I suppose that’s how we would think of everybody if we knew enough about them to think straight.

Through the squalls of hate

Sail on, sail on, sail on…

“What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?”
– Rob (John Cusack), High Fidelity

There are times — even during good times — when you just need a little melancholy in your music. Not sentimentality, but just a touch of blue. When those times come, here are some of the songs (or, more precisely, the lyrics to those songs) that I turn to:

“Banks Are Made of Marble”

I’ve traveled ’round this country
from shore to shining shore
It really made me wonder
the things I heard and saw

I saw the weary farmer
plowing sod and loam
l heard the auction hammer
just a-knocking down his home

But the banks are made of marble
with a guard at every door
and the vaults are stuffed with silver
that the farmer sweated for

I’ve seen the weary miner
scrubbing coal dust from his back
I heard his children cryin’
“Got no coal to heat the shack”

But the banks are made of marble
with a guard at every door
and the vaults are stuffed with silver
that the miner sweated for

I’ve seen my brothers working
throughout this mighty land
l prayed we’d get together
and together make a stand

Then we might own those banks of marble
with a guard at every door
and we might share those vaults of silver
that we have sweated for

Originally by Les Rice. The most famous versions are by Pete Seeger and the Weavers, but Iris Dement does a lovely take on it.

“No Expectations”

Take me to the station
And put me on a train
I’ve got no expectations
To pass through here again

Once I was a rich man and
Now I am so poor
But never in my sweet short life
Have I felt like this before

You heart is like a diamond
You throw your pearls at swine
And as I watch you leaving me
You pack my peace of mind

Our love was like the water
That splashes on a stone
Our love is like our music
Its here, and then its gone

So take me to the airport
And put me on a plane
I got no expectations
To pass through here again

– Jagger/Richards, The Rolling Stones. While I could pick nearly anything from Beggar’s Banquet, after I heard this played behind the harrowing footage of Katrina refugees turned away on the bridges out of New Orleans five years ago, it has come to have a special meaning for me.

“O Worship the King”

“Broken Bicycles”

Broken Bicycles, old busted chains/With busted handlebars out in the rain/Somebody must have an orphanage for/These things that nobody wants anymore/September’s reminding July/It’s time to be saying goodbye/Summer is gone, but our love will remain/Like old broken bicycles out in the rain.

The things that you’ve given me will always stay/They’re broken, but I’ll never throw them away.

Tom Waits, “Broken Bicycles” (I must admit I like Maura O’Connell’s version from A Real Life Story better).

Melancholy, but lovely.

See? I feel better already.

Mary and I just completed an epic five-week trip that included a very successful research stopover in Memphis and a jaunt across upstate New York, Vermont (I think I’m in love!), and down the eastern seaboard, seeing old friends and making new ones.

Our stopover in far western New York included a couple of nights in the villages of Fredonia, Dunkirk and Lily Dale. Perhaps you saw the recent HBO documentary on Lily Dale. Or perhaps you’ve read Christine Wicker’s Lily Dale: The True Story of the Town That Talks to the Dead. If you haven’t, Lily Dale needs a little backstory.

This is home of the American Spiritualist movement. About 150 years ago, a movement sprang up composed of people who believed you could gain wisdom (and perhaps salvation) by speaking with the dead. Mediums. Seances. Ghostly rappings. That sort of thing. Today Lily Dale is a small village (you have to pay an admission fee to even enter the place during the summer) and virtually everybody there still believes. In fact, before you can practice (or put out a shingle), you have to be certified by the Lily Dale Assembly.

The village is all but untouched since the 1800s — it looks like a set from Meet Me in St. Louis. (Well, except for all of the fairies, dolphins, spirits, witches, sacred herbs, and crystals everywhere.) Everything is brightly painted, every garden is a delight, and every other person you meet is a medium. Throughout the summer, an array of guest speakers, famous mediums, ghost-hunters, and authors give talks, seminars and demonstrations. It is, of course, a trip.

