The Here-now

     On another sunny day in St. Petersburg, I'm outdoors at my favorite Starbucks (they greet me by name - yes, I know: it's good for business).  Cozied up in a shaded nook, enjoying my tall half-caf (half a cup of decaf, topped off with regular) coffee, I ponder this post.

     I'm jotting notes about the tension in churches between the so-called spiritual world and the physical world. Drive by a church building.  Solid, upright, above the fray, right?  However, inside that building, someone behind a desk is juggling the accounts, attempting to meet the costs of running that business.  Are the tithes paid and up-to-date?  Can that empty office space be rented? Will another fund-raiser be necessary this year? How do ministers and lay administrators walk the fine line between funding the "here-now” and delivering the “hereafter”?

     A long-haired blond 40-ish woman, clad in hip jeans ending in boots, settles at a table next to mine.
     “My grandfather worked his whole life for that money,” I overhear her declare into her cell phone. “Now it's gone. The church took it!”
     How can I concentrate on my work?  Did a character just walk into my musings?
     My neighbor tosses her hair, punctuating her words with swings of her crossed leg. “Rich people don't know what it is, y'know, to scrimp and save.”
     She listens before continuing, “You're right, I guess they're not slackers, but.....”
     I wish I could hear the other end of the phone.
     “I know, I know, the church is just the body.....” She swings her leg faster. “God, I wish I could live like Jesus, but...” She listens.
     She leans forward, freezes her body like she's holding her breath, and lowers the pitch of her voice.
     My right ear hones in.
     “My husband doesn't get it. He never had anything. He's saving for retirement. And now,” she throws back her hair and punches the air, “he says I want to give it all away.”
     She slings her purse over her shoulder, gets up and starts pacing the pavement, then turns toward the parking lot.
     Wait, I want to say, don't go.  How can you leave right now?

     I conjure up her story. Did her grandfather's church make eternal promises to him in exchange for his earthly assets?  Is she feeling torn between her husband's thrift and her own church's teachings?  Is her church walking that age-old tightrope: Give us your money in the here-now. We'll take care of you in the hereafter.
    
     My organ bench gave me a front-row seat to this drama when I was director in a prominent Anglican church, one with big bills not quite balanced by big hearts.  One Sunday, the "bricks and mortar" costs must have weighed heavy on the rector. It was Passion Sunday, the week before Palm Sunday. The choir, all professional singers well-trained by yours truly (of course), had presented sections of Johann Sebastian Bach's B Minor Mass.  Like a "Lessons and Carols" service at Christmas, the musical sections were interspersed with scriptural readings.

     Picture a gorgeous sanctuary, brass railings, two-story high, elegant stained glass windows, and filtered sunlight radiating mist-like overhead. The program had concluded with the choir's stirring “Crucifixus”, cadencing in a shimmering sotto voce which gradually evaporated into the heavens.

    I lifted my hands from the organ keys, feeling proud and satisfied, and looking forward to the rector's words, words of thanks and appreciation, which he would unfailingly extend to the choir members and their director for weeks of effort and commitment to the spiritual life of the parish.

The rector,

a lanky

six-foot-four inch

squash-playing

WASP,

walked

to the lectern

and,

 in his

very best,

high-pitched

squeaky

twang,

said,

“I want y'all to remember the White Elephant Sale.”

*     *     *

    “Nature’s great masterpiece, an Elephant. The only harmless great thing; the giant of beasts.”

                                                                                       John Donne in The Progress of the Soul