*Though this is definitely outside of what I normally write, I’ve decided to publish a novella entitled “The Church.” From Nov. 30 to Dec. 15, I will be publishing the work of fiction in 15 parts. Each day, I will publish a part of the story of Christian and his quest to plant the largest progressive church in the world. I will publish the entire work at the end. Today, I’m publishing part 12 entitled “The Vacation” Enjoy!
“You saved me.” Angela whispered the words over and over again in my ears. I never got tired of hearing them. Not long after we arrived in Venezuela, we married on the whitest sand I’d ever seen. The local priest assured us that we were children of God. Those words are always nice to hear. We were the only three people at the ceremony. On the way down, I decided to take Angela’s last name. In those seconds, I officially became “Christian Utopia.” Once the pronouncement dropped, Angela and I ran and dove into the bluest water imaginable. Embracing in the consistent waves, I couldn’t believe I was so lucky. We bought a condo and started to make a life in the obscurity and absurdity of it all. Each day, I got better at training my brain to never think about the Cathedral of the Swinging Dicks again. Angela helped. We swam. We danced. We sang. We ran. We climbed. We did it all. Before we knew it, over nine months had passed. For the first time in both of our lives, we were happy. Then, things changed in an instant.
Walking down the street early one morning, someone approached me and questioned, “Christian Utopia?” Afraid to respond, I just froze. I guess I thought he would disappear. “I’m Quincy from the Cathedral of the Swinging Dicks and I was sent to make contact with you.” For many weeks, Quincy followed me around. Honestly, I didn’t want to have anything to do with him. I was done with all that bullshit. Each night, Angela encouraged me to at least listen to what he had to say. I just wasn’t interested. Eventually, I engaged him because Angela assured me that it was the right thing to do. When we finally sat down with him, Quincy extended us an apology and asked us to come back to the Cathedral of the Swinging Dicks. Immediately, I said, “Fuck no!” Then, Angela said that forgiveness was the only way we could make a life worth living and that she was interested in returning as an act of grace. I started to have mixed emotions. Struggling greatly, I had no idea what to do.
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