Now, not everybody would probably enjoy spending an afternoon in Lily Dale. I know there are folks who believe all of this stuff is of Satan. There are others who dismiss it out of hand. But Mary and I enjoyed it anyway. I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why I got such a kick out of the place until I read this passage in Christine’s book. It’s her description of Shelley Takei, a psychologist who summers at Lily Dale and who founded the Lower Archy of the Pink Sisterhood of the Metafuzzies and the Blissninnies. The group’s motto is: “We don’t know jack ***, but we care.”

Their motto reminded me of the controversial church t-shirt I mentioned a couple of posts back. This clearly works for the folks in Lily Dale. Nobody hassled us. Nobody preached to us. Nobody told us were were going to hell if we didn’t vote for a certain political party who shall remain nameless. Everybody was very nice.

Does it work for me? No.

It did get me to thinking about what I do believe. My beliefs have changed over the decades. I used to be pretty sure I knew all of the answers. I was a little dogmatic. I was judgmental. Now, not so much. I don’t sweat the petty stuff anymore (nor do I pet the sweaty stuff), particularly as it pertains to other people.

Instead, I’m kind of like David Oliveria’s mom. At least how David depicts her in his poem “Why I’m Not a Vegetarian”:

As my mother would say,
“Live and let live—
Just keep the details to yourself,
And pass the ketchup, please.”

(David Oliveira, from A Little Travel Story. © Harbor Mountain Press, 2008.)

And yet …

And yet … there is something I do believe strongly. Perhaps you’ve heard the story of Gavin Bryars, a well-known jazz musician. The short version is, while living in England in the 1970s, he was employed as a sound technician for a documentary on the homeless. Somewhere around King’s Cross, he recorded a nameless hobo singing a little ditty, which he recorded — and promptly forgot about for many years.

Eventually, he re-discovered the audio tape and played it back. Something about the little tramp’s voice struck him, so Bryars made a loop of the little ditty — it works like a “round” (like “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”) — extending it to 90 minutes. When he returned from tea, a group of people were standing around his studio, listening and crying.

Bryars took the raw vocals and eventually over-lay dozens of string instruments, creating an ebb and flow of music behind the voice, culminating with Tom Waits singing a duet with the nameless man for the final minutes.

Jesus’ Love Failed Me Yet was an underground hit. Bryars then returned to U.K., but never found the little man again. This CD has spoken to me in ways that few sermons ever have and I’ve used it to calm the storms of my life on many occasions. I’ve also given away numerous copies. And this all the little tramp sings:

Jesus’ love never failed me yet/Never failed me yet/Jesus’ love never failed me yet/This one thing I know/That he loves me so/Jesus’ love never failed me yet

That’s it. That’s what I know. That’s about ALL I know.

Everything else peripheral.

Which means that I’ll tend to my bidness and be happy. And I’ll be happy that you’re happy while you’re tending to your bidness, be it in Waco or Lily Dale or elsewhere.

Or, as another great poet once wrote:

Whatever gets you through the night, ‘s all right, ‘s all right
It’s your money or your life, ‘s all right, ‘s all right
Don’t need a sword to cut through flowers, oh no, oh no

– John Lennon, “Whatever Gets You Through the Night”

Eilan Landon Menjivar, by Mark Menjivar

Don’t the hours grow shorter as the days go by
You never get to stop and open your eyes
One day you’re waiting for the sky to fall
The next you’re dazzled by the beauty of it all
When you’re lovers in a dangerous time
Lovers in a dangerous time
– Bruce Cockburn

Our Sunday sermon was delivered by the always brilliant, invariably funny Dr. Lai Ling Ngan. She chose as her text 1 Kings 17:8-24. It’s the familiar story of the prophet Elijah. Times are bad, with famine and drought on the land. Elijah makes the mistake of telling the king it’s his fault and — naturally — has to flee into the wilderness to save his life. He is fed by ravens (who are, as Dr. Ngan points out, carrion eaters).

Eventually he meets a woman who is about to make a final meal for herself and her son. There is no more food and death will soon follow. Elijah asks her to share her last meal, which she does, and he then creates an endless supply of food for them. But the child dies anyway. Elijah prays to the LORD and raises the child from the dead.

