storeeze

“Okay ladies and gentlemen, we're gonna be in Springfield in six minutes, here. Six minutes to Springfield. Please make it through the aisles to get to the doors on the lower level if you're getting off at Springfield. Springfield next,” bawled the Amtrak PA. She was at the counter of the café car, followed me to a table, tugging on the cotton underwear peeking out of her pants. Flashy red earrings, brown corduroys, dirty tennis shoes, and a thin black v-cut slip-of-a-top. No bra. Pendulous breasts stretched low, swaying in time with the coach. Expressive black eyes with a look of almost childish sincerity, encased in sleepy purple eyelids, on a face worn by care and suffering. She called herself ‘Michael Jackson’. She boasted eight children: ‘Boo, Boo, Boo, Boo, Boo, Boo, Boo and Boo-Cah’. She came to Springfield filled with promises made by a man. A shadow fell when I probed her religion, followed by much excitement: “Get God all up in you and be the best you can be.” She kep...

He is not here, but is risen!—Luke 24:6 My granddaughter Christina was visiting from college on Black Saturday, just in time for my favorite Easter tradition—rack of lamb, red wine and The Last Temptation of Christ —until her mother got wind of it. “THIS MOVIE PORTRAYS JESUS AS A HOMOSEXUAL!” I snatched the phone. “It’s the best Jesus movie.” “It's disrespectful. Bad on Easter. I raised Christina a certain way and I don't want her watching it.” “You haven’t seen it.” “I don’t care. Put her back on.” “Hi Mom, it's me again.” “Don't let gramps make fun of our religion.” I couldn't think of an answer; we went straight for the wine and lamb. Come Sunday, I figured Christina, a biracial young woman, would appreciate the African American congregation and a good honest sermon at the St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church. The building stood on stilts, ark-shaped like Noah's, ready for the Flood. We took it in, and walked up a steep ramp into the vestibule to a blast of Han...

My first sense of a Higher Power walked in with death: Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. —Child's bedtime prayer, 18th century Before my mother taught me the prayer, I had had no thoughts about death or God. Afterward, those were all my thoughts. The prayer, a childhood favorite at the time, established a supernatural realm and the agency to connect it with the material world. It reminded children of the impermanence of life and the certainty of death. Withal, it promoted the curious idea that the sovereignty of the prayer would not only reassure children before bedtime, but also preserve the innocence of childhood slumber following its recitation. This can’t be right, can it? How could I go to sleep if I might not wake up? Terrifying. As we prayed together each night, she taught me to pray for others. Would they die, too? This sad bedtime poem generated more questions than answers. What is a...