Hope of the Hopeless

I took tons of notes, shocked by the words boring into my ears, reaching for Mady's proffered notebook soundlessly, dumbly, she somehow knowing and anticipating my need, my craving to document and quote, to verify that the words assailing me are not fragments of my worst consciousness nor repetitions of the worst of contemporary cultural commentary, but in fact are there, real, of this particular moment: uttered and received by this congregation of poorly dressed sycophants as truth. Somehow, writing the words not only documents them but distances me from them, like raising a fence around me for protection. For I do feel assailed. I do feel assaulted. The hatred and the sense of violent vindication both terrifies and appalls me. At the end of this service, both Mady and I need to flee.

When we approached the enormous edifice that is the Faith Bible Chapel in Arvada, Colorado, we were first greeted by two uniformed police officers and only secondarily by members of the congregation. I asked the police officers why they were there, pretending to assume they were there because of some raised terrorist alert. "Oh no, m'am. We're just here to make sure no one gets hurt." At the end of the service, they are still there, posted just outside the chapel doors again, keeping the peace. There is also an ambulance on alert in the parking lot. God forbid anyone of these just and righteous churchgoers should meet their end during the service. These, after all, are the Chosen. These, after all, have the Hope and the Promise of the End of It All. But God forbid their lives should end before that Glorious, All-Out End.

How horrible, how paltry and frustrating, how completely unfulfilling their lives must be that they can actually look forward to the End of the World. It does not take so much for most of us to find life justifiable, bearable somehow. Our daughter looking beautiful, shining clean and radiant in a prom dress next to some unknown young man even though we know full well we shouldn't care whether she looks beautiful or whether she has a date;, our son winning honorable mention in a contest he rightfully should have taken first place, our daughter emerging from under the hood of an old jalopy, grease streaking her happy features, a sunrise, a sunset, waves breaking on the watertop. But these people have lives so patently completely without joy that the pronouncement of the imminence of the end of the world as we know it makes them break out into applause, makes the husband in his cheap and shapeless suit bestow the fondest of smiles upon the joyous face of his wife, upturned.

It's Mother's Day. The moms of the congregation are called down to the front for a special blessing. Mady urges me to join them. I, frozen in fear, cannot. "If anyone asks, I'm your crazy spinster aunt," I hiss back at her. The moms are rewarded for their mommerly excellence with a gift: an emery board. I am so vastly relieved that I am not among them. A fingernail file in return for your life. It makes my puny bookseller pay look formidable somehow. Oh yeh. Moms also are rewarded for their selfless service to their children with a free doughnut following the service. Let them eat cake, and let them have nicely shaped and manicured fingernails, oval and smooth, betraying not the work they do.

This is the most sacrilegious religion I have ever witnessed and one I could not have imagined, even in the worst of my nightmares and day panics. Their foyer is full of booths, where cheap trinkets are being sold. Nothing at all religious, just baubles and bags and ornaments. I cannot help but think of Jesus entering the temple in Jerusalem in the days leading up to his crucifixion and overturning the tables of those who would do commerce in God's holy place. In the women's bathroom, a sign in each stall instructs Spanish speaking users to make sure to place their tampons in the proper receptacle. English speakers apparently know how to properly dispose of their waste and need no physical reminders. Reminders of Israel, flags and maps and brochures, are everywhere. It's like a travel bureau, one in which every traveller's going to Israel.

This puzzles both of us for a while, but by sermon's end it is all terribly, dreadfully, appallingly clear. These Christians love Israel and, in particular, love the war and the pain and the bloodshed that has lasted so long between the Jews and the Palestinians. This hatred, this conflict, this bloody fight for a small stretch of desert land on the other side of the world is, by these "Christians," the beginning of the hastening of the End. When Jesus comes back, you see, he will enter by the East Gate of Jerusalem. There can be no political settlement, no ceding of this Holy Gate to the Palestinians. The war must continue. We need to support Israel, so the Lord can come and smite all of these damned heathens so stone cold dead only hellfire will return them to screaming, tortured life again. The end will come only if we continue our present path of hatred and violence. We not only have no obligation to nurture peace, we have no reason to feed the poor or cure the ailing; all this sadness and evil is a sign of the Glorious End Approaching.

I can say no more. The pervasiveness of despair and hatred overwhelms me again as I write; words may create a fence that keeps these people from touching me, but it is such a small fence, a little white picket fence, and theirs is the barbed wire fences around Auschwitz, Bergen Bergen, Baba Yar....