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“I can’t speak for the Catholics, but in my church, we don’t believe in the transubstantiation.”
“The what?”
“When the bread and wine are literally transformed into flesh and blood. In our church, it’s for remembrance. It reenacts the Last Supper. So it honors Christ’s sacrifice. And it’s one of the few traditions we have that Jesus actually set into motion himself. He didn’t put up a Christmas tree. So it goes all the way back. That is amazing to me, every time, to think about people performing this same ritual for centuries. You’re part of this long stream of time, of generations.”
“Okay, I can see re-creating the Last Supper, but why drink Jesus’s blood?”
“That’s always seemed very powerful to me, the blood. Just the whole physical nature of it. Did you know that some Romans thought the blood contained the soul? They saw that when people died they lost their color, so they figured their animating spirit must be in the blood. So if you drink from that cup, it’s making Jesus a part of you, not just in your mind, in your spirit, but in your body. So he’s part of your physical being and your everyday life.”
“In your body…. I just…. It sounds nice but I don’t really know what that means.”
“That’s okay.”
“No, but I’m not putting it down. I’m interested. It means something to you. I’m trying to understand why.”
“I
don’t want to preach to you. I don’t want you to think that’s why I’m here.”
“You’re not. I’m asking.”
“Okay, the body of Christ. Well, it’s about being nourished by his sacrifice. You’re making the essence of Christ part of you. It’s about destruction and rebirth. The way the tree that falls in the woods decays and nourishes the flowers. Jesus was a man and existed in a physical body, but he doesn’t anymore. But now he exists in all our bodies. He keeps living in us. Christianity is about resurrection. Or at least it is for me. Different churches focus on different parts of the story. The cross, it’s a difficult symbol because it was what the Romans used for torture, but it’s been transformed. Now it’s a symbol of resurrection. What I think that means—one thing I think that means, is that everyone has a chance to be reborn. You don’t have to get it right the first time. You start where you are. Everybody deserves a second chance.”
“Hmm,” Ian said. He turned his eyes upward to the left and took another drag on his cigarette. He was thinking about what Paul had said, and he seemed to like what he heard.
“You told me your mother was religious. What kind of church did you go to?”
“Pentecostal. Real fire and brimstone stuff.”
“Wow.”
“It was all about Christ’s army and going to war with the devil. You wanted to be on the right side of the war.”
“Did people speak in tongues?”
“Yeah. They’d lift up their arms to God and cry and fall on the floor and babble.”
“Did you?”
“Yeah, I did it too,” he said, glancing at the ash of his cigarette.
Paul tried to imagine a young Ian on his knees, his arms uplifted to heaven, with tears streaming down his face, babbling incoherently for the Lord. Paul had always had a certain fascination with Pentecostalism. There was something uncomfortable and disturbing about it, and yet he admired and longed for the Pentecostals’ completely immersive, emotional relationship to the divine.
His own religious tradition was so comfortable and staid. Respectable people stood at neat pews; they read prayers in an inflectionless monotone. They opened their hymnals and sang “Hallelujah” in an oddly flat and soulless way. (Although every church had one or two choir members who loved to belt out the high notes and harmonies.) His church’s European heritage expressed reverence in hushed tones and quiet contemplation. It did not make noise. It was an antidote for the flashing lights and frenzy of rush-hour traffic and evening TV. Yet he also wished he could feel worship in his guts. He admired the call and response of the black Baptist churches and the energy of a gospel choir, and he wanted to be so swept away that he couldn’t express it in true language, like the Pentecostals did.
“What did it feel like?” Paul asked. “Did you feel like you were having a spiritual experience?”
“Mmm. I guess, sometimes. You get wrapped up in it, everyone is around, and there’s all the music and energy and people dancing. You feel the energy. At the time I thought that was, like, God energy. Now I think it was just adrenaline, you know? I just didn’t want people to think I was with the devil. I was putting on a show. I knew I was damned to Hell.”
“Why?”
“Leviticus 18:22. The inerrant word of God.” Ian gave a rueful look, crushed out his cigarette, and took another out of the pack.
“Is that the one about….”
“‘A man shall not lie down with a man as with a woman. It is an abomination.’”
“I can’t believe you memorized chapter and verse on that.”
