I saw him there in my driveway. He had a face with many lines
and whiskers; a troublesome past, and most likely an ephemeral future.
I was coming home from a night of
sexless cuddle-ry, after an unpaid gig in downtown poverty. Still in high
spirits, somehow, I navigated my un-showered, still-in-yesterdays-clothing, self
to the curb of my bohemian bungalow, and noticed him “grace” my property.
Grasping a bottle of something fierce, he littered the air around him, like a Nazi
beehive, with abrupt utterances, and sleepy hopelessness. I knew not how to
react, so I did what any girl who used to spy on her big brother would do: I
parked my car and followed him down the street. Ducking and hiding behind
shrubs as he waddled, doubtful he would have noticed me if I were dressed up in
a Big Bird costume, nonetheless I maintained an elusive demeanor. He must’ve
been around 60 years old, but by the smell of him, he’d been dead for years.
He zombie-like approached the church just two doors from my
house. Something intrinsic compelled me to proceed, so I followed him in like a pup. The
large blond woman at the door smiled like a marshmallow at me and asked if I
was there to join them for dinner and service. I then realized I had
stumbled into one of those catch 22 sustenance offerings in return for dogmatic-lecture- listening. “Why, yes I have”. I used a fake accent, not that it would
matter, because I do live only two houses down from this church, and it’s not
like they wouldn’t recognize me as their neighbor because of a discrepancy in
my speaking voice.
I charted down
the grey-carpeted stairs to the basement, feeling that I did not belong, (not
only because of my Jewish upbringing) to a reasonably sized room, with white
walls, white tables, white pastors, and white women wearing ivory sweaters
greeting the homeless with forced philanthropy.
I sat in a folding chair next to my new friend/intruder,
although I couldn’t get too close for reasons stated earlier. He turned to me
and coughed real loud, as if I had just bombed his aura with pepper spray, got
close to my face, and bellowed “You’re reeeeal pretty”. I sipped on my plastic cup
of apple juice with enthusiasm. “Thank you, sir”. Shit! I forgot to use the
fake accent. Oh well.
Everyone stared at me, besides those who just looked down at
the table. Maybe 25 people had congregated, all hungry, and expressionless. They
either knew I wasn’t actually homeless or thought I was a prostitute. I wasn’t sure
which angle to play up. So I stayed pretty quiet (which is a difficult thing
for me to do).
The frail woman in front of me with strange haircut, adorned
in white running suit and neon green tee shirt, introduced herself as Annette.
“God don’t want me to think bad thoughts no more”, She said. That pretty much
summed it up. Honestly, it may have been the wisest remark I heard that evening.
The pastor who resembled a large Buick spoke for a half hour exactly (not that I was watching the clock…) about how
Jesus specifically called him to help others, and while he could be sitting on
his back porch right now (Gee, that’s sweet of you to rub it into the homeless
that you have a nice big back porch), he’d rather be in this basement helping
the needy. He did have a convincing kindness tucked behind his eyelids, though,
and I knew deep inside there was soul who craved to improve mankind.
I closed my eyes and attempted to listen with an open mind,
despite my aversion to organized religion, and my refusal to become a sheep.
Each time he said the word “God” I replaced it with the word
“Love”.
Each time he said the word “Jesus” I replaced it with the
word “You”.
And each time he said the word “Satan” or “Devil”, I
replaced it with the word “Fear”.
After my alterations, that sermon wasn’t too shabby. I felt
pretty all right about it.
“Are you going to eat with us? “ Said a white haired woman
with despondently blue eyes. I felt too guilty to consider consuming their
food. Like a housecat coming down to the alley to feed on the scraps. Granted
all I had at home waiting for me was a box of cheerios, and if I had left them
out on the counter from yesterday morning, which I think I did, they’d probably
be quite chewy by that point. Before I knew it a bald man was stacking baked
beans and bread, hot dogs, and weird noodles on a paper plate, placing it in
front of me like a dog treat. I stomached as much as I could, while trying to
push the hotdogs on the other folks like they were laced with crack cocaine.
It didn’t take long for me to start my own preaching- about
self-love and the fact that we really have no fucking clue why we are here on
earth, to act as if you do is complete blasphemy. The evil glares from the evangelist
administrators made me want to continue with my monologue, but I ended up in a
side conversation with one of the gentlemen there about quantum physics. He had
studied it for years. The homeless man to his right had worked for Ford his
whole life, but now is on the streets. These people all had such potential,
they had dreams, but the society we live in has made it next to impossible for
that potential to be cultivated, and now they sleep in public restrooms, under
Mt. Clemens’ lovely bridges, if they are lucky enough in shelters, enduring ½
hour of brainwashing every Saturday evening while their insides rumble.
What dejection.
I left with the onset of a pretty severe tummy ache, felt
almost drunk with sorrow, as I tumbled up the stairs. I kindly rejected the
7:00 service and found my way home while a thousand thoughts intravenously
obtruded my head. Why is it that
money and religion always go hand in hand?
Could it be they are both completely man-made and used to
control people!?!
I thought, if man creates something, that means he has the
power to destroy it.
That’s at least a start.
My heart pumped out of spite for my species’ corruptions,
yet a flint of hope stood like a baby tree in an uncharted rainforest of
untruths.
Religion and science battle one another because science
attempts to uncover misconceptions, to make sense of the complexities and
mysteries of this universe, it is future-based; Religion strives to keep people
simple, and focused on the past-excited about the apocalypse. Come all ye
Sheep-ple! Celebrate the demise! Disregard your biology and innate survival skills!
How I long to free myself from the future and the past, and
live wholly in the moment. After all, it is my past negative attitudes
towards religion that led me to disdain it so much.
Please Note: religion and spirituality are two entirely
different things in my book.
Everyone deserves to eat; young, old, squirrels, ducks,
witches in ditches, death row prisoners clutching their bibles, muttering
“Thou shall not kill”.
But really, aren’t they just teaching hungry people how to
starve?
At home that evening I got sick. I expelled their crackpot ideas along with the food I had
criminally eaten, although I had enjoyed the experience.
If my driveway-hideout-man returns next Saturday I might
just share a bowl of cheerios with him. I might just suck it up and realize
that we are all dancing to the beat of an unlawful drum, at any given moment each of our
entire life savings (the little green rectangles that you’ve never
seen but spend your entire life working for and cluttering your mind with
thoughts of) could disappear, and we could all be eating baked bean propaganda together
on a Saturday evening. Void of running water and big down comforters. Roofless
and toothless, dehydrated from a worlds cruelty.
I think it’s time we stop thinking and talking about money
as if it owns us. As if it has power over us.
I think it’s time we throw a grenade at this bullshit
institution and work on rebuilding something not based on fear.
Our past will always be cluttered with mistakes, but there
is no right or wrong, only information to lead you towards a better future.
Fuck this apathetic Chinese finger trap mentality. Lets all meet
on a Saturday evening over dinner, not to worship a ventriloquist in the sky, but to
brainstorm up ideas on how to start making a positive change. How can we pull
together, not as a specific race or a class, but as a species, to sustain life
on this planet? How can we lesson the God and Money and heighten the Love and Share.
Lets acknowledge our wrongdoings, and move beyond the
fear that traps us in the past.