The Bible is the Sword of the Spirit, St. Paul wrote in Ephesians, part of the armor that every Christian was to put on. To us in Junior Church and Jet Cadets, it meant that we had to know the books of the Bible, all 66, in order. We were also encouraged to memorize many verses so that we could, when tempted, respond as Jesus had—with a quote from Scripture. (It was impressed upon us that Jesus had quoted from Deuteronomy to defeat the devil; could we do that?)
To test our knowledge of the books of the Bible and their respective locations, we had Sword drills. An adult—youth group leader or Sunday School teacher—had a list of Bible references. We sat, ready for the challenge, our Bibles closed. If you had a Bible that zipped, you were allowed to put your hands inside the cover. If you had a Bible with tabs showing where each book was located, you could not play, at least not using that Bible. You could not put your thumbs on the edges of the Bible, which would give you a quicker start on opening it and was therefore cheating. The adult read the verse’s address. We repeated it, sitting on the edge of our folding chairs, waiting to hear “GO!” We thumbed frantically through the Bible to find the verse. The first kid who did so leaped to his or her feet and began reading. Sometimes we were divided into teams, maybe boys against girls. You had to know the order of the books, of course, but some of it was just luck. Maybe your thin pages stuck, but Ed’s didn’t, so he got up first and began to read just seconds before you had the right place. I wonder now, other than the competition factor, what the point of the whole thing was. In that era of the Cold War, we were sometimes treated to stories of people—in Russia, say—being persecuted for their faith. And then came the inevitable question: if you were on trial for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you? I can’t really see that winning a Sword drill would be evidence, but who really knew the tactics of the KGB?
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From grades four to six, we were under the tutelage of Aunt Betty during the church’s 11:00 A.M. service, held upstairs. She was in fact the biological aunt of many of the kids, the church being populated with several families originally from Hungary. She was graying, a woman who loved to wear purple. Although she couldn’t carry a tune, she gamely led us in song. She and Uncle Andy had no children, but they were endlessly kind to the children of that church. Standing in the back of the sanctuary after church, Uncle Andy could be relied on to have hard candy in his pockets. And he and Aunt Betty occasionally took three of us favored girls out for Sunday lunch.
Aunt Betty was a consummate teacher. Professionally, she taught third grade, and much of her presentation seemed aimed at that age. She called us her preciouses, with no irony or thought of Tolkein’s Gollum, featured in a novel I hadn’t yet read. We sat in rows of folding chairs divided into two sections and separated by a center aisle, which made it easy for the kid ushers to take an offering. This was Junior Church, after all, so there was an offering, a few coins from our allowances. There was a very mild altar call at the end of the lesson for any who wanted to know Jesus as their personal Savior. (One Sunday, I did, and she “led me to Christ” as we termed it.) She must have taught us several things, but one series sticks in my mind. The Gospel of John is the most mystical, least action-oriented of the four gospels. Jesus works miracles, some of them not in the other gospels; he also gives lengthy discourses, some of which make little sense on first reading. Why it should be the favored Gospel of my youth I do not know, but I loved it. Even at that age, I was writing and wanted to be a writer. A book that began with “In the beginning was the Word” got my full attention. Beyond that, I was caught by the weekly lesson, presented in flannelgraph. Teachers went to a church supply store and bought a book of biblical figures, like paper dolls, but with a felt backing, for the stories they were going to teach. They also bought large pieces of white flannel that they colored or painted to make the appropriate background. Then then hung the finished product over a board propped on an easel. If multiple backgrounds were needed, they were layered on the board, the correct background to be flipped up as the story progressed. What I remember is a pastoral setting—green grass, rolling hills, blue sky—ready for the Lamb of God to march onto the scene and to be so heralded by John the Baptist. We progressed, slowly, through the book of John. Each week we were to memorize a Bible verse from the story, a memory aid given to us at the end of the lesson. These, too, seemed wondrous to me, the words from the King James Version printed on construction paper of the appropriate color and shape. So, for the miracle of turning water into grape juice (Jesus did not approve of alcohol), there was a small purple bunch of grapes, with Mary’s words from chapter 2 written on it: Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it. And a yellow ear of corn proclaimed these words from one of the discourses--Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone, but if it dies, it bringeth forth much fruit. By sixth grade, we were deemed ready to practice going to Big Church once a month. This was done so that when we attended regularly (the programs for teens happened on Sunday evenings), we would know how to behave. I might have been apprehensive—my parents did not attend church, so I had no family with whom to sit. By the grace of God, the teens had commandeered the front pews on the organ side of the church, close to the pulpit, an alternative family to join. After we moved when I was eight to a suburb, no one took me to any church. My mother firmly believed I wanted more than anything else to make my First Holy Communion. I just wanted that sense of being surrounded by mystery, though I couldn’t name it.
Up the street—a barren tenth of a mile cut from what had been cornfields, still being developed by people who believed in shrubbery but not trees—lived a family with one little girl, Carol Ann. She was too young to be a playmate for me; in fact, there were no children my age on the street. But she wanted to earn a watch in the Sunday School contest, and for that she needed points. Visitors were worth points, so her parents loaded up the station wagon with any neighborhood kids willing to go. I don’t remember if Carol Ann got her watch, but her parents got stuck with me. I rode to church with them for years. I was an earnest child in the back seat with their daughter and Grandma Aladich, Carol Ann's maternal grandmother, whom we also picked up on the way. I soon became involved in the joy of earning points myself. A child earned points, charted on a hanging poster in the Sunday School classroom, for any number of good works: attending, bringing one’s Bible, memorizing Scripture, completing the lesson in our quarterly, bringing visitors. We weren’t really competing against each other, or at least I wasn’t, not until Bible bowls or Sword drills. Instead, we were earning pins for our Jet Cadets hat (which we also had to earn) or a trip to camp. Or a watch. When I was still very young, my family attended a nearby Protestant church within walking distance. I don’t know why we stopped going; it may have been that getting two small children up and ready grew too complicated. But maternal grandmother stepped in, and I began going with her to St. Bernard’s Roman Catholic Church, downtown.
The Mass was in Latin; I had no clue what was being said, but the beauty of the Gothic space gave me my first taste of awe. Pink and blue angels painted on the ceiling hovered in a circle above us; saints and more angels were painted on the walls. Two tiers of stained-glass windows reflected color over the congregants. Gold-bedecked statues flanked the marble altar. My Gran walked forward to that altar for Eucharist, and when she came back, she knelt and put her hands over her face to pray. When she cupped her palms over her eyes, she became someone else, unknowable. Mystery was everywhere in that space, and it drew me. At home, Gran had a plastic faux ivory rectangle with electric lights arranged to simulate an altar. It sat on the buffet flanked by lit candles decorated with pictures of Therese of Lisieux, the Little Flower, or of the Virgin Mary. It all seemed holy to me. Whenever we visited, I walked to the buffet, knelt, and sang “Silent Night,” the most sacred song I knew. So far as I know, no one taught me to do this. Certainly no one paid any attention to me. I’ve always believed that if we had not moved when I was eight, if I had made my First Holy Communion, I would have become a nun. Had we not moved from deep in that fume-filled city, however, I would not have known early loneliness, solitude, or the comfort of books. |
Baptist GirlI was a conservative Baptist girl who grew up to become a career Christian, working first in a Baptist school and then in a Baptist college. For about three decades, it was very good until it wasn’t, and I had to leave. But the Baptists formed me. This is my homage to the good times and good people of the world I left, finally, at forty-three, when I became an Episcopalian. These are my memories; others might disagree with my recollections. So be it. Archives
January 2024
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