the sunset in an overhead

02.may.2005: going to the church a bit unnerved and shy, i introduced myself to one person. after nicking a jellied donut and a styrofoam cup of tea, i backed off quietly in the corner. now, it wasn’t a “church” church, per se. it was a very small room tucked in the corner of a very small business school, after winding hallways and littered fliers that reminded everyone when final exams are scheduled. ah, the smells of education that wax the floors...

the structure of the service was quite similar to New Hope’s back home: half the service consisted of music with a live band, and the other half consisted of a preacher and a message. on the edge of a yellowed overhead, the lyrics of the songs were placed, and we stood to sing as we felt for the unknown notes together. the guitarist, the bassist, the drummer (who later turned out to be the preacher) jammed and segued between the different overhead plastic sheets while the congregation’s tongues tripped up shyly behind the song’s unchartered territories.

the space between the music and the preaching was stretched more than i was accustomed to, and had to load up my small talk artillery for defence. so i turned to my neighbour and let my accent do the introducing.

“hi, i’m suzanne. i’m from visalia, the place where scott took off to.”

“oh! oh right! you’re the congregation across the sea that stole our pastor!”

british wit is harsh sometimes. one guy told me that, well, technically scott was fired and he’s glad some unfortunate congregation has to deal with him now. the worst part is, i believed him.

sarcasm is hard to decipher in a different accent. i wouldn’t have known if there weren’t a few giggles and “come on, now”s coming from other people in the conversation.

i feel stupid over here sometimes.

the 20-minute long chat session ended when the drummer, an ultra-hip youngun, got up to give the message to the 40 people who showed up that sunday.

“do ya do theology? do ya? huh huh?” read the overhead as he got up to spoke. and in case you were wondering, you probably do do theology. atheists and agnostics do theology. if you think about god existing or not existing, you do theology.

he talked about this point for some time, and my mind wandered into the golden bulb of the overhead projector, wondering just how miraculous it was that they positioned the curve of the glass to make the light look like a sunset.