Elijah is usually cited as the hero of the story. But Dr. Ngan points out that the woman is pretty brave, too. She supports her argument by citing Heidi Neumark:

There is no point in romanticizing poverty. There is, however, a point in recognizing the power of those who fight for life and bear witness to a death-defying hope. We could say that Elijah, the male prophet, does this and therefore deserves the spotlight in the lectionary text. After all, he raises someone from the dead. But the widow raises the child — without a husband, without a safety net, without welfare or workfare. She does it in a time of idolatrous national arrogance, famine and drought. Raising the dead requires a single act of trust and prayer from Elijah. Raising a child requires countless acts of trust and many prayers, especially for a single mother.

I have a new grandson, Eilan Landon Menjivar, pictured above. Great little guy. Doesn’t say much. He’s got great parents, Mark and Rachel, who have acted in trust and faith and brought him (and his older brother Asa) into a confused and dangerous world. Bless them. Bless all those who choose to bring children into this Fallen World. I’m not sure I have the faith or the strength to do it now.

And bless those who choose to adopt. Or choose to be Big Brothers/Big Sisters. And bless those who marry and choose not to have kids. Bless ‘em all.

I don’t listen to the radio stations or watch the TV shows where  the hosts(generally white males) shout and threaten and villify and demonize people who disagree with them. I don’t read magazines or newspapers or blogs or even e-mails from the extremists who claim to have all of the answers … and who believe in a theology derived from bumper stickers.

But I do try to listen to Asa and Eilan and Claire and Lucy and Luke and John and Helen and all of the really smart little kids I’m fortune to be surrounded by. I wish I could leave them a better world. I’m working on it, but things are looking a bit dicey at the moment.

It’s almost enough to make a guy despair.

Almost…

But then I stumbled on this quote. It is cited in a memoir by one of the survivors of the Civil Rights Movement, Julius Lester, who survived living in the Jim Crow South, the savage beatings in Danbury and St. Augustine, the hoses and dogs in Birmingham, the nightsticks and horses in Selma, the bricks and rocks in Chicago. Julius Lester and all of the heroes of the Movement truly lived in dangerous times. And yet he chooses to open his book Falling Pieces of the Broken Sky with this quote:

The entire Universe will be broken into a thousand pieces in the general ruin …chaos will return and will vanquish the gods and men … the Earth and Sea will be engulfed by the Planets wandering in the Heavens. Of all the generations, it is we who have been designated to merit this fate, to be crushed by the falling pieces of the broken sky. — Seneca

And thus has it ever been. Demi-gods and demogogues, reactionaries and counter-revolutionaries, fundamentalists and self-righteous Puritans — they’ve always been with us. Like the poor, they’ll be with us until the end, be it fire or ice.

And babies will be born in the eye of the storm. New love will emerge in the ruins. Old lovers will stand and re-affirm their faith and love in the maelstrom.

We’ve always been — and there have always been — lovers in a dangerous time.

And bless us all.

The intersection between African American sacred music and the labor movement in this country is one of the areas I’m exploring as I research Nothing But Love in God’s Water: The Influence of Black Sacred Music on the Civil Rights Movement. Spirituals quickly found their way into the brave labor actions of the first part of the 20th century, during a time when the wholesale slaughter of workers and activists was sanctioned by Big Business and Big Government alike.

One of the heroes of the labor movement was Ralph Chaplin, a brilliant labor activist, writer, and artist. It is Chaplin who pens the lyrics for the famed union anthem ”Solidarity Forever,” for instance.

It is in the pages of Rebel Voices: An I.W.W. Anthology* — where I found numerous examples of old spirituals transformed into stirring labor songs  — that I encountered this lovely, heart-breaking poem by Chaplin, written while unjustly imprisoned, following the officially sanctioned murder of yet another labor activist:

Mourn Not the Dead

Morn not the dead that in the cool earth lie/Dust unto dust/The calm, sweet earth that mothers all who die/As all men must;

Mourn not your captive comrades who must dwell/Too strong to strive/Within each steel-bound coffin of a cell/Buried alive;

But rather mourn the apathetic throng/The cowed and the meek/Who see the world’s great anguish and its wrong/And dare not speak!

