THE RECONNAISSANCE OF TRUTH
IT TAKES SCRIPTURE TO HEAL THE INFIRM
See History of the Parasomnial Order, vol. 1, pp. 46, 985–035.
PART TWO
Matthew James visits the Mother Church in Los Feliz, California, hears a lady with wrinkled throat sing, witnesses a vagrant coloring his pants, and learns in the ways of Mary Baker Eddy. Written months after the fact upon Wordpress.
On my journey to find truth, I have come across a few steppingstones of retrogressional discomfort nudging me in the direction of spiritual disappointment. I am finding through my Reconnaissance of Truth exploration that spirituality comes in different shapes and sizes of supposed freedom of enlightenment. Some don’t even express the freedom of enlightenment as a freedom at all. They just sing a dance of gibberish to fill the void that has been vacuumed flawlessly without tripping over the seemingly long cord. And some, gaze into the eyes of a charming middle-aged man whose eyebrows say: “I feel for your longing” and whose greased up hairs say: “I’m the reason for your longing”. And here—at the Church of Christian Science—they utilize the technique of perpetual indoctrination and inculcation of biblical passages read by a bespectacled woman who’s reading the works of her accompanying amanuensis for the sake of boring the bejesus out of myself, and the entire congregation of about 60 goodhearted people who for whatever reason are enjoying this hackneyed way of preaching the gospel of the late Mary Baker Eddy. Based on that, the Church of Christian Science does not live up to the reputation that all scientists are as exciting as the great Bill Nye the science guy. This may sound like an exaggeration, and it well is, but, I had a well soporific time with my monotone professors for preachers here at the Mother Church of Christian Science.
As I arrived at the church conveniently located next to Skylight Books, I took a deep breath for purposes of: I was a little nervous. I walked inside confused, not knowing where to go; ahead of me was blocked by a nice quiet middle aged church bouncer who assuaged my confusion and directed me right to the chapel. She admonished me to be on best behavior for I was early, and Mrs. I-can-sing-better-than-you was warming up her vocal chords for a song of truth. This lady was pretty confident in her singing abilities, and somehow managed to learn how to sing with the disability of a wrinkled throat. With my eyes fixated on this womons throat, I found a seat in the back of this surprisingly small chapel. My arms were reverently folded as I studied her every move; I think she was aware of my blatant eyes giving her the why-do-you-think-you’re-better-than-me look. She tried avoiding me for the rest of the service, but couldn’t, because of my relentless nonverbal attack of uncomfortable stop-judging-me stares. Five minutes past, I had forgotten about this lady who kept averting eye contact with me, and I started thinking about Jesus. I was thinking about how he died for me so I could be here at this very moment glancing at the various quotes on the wall while trying to figure out how to describe this place to my faithful nonexistent readers. I looked through the pamphlets in front of me, and they were nothing but scripture passages—and Mary Baker Eddy this and Mary Baker Eddy that. Then I noticed that the quote behind and above the octorganistagenarian was a quote from the late Mary Baker Eddy. It read as follows: “Divine love always has met and always will meet every human need”. Which got me thinking: who is this Mary Baker Eddy?
Mary Baker Eddy is the founder of this glorious church of Christian Science, and is the author of their supplement to the Bible entitled Heath and Science, A Key to the Scriptures—it’s kind of like Science of Mind, but Heath and Science came before Science of Mind. In 1821, she was born on the 16th of July; funny thing is, we were born on the same day, yet, I feel no spiritual connection. She lived a life of agonizing pain due to the various illnesses that were bestowed upon her. She suffered from newborn jaundice, fibrodysplaia ossificans progressiva, scabies, schistosomiasis, polio, encephalitis, smallpox, orthorexia nervosa, urea cycle disorder, various yeast infections, mucopolysaccharidosis, malaria, Ataxia telangiectasia, bulimia nervosa, couvade syndrome, klippel-trenaunay-weber syndrome and meningitis. Living with these diseases was tough for young Mary, and conventional medicine was just not going her way. So she sought help from an alternative medical practitioner by the name of Phineas Quimby—who was quite the magician when came to healing the brain with magnets. The magnets helped for awhile but she seemed to go right back to her initial state of illness, and, right at the point of succumbing to suicide, she found something; a little special something that was inside the drawer of her candled nightstand. A book, brown and leather-bound called the Bible. She noticed that by reading it every day she felt a little better. And the more she read, the better she felt. Based on her success with her new found Bible healings, she decided to organize her own Bible-healing church. Which in fact, is the very same church with the stupendous singing wrinkled throat act—that, for whatever reason keeps staring at me.
