I woke up Monday morning to a gray, flat world. The first half of the month had been so warm and sunny, you could believe fall was going to run straight into Christmas without the usual ugly overture. But here it was: an Appalachian November, colorless, shades of blue-gray whipped up like a fingerpainting in the sky, the earth a mass of musty gray-brown. My depression and anxiety tickled my stomach so I couldn’t eat breakfast.
In the beginning, when God created the Heavens and the Earth, the Earth was a formless waste, and darkness was over the surface of the deep. You can believe that if you live in Appalachia in November.
I decided to run an errand I’d been putting off. I had some food for the Friendship Room, and the bag was getting heavy.
This is the wager I’ve made: If there is no god, I’ll do whatever I think will make the world a little better, because if the world is all we have, it must be very important. If God is Love, I will find God in trying to love people. If the god of the Charismatic Renewal is real, I will do nothing just to appease him. He isn’t worth my time. This is the way I try to live my life. And I think that both the God of Love and the world with no god at all approve of mutual aid for your neighbor.
What with the fiasco of having to replace the car, that we haven’t been able to help them lately, and I hate that. It used to be the only joy I had. But as we bought groceries for ourselves, we broke off a piece here and there for the pantry: buying five cans of tuna when we needed four, and putting one can in the bag by the front door. Buying a package of dehydrated potato flakes when we ran down that aisle to get Adrienne’s gluten free pasta, and putting the potato flakes in the bag by the door. Buying a can of mushroom soup for the pantry when we bought chicken broth for our own recipes, and putting that in the bag. On Halloween, we sorted out all the candy we got that looked tasty but had allergens we couldn’t eat, and put that in the bag as well. And now the bag was finally full.
If the God of Love is real, then this is a bag of gifts for Jesus. If there is no God, it’s just a bag of supplies for people who have had bad luck and deserve better. If the god of the Charismatic Renewal is real, I don’t care what he has to say about candy and mushroom soup, except to hope he’s annoyed.
I drove uptown instead of down, the opposite direction of the Friendship Room, because I like to go for drives when I’m anxious. I like blast loud music on my phone and drive up and down country roads to soothe myself. There’s a pretty road back by the Wintersville border where a housing development suddenly becomes a rural area, all farmland and quaint houses– then, suddenly, it turns into a downhill plunge, and then you’re in the most Appalachian-looking neighborhood in Steubenville, between the cliffsides beside Beatty Park. Then under the bridge and from South to North Fourth Street, past rotting buildings that used to be stately houses. Past the downtown library and the Greek Orthodox church. Past the old theater and the single block of prosperous-looking shops where the college students like to go. Then down past a long line of churches, to the duplex with the blue door where the homeless go to get their meals. It’s a loop that takes nearly half an hour, from my house to the Friendship Room. It gives me time to think.
Lo, the day is coming, blazing like an oven,
when all the proud and all evildoers will be stubble,
and the day that is coming will set them on fire,
leaving them neither root nor branch,
says the LORD of hosts.
But for you who fear my name, there will arise
the sun of justice with its healing rays.
In November in Appalachia, you can see the stubble. You almost look forward to the oven, just for a little warmth and color. As for the sun and its healing rays, it seems an impossibility. November is an agnostic time. I could almost be an atheist, except for the occasional pops of color here and there, where I see a tree still clinging to gold leaves.
I kept thinking about the Gospel at Mass last night.
I’d taken Adrienne to church so she could receive Holy Communion. I didn’t like to be there. But something about the Gospel took me by surprise.
Then they asked him,
“Teacher, when will this happen?
And what sign will there be when all these things are about to happen?”
He answered,
“See that you not be deceived,
for many will come in my name, saying,
‘I am he,’ and ‘The time has come.’
Do not follow them!
When you hear of wars and insurrections,
do not be terrified; for such things must happen first,
but it will not immediately be the end.”
That Gospel passage is the polar opposite of everything I knew in the Charismatic Renewal.
We always thought that the time had come.
We thought we were in the end times.
We thought we were better Christians than anyone else, because of our constant preoccupation with the end times.
We were constantly going out to see signs and wonders, praying in fields and churches where there were rumored to be apparitions. We prophesied and took each other’s prophesies as commands straight from Jesus. We pored over books of locutions and decided they were Jesus as well. We heard of wars and insurrections, because there are always wars and insurrections. There have been wars and insurrections for as long as humans have been living together in families. But we knew those wars and insurrections were sings of the end times, and I, at least, was terrified. I didn’t want it to be the end times. I wanted it to be an ordinary time, where I could grow up and go to college and act in Shakespeare plays and have a normal life. I wanted a normal life to do good in, not an apocalypse.
It struck me again that I wasn’t raised Catholic. Sacramentally I was. But the culture, the superstitions, were something else entirely. The Charismatic Renewal is a cancerous growth on a certain type of Catholicism. It isn’t itself the Church.
If I don’t feel very Catholic right now, maybe that’s because I never was.
That doesn’t mean I’ll end up remaining Catholic when this painful deconstruction is over. It just means I’m willing to be impressed.
The god of the Charismatic Renewal resembles nothing so much as an Antichrist. Saying that feels like blasphemy, but it’s true. The god of the Charismatic Renewal is a god of bangs and flashes and special effects, terrorizing people, drawing their attention away from everything that’s theirs to do, promising them safety from the coming wrath if only they’ll be good and scared. The Christ of the Gospel has such a different message.
And I realized, as I pondered that, that I really do believe in the Christ of the Gospel. I really have spoken with the Christ of the Gospel. Losing the god of the Charismatic Renewal and stumbling upon the Christ of the Gospel may even be worth having lost everything in this terrible part of the country, where nothing is as it should be.
The drive through the countryside was bleak, in a comforting way. The grass and the trees are brown stubble, and the sky is dirty gray. Something about the dullness of it all flattened my anxiety, by the time I got to the Friendship Room.
There were two men there, seeking food at the empty pantry cupboard. They helped me unpack and stock the shelves. Each took a bright yellow Butterfinger bar for themselves. One of them asked to take my shopping bag to carry his things. It was one of those two dollar cloth bags, a brightly colored flowered one. When I handed it over to him, it looked like an impossibility: a visitor from another world, where there isn’t so much gray.
I don’t know if those men were Jesus in disguise or just two men who’ve had bad luck. But I know that that was worth doing.
They will have you led before kings and governors
because of my name.
It will lead to your giving testimony.
Remember, you are not to prepare your defense beforehand,
for I myself shall give you a wisdom in speaking
that all your adversaries will be powerless to resist or refute.
You will even be handed over by parents, brothers, relatives, and friends,
and they will put some of you to death.
You will be hated by all because of my name,
but not a hair on your head will be destroyed.
By your perseverance you will secure your lives.
I’ve never had much of a defense to prepare.
I don’t have any answers.
I have this, my testimony, my talking from day to day about the things that occur to me. I don’t know if this is wisdom or not.
I drove home the long way, another half hour, through the countryside and back to LaBelle. And for a moment, everything felt all right.
image via Pixabay
Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross, The Sorrows and Joys of Mary, and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.