Celebrate With Us

The Wednesday night guided meditation and healing service sounds a little too Fight Club for much of the non church crowd, but being holier than them, I have a high tolerance for both healing and mortal combat.

The man had the worn look of old and poorly maintained leather abused by the trail as he stumbled from his crimson Toyota, wife trailing behind him as he pulled on a Trilogy sailing shirt to cover the uniform sunburn of a broken down first mate. They made their way to the back entrance of the church as the Preacher sat in front of his piano banging out a quiet version of Om Shanti. They sat two pews in front of me.

I like to sit near the back to keep my eye on things. As part of the volunteer agreement the Healing Arts Center practitioners use the last half hour to offer services to anyone who can make their way to the front pews where they all convene patiently throughout the service in their green fuzzy leis waiting to dispense therapy.

But not me. I like to come from the back like a porn star. A grand entrance from the Ti leaf blessing station directly across from the communion wafers. It’s my own personal arrogance hard at work, but at least I don’t come in the middle of a song.

Drunk in church is a sure way to write your way into the collective consciousness of a congregation. And the sailor had plenty of ink. Thinking of drunken churchies, I picture an indigent man stumbling in on an icy night at a church sandwiched uncomfortably between a Persian deli and a methadone clinic on the dirtiest streets of wherever, USA. But this one rolled up stupid in a red flatbed, straight out of Kihei in the heart of Kapahulu.

After the singing comes the prayer requests. When you hear about everyone’s dying relatives or missing children or any manner of the Lords will personified. The sailor wanted none of it. As the deputy pastor walked from person to person, listening and broadcasting their prayers to the group over the wireless microphone, he became increasingly frantic, raising his arms in fury and exasperation each time she picked someone else. At one point, his wife had to pull him down like someone restraining a pit bull.

But his time came.

Just as the woman behind him leaned in telling him to be patient, the pastor spotted him. She walked up and held the mic forward for him to speak and he boldly tore it from her grasp.

He was out of the pew and into the aisle with the grace of a seasoned televangelist, his head cocked backwards and a dramatic drunken sway to his frame. He alternated between a two hand prayer grip on the handle of the microphone and one hand raised for either calming effect or balance.

“I’m going to do it,” he announced to us softly under the soft glow of the high ceiling lights with the grim determination of a plumber. “It’s been my lifelong goal to move to O`ahu. And now. Here! I! Am!”

He paused for emphasis, nodding his head with subtle arrogance. He assessed the unresponsive crowd who had never seen anyone with the mic other than the mikanele. You could almost hear the unison whispers from the gray hairs that this was not the reverend Sky St Jon.

“Today I did it. I finally enrolled at the UH. Just under the deadline with less than 20 minutes to spare. And I’m going to do it!”

At this point all heads were down. He had the feel of a snake that might strike upon eye contact.

“See… I’m here tonight,” he bent his knees to meet the downcast eyes of the congregation as he balled one hand into a fist, “to receive your prayers for my prosperity.”

He let this sink in, standing back up and pointing a thumb into his own chest.

“For the prosperity of me, my wife and our two children as I complete my schooling at UH Manoa which I enrolled in today.”

Just under the deadline. Yes. We were all clear on that one. He flopped his arms out parallel to the floor and dropped the mic. The deputy pastor scurried to grab it as the bounces echoed to the high ceilings and back. He sat down with a piously superior nod. His wife patted his back nervously as the pastor asked for his name to properly invoke the prayer.

“It’s Bryce!” he shouted in disgust without the benefit of the amplifier as if his name had been Jesus or Mohamed or Kamehameha I.

“Let us pray,” she began, “for Bryce and his family embarking upon this new journey and know that god wants us all to prosper in all of our-”

“Celebrate with us!” He was up again, the wife pulling at his shoulders and the gray haired old ladies disabling their hearing aids under the pounding waves of his verbal diarrhea.

We work on the people in the front pews as the group is coming out of guided meditation and some are dropping satchels containing more prayers into a wood chest on the front stage. It’s a relaxing time. There’s a song droning on in the background about healing or love, I can’t remember.

I had my eyes closed and my hands around the back of the neck of a lady from Baltimore, feeling for tension in her cervical vertebrae when Bryce was able to sneak up on stage behind me. His voice boomed across the church and I nearly ripped her head off in alarm.

“Love is the way!” He bellowed with arms up again. “Love!”

And then he was gone. He came in late and he went home early. And I haven’t been back there since. He left his mark like a careless Picasso and now he’s free somewhere up in Manoa terrorizing the business department with drunken theories on capitalism and the global marketplace I assume. Because he’s the kind of thorn-in-your-side hit-and-run artist that you have to give a sort of grudging respect to if for nothing else his calculated sleaziness, which leaves no time for someone to catch up with him in the parking lot and give him the kind of healing he really needs and truly deserves.