* Industrial Workers of the World (or the “Wobblies”), “An Injury to One is an Injury to All”

On the surface, Daniel Okrent’s new book, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, sounds like another interesting read about a quaint tradition from the distant past. But as reviewer David Oshinsky makes clear, there are some chilling parallels with today — but NOT in the areas I was expecting.

First, I was sadly unaware of the many connections, both sinister and innocent, that led to the 18th Amendment. As Oshinsky notes, there are studies a’plenty on Carry Nation, Billy Sunday, Al Capone, and the rest. But only Okrent puts the 18th fully in context:

“Knowing that alcohol taxes accounted for about one-third of all federal revenue, temperance leaders campaigned successfully for a federal income tax to make up the difference. Believing that women were more likely than men to support restrictions on alcohol, these leaders strongly supported women’s suffrage. And when America entered World War I in 1917, helped fan the flames of anti-German hysteria by accusing the Busch family and other brewers of harboring sympathies for the kaiser (a charge, not entirely untrue, that turned beer drinking into a disloyal act).”

There’s much more, of course. In the end, Oshinsky notes that Last Call resists the temptation to link what happened in the 1920s to what’s happening now in the political climate. Okrent may resist — but Oshinsky does not:

“About a century ago, a group of determined activists mobilized to confront the moral decay they claimed was destroying their country. Their public demon was alcohol. but their real enemy was an alien culture reflected by city dwellers, recent immigrants and educated elites. Always a minority, the forces of Prohibition drove the political agenda by concentrating relentlessly on their goal, voting in lock-step on a single issue and threatening politicians who did not sufficiently back their demands. They triumphed because they faced no organized opposition. Americans were too distracted — perhaps too busy drinking — to notice what they had lost. It’s a story with an eerily familiar ring.”

My research into the roots of black sacred music as protest music takes me, at last, to the great African American writer, educator and leader, W.E.B. Du Bois.

In his Autobiography, he closes with advice to his recently born great-grandson. Du Boise is 90 as he pens these words; his Autobiography was first published in the United States in 1968. It is remarkably appopriate for today, not just for May and June graduates, but for all of us:

The most distinguished guest of this festive occasion is none other than my great-grandson, Arthur Edward McFarlane II, who was born this last Christmas Day. He had kindly consented to permit me to read to you a bit of advice which, as he remarked with a sign of resignation, great-grandparents are supposed usually to inflict on the helpless young. This then is my word of advice:

As men go, I have had a reasonably happy and successful life, I have had enough to eat and drink, have been suitably clothed and, as you see, have had many friends. But the thing which has been the secret of whatever I have done is the fact that I have been able to earn a living by doing the work which I wanted to do and work that the world needed done.

I want to stress this. You will soon learn, my dear young man, that most human beings spend their lives doing work which they hate and work which the world does not need. It is therefore of prime importance that you early learn what you want to do; how you are fit to do it and whether or not the world needs this service. Here, in the next 20 years, your parents can be of use to you. You will soon begin to wonder just what parents are for besides interfering with your natural wishes. Let me therefore tell you: parents and their parents are inflicted upon you in order to show what kind of person you are; what sort of world you live in and what the persons who dwell here need for their happiness and well-being.

Income is not greenbacks, it is satisfaction; it is creation; it is beauty. It is the supreme sense of a world of men going forward, lurch and stagger thought it may, but slowly, inevitably going forward, and you, you yourself with your hand on the wheels. Make this choice, then, my son. Never hesitate, never falter.

And now comes the word of warning: the satisfaction with your work even at best will never be complete, since nothing on earth can be perfect. The forward pace of the world which you are pushing will be painfully slow. But what of that: the difference between a hundred and a thousand years is less than you now think. But doing what must be done, that is eternal even when it walks with poverty.

