On a hot Phoenix night in 1969, the sweat of a hundred teenagers raised the humidity in the tent set up on the asphalt church parking lot. Brother Mid McKnight wore a black suit. He held a black leather-bound Bible in one hand, a microphone in the other. He paced the stage never opening the Bible but quoting book, chapter and verse from it as he pointed at us with it, convicting us of the fires of hell while he dripped in the holy sauna of our “Jesus Movement Piety”.
It was called a “youth rally”. I had never heard of such a thing nor experienced anything like it in the pre-Vatican II Latin Mass Catholic Church I was raised in and in which I had aspired to become a priest since first grade at St. William’s.
1969 was my senior year of high school. “I want to know what I need to do to become a priest after I graduate”, I told Fr. David a few months earlier.
Our parish was “light blue collar” and so was my Dad. I did not understand that my ‘60’s art department ethos versus rural Arkansas military service cultural conflicts would carry over into the Church and serving God.
Fr. David stared at me: Long hair. Thrift store gold rimmed John Lennon glasses. Bell bottom jeans. Sandals. Perhaps I should have known better than to show up to a life altering interview with an “establishment enterprise” in a sartorial counter-cultural motif, but I was barely 17 and the blinders of adolescence narrowed my field of vision quite well.
“We don’t want your kind in the priesthood”, he said matter of factly.
I don’t recall much after that. I must have gone home and told my mother (who hadn’t gone to church since we moved to Phoenix 3 years prior). Decades later she told me that she had gone to the church and talked to the priest and told him about my “spiritual history” as a child. He told her, “You need to come to church, tithe, and then we’ll see…” She said that she took that as a money grab to get me ordained and never went back to the Catholic church again. And I was invited to a “youth rally” by a friend in my English class.
I still recall the first “altar call” I ever heard. It was a story about a boy and his dog.
The boy grew up with his faithful dog. They were inseparable. The boy would take the dog everywhere. Their favorite thing was to go fishing in the boy’s rowboat. The dog would jump out of the boat and swim in the lake and the boy would always bring the dog back into the boat. The boy grew up, the dog grew old. One day, the boy knew the dog was getting too old and was dying. He took the dog out to the lake. He helped the dog out of the boat into the lake. The dog tried to swim like old times, but faltered. He put a paw up on the edge of the boat, pleading to his best friend to help him back into the boat. Instead of helping the dog into the boat, the boy grabbed a hatchet and cut the dog’s paw off. The dog was bewildered, floundering in the lake and put his other paw up on the edge of the boat and whined to his best friend to help him into the boat like they always did. The boy brought the axe down and cut off his other paw… The dog sank into the lake, trying to swim toward the boat where his best friend sat with an axe.
“THIS… is what we do to Jesus when we sin! WE crucified Jesus, our best friend!”….
And we all flowed down to the front of the tent as we sang “Amazing Grace”.
That was my conversion to a “Bible Church”.
My Dad was not impressed with my “new spirituality”. My orthodontist called my Dad after I told him and his dental assistant they were going to hell for being Catholics. “Well… it’s true,” was my defense.
I understand now why my Dad seldom took my spiritual life as a measure of anything truly spiritual. On the other hand, when it came to his life and death I was his last resort.
He had his first triple bypass when he was fifty one. I held his hand as they took him in to surgery. He said, “Pray for me.” I said, “I will.” That was the last time we discussed anything spiritual until his third heart procedure twenty something years later. He was sure this was “it”. I called the priest from my Orthodox church (my third “conversion”) to come anoint him before his surgery.
Dad was on the gurney in pre-op. We had about ten minutes. Fr. Damian looked at my Dad and said, “Jess, are you ready to die and meet God?” My Dad said, “I don’t think so.”
“Then would you like to get ready?”
“I think I better…”
“Do you believe Jesus can forgive you for everything you’ve ever done?”
“Yes.”
“Would you like to be baptized then?”
“I think I better….”
And we took a Dixie cup from the countertop, filled it from the sink tap, and we baptized my Father.
He went in to surgery. And he came out alive, and a Christian.
He was not a very good one in my estimation. But then I wasn’t a very good one in his either. He never talked about his faith. I talked about mine incessantly all over the internet.
How much of a Christian he was, I would not find out for another 20 years when, after he died, I found this tattered paper folded up in his wallet.
Perhaps this is the way.
(Translation: God grant me health, happiness, peace, love and the power of your holy light, now and forever.)