When things started off, these two ladies came out from what could be considered a backstage and trotted to their double-wide podium with their heads held high. They were wearing business suits; one wearing black to match her dyed hair, and the other wearing grey to evoke the conservative mother within. Their entrance was almost like an infomercial, but without the cheesy energetic music. I was feeling good to be alive, and thought to myself: this just might be the one and only true church. The lady in black spoke first about Bible study Wednesdays, which nobody showed any interest in because: who needs more Bible? Then, with her eyes glued to her paper, she read her talk verbatim with the occasional scripture passage, and by occasional, I mean every other sentence. I thought these biblical quotes would eventually stop. But no! She kept quoting away. That’s when I wanted the other speaker to break from her silence and give me gold. But, did she break from her silence? Yes. Then did she give me gold? No! Just more scripture babble.
My mind started to maunder while the monotones were dutifully quoting scripture with their unnatural inflections sending irritating messages to my brain causing me to focus on other things—like my surroundings. Looking around, I noticed a rectangle of a window above, and saw the beautiful clouds traveling from east to west with a heavenly glow. I felt as if I were with God, in his home. Then I looked at the canted wall behind the pulpit, and thought that it kind of looked like what the back of television set would look like—from the inside prospective that is. I turned around looking back at the various windows behind me, and realized I was actually in a television set. I mean, the windows were like multiple screens of television sets stacked on top of each other forming one gargantuan fluorescent screen allowing Elohim to spy on me with comfort (not to be confused with Way of the Master, Ray Comfort). I felt violated, Elohim scrutinizing my every move with his godly eyes. He knew I wasn’t paying any attention to these horrid preachers for women. I then decided to put my I-am-enjoying-every-minute-of-this-humdrum-church mask on. I figured Elohim wouldn’t kill me off this wonderful church television program entitled Elohim and Friends. Then it dawned on me, that Elohim knew he was getting bad ratings and needed something to spice things up. He needed new talent, and not just any new talent, the kind of talent that will shock this seemingly friendly congregation out of this mind-numbing sermon. He needed someone sexy, charming, and personable; someone with street smarts—who resembles Jesus in a disheveled sort of blasphemous kind of way.
Boom! I heard discordant shuffling at the rear entrance of the chapel. A sound that is synonymous with solitude—a solitude that only few understand. Bearded and soot infested remnants of what was once considered tattoos, were decorated blatantly about this reluctantly welcomed face. This homeless Jesus of a man looked like he just rolled out of bed (which was probably in the garbage can, or, some dirty cardboard laid out in an alleyway somewhere) and walked to church to get his dose of Jesus for the day. This vagrant was walking in my direction with guitar and harmonica in hand. His pants were once green before he decided to sharpie them blue. I noticed he thought that sitting two seats from me was the right thing to do. This man reeked of alcohol and burnt toast, with a hint of: I am now starting to get a headache from his pants. I glanced up at the matronly grey-haired preacher. She was very uncomfortable at the site of this gentleman. She had the look of I-am-going-to-fire-Ms.-Prescott-our-church-bouncer-for-letting-this-subhuman-in-God’s-house. Quite frankly, it was a priceless look. She kept staring at him with conflicting facial expressions. One saying: It’s okay, we welcome everyone, even this disgusting-smelly-homeless-person who for whatever reason likes to organize little papers on the arm of the pew in front of him while coloring his green sweatpants with a blue sharpie. And, the other one saying: We need someone with strong manly muscles to escort this bum out of God’s house, for we do not need bum-scum in here, because he is like the virus that attacked his very own blood, and now he is attacking our souls with his presence, infecting us all with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, and that’s not what we want.
Just by watching the preacher-lady’s facial expressions really made my church experience a better one. I feel that God sent this homeless man to church for my spiritual growth, and, for me to learn that my life isn’t as hard as I think it is. We live each day thinking that we are the center of the universe. We really aren’t; homeless people are. They make the world go round, and they run everything behind the scenes; from truth-spreading to marketing-schemes. So next time you see a homeless person, I want you to give them money. That way, they can spend it on whatever they wish, for it is their money now. And don’t be frightened when they ask: “What Would Willard Do?” Because that’s what God wants. He wants us to think about that question long and hard, and, he wants us to come up with an answer (even though, there really is no answer). He just wants us to think about life, and why we’re here. Or maybe, he just wants better ratings for his show: Elohim and Friends.
Just for the record, this is not the one and only true church I had once thought it to be. And, divine love always has met and always will meet every human need, except here, at the Mother Church of Christian Science.
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