I had the very good fortune to be part of GospelFest 10 in Seattle a couple of weeks ago, along with my friend Dr. Jimmy Abbington. Jimmy and I spoke during the academic part of the conference. Then, on the following evening, we were guests at a program featuring some of the best choirs in the Pacific Northwest, directed by the top music directors in the area — Juan Huey-Ray, Elias Bullock, DaNell Daymon, Gary L. Wyatt, Cora Jackson and others.

But just before the music, the organizer of the festival, Dr. Stephen Newby of Seattle Pacifici University (which hosted the event), asked me to give a history of gospel music at the beginning of the program. In “four minutes or less.”

Thanks, Stephen.

That’s not really possible, of course. So I spoke (in 2 1/2 minutes, no less) on the historic nature of the closing concert/service. It is my belief that gospel music, more than any other American musical form, has been handed down from the first African slaves who were brought to North America. The African distinctives of their music remain in African-African music today. In fact, they form the basis of all popular music in this country — ragtime, jazz, blues, rock ‘n’ roll, rap — as well as gospel.

The gospel blues and jubilee and the spirituals combined together to create black gospel music.

It is an unbroken, almost apostolic, succession. That music, that message still endure. It has been, for most of its history, transmitted orally. There are people alive who learned it from the Rev. Thomas Dorsey, Mahalia Jackson, Roberta Martin and the others who were there when it was first dubbed “gospel.” And John P. Kee, Donnie McClurkin, Yolanda Adams, and the others learned from them. And so it goes …

So any time gospel music is sung, it is the same song those who came before sang. There is more of a beat now and the sometimes I fear the electronic instruments will swamp the Message. But at GospelFest 10, that didn’t happen.

Instead, brothers and sisters, we had CHURCH for three very, very short hours … 

(Photo of the Eufaula, Alabama, church choir, circa 1950s)

I recently gave the keynote at the East Texas Christian University Christian Writers Conference. It was good to be among good people amid the blooming azaleas and dogwood trees and to smell the pines again. My talk was titled “The Redemptive Power of Humor.” It was based, in part, on my recent book by the same name and I really wanted urge all of these Christian writers to use more humor — or at least accept more humor — in their writing and lives.

My thesis: “11 a.m. on Sunday mornings used to be the most segregated hour in America. It still is. But it is also the most dour hour.”

The talk went great. I used lots of funny Power Point slides, played “Bulbous Bouffant,” played the spoons (!), and told a story or three.

When I came to the section on writing with humor, I emphasized that the essential element of humor in real life and in writing is surprise. (That’s why we should always preface a joke with, “Stop me if you’ve heard this one before …”. Without the surprise, a joke ain’t a joke anymore.) When I got to this moment, I showed the slide of the t-shirt depicted above.

Dead silence.

So, instead of quickly moving on like any intelligent person, I said, “Isn’t that wonderful? Isn’t that intriguing? I’d certainly check out a church that advertised itself that way. In fact, how many of you would check out a church like that?”

About 200 people in attendance. Three raised their hands. One of them was my wonderfully supportive wife Mary. More silence.

Dude.

Why does that slide, “We suck …” bother people so much? Or at least bother many religious people so much?

I’ve thought about that (lack of) response, that Power Point, a lot lately.

I think the response is tied into the reason why there’s NOT more laughter in churches these days. (But not the African American church, BTW. Every black church that Mary and I have attended rings with laughter before, during and after church.) 

It seems to me that, for many of us, church is place where we wear masks. Smiley masks. Everything’s good, everything’s great. Thanks for asking. But too often, it’s not a place where we unburden our hurts and pains and sorrows to people who genuinely love us and want what’s best for us.

I love my Sunday School class at 7th & James (Not-so-Baptist-that-you’d-know-it) Church. I’ve confessed and cried and prayed with the folks there for years. I know what’s said in that little classroom stays in that little classroom. But as much as I love 7th, I don’t think I could be as vulnerable and open with the entire church … even during times of desperate need. I just … couldn’t.

Through the years, people at other churches have told me much the same thing.

But Church SHOULD be a place like that … all the time, right?

I don’t have any answers. But I have a song, one written by the brilliant Ken Medema that helps sometimes: