Living Paradise: March 2012

These three posts are from over a year ago. I put them away, on my laptop and then couldn't find them when I wanted to post. Never mind. Here they are:

Father, Son and...Holy Ghost, is that a Dog!

Sunday, Sept. 19, 2010

After breakfast, on Sunday mornings, we go to church. We started that a few weeks ago. I went to Catholic Church until I was seventeen and quit for lack of inspiration to continue. But this is clearly different. For one thing, I really like the music. I can't understand the words but the music is beautiful and the choir, though small, sings their heart out. My lack of understanding suits my lack of faith just perfectly.

I never considered church a place for entertainment, but the last two Sundays have changed my mind. This morning, a very nice-looking dog - beefy and well-groomed - walked right through the middle of church, in the middle of the service, from one side to the other. He looked like a cross between a Scottish Terrier and a Yellow Lab. He came in the south door of St. Gregory's and exited the north door. And then, a few minutes later, he did the same thing in the other direction. I didn't think it was a Catholic dog: it didn't stop for holy water and the sign of the cross at the entrance and it didn't genuflect in front of the altar when it reached the center isle. He marched right through like he owned the place, and with a hurried gate that let us all know he had matters of importance out the opposite door. No time for lolly-gagging. Same thing on his return to the first side; marching with his head erect and with an air like he was the archbishop come to see that all was proper and in order.

Either no one else noticed him or he was such a regular customer that they paid no attention. I thought it was pretty funny. I'm not used to animals in church and in this dog, and the sparrows and swallows, have free reign. The birds build nests are all over place, close to the ceiling. They come and go throughout the service and add their part to the music.

I've also seen a few cats hanging out in the archway entrances to catch a nap in the shade. But cats have a mind of their own. They are not about to accept a belief system with rules that just might interfere with their habits and preferences. So, they are content to sleep on the fringes of Catholicism without actually entering its sanctum. Not so the dog, though it seems he's in the habit of just passing through, not tarrying long enough to be penetrated by the restrictive dogma that we humans crave.

When church was over, I asked Emelie if she happened to notice the presence of the dog. She said “yes, it's Father Jerry's dog.” hat explains a lot, though I think one of the herding breeds would be more appropriate, under the circumstances.

After all, He's just "God", spelled backwards.

Oct. 3, 2010

The dog showed up again today. (I wonder what the priest named him?) He was very late for mass. Came waltzing right in, in the middle of his master’s sermon, from the door behind and to the right of the altar. (If my rusty, Catholic memory serves me right, it’s called the ‘Sacristy’.) With his head held high; wagging his tail like nobody’s business, he pranced right up to the statue of Mary, at the front, right of the altar and paused. Mary was standing on a makeshift dais, a cloth-covered table. Pooch was very close to one of its legs. He looked up at Mary, his tongue hanging out of his mouth. Then he sniffed the table leg. At that moment, I became very interested in the subject of nature versus nurture; sin versus virtue. (Is that redundancy?)

My eyes were riveted to his foot, closest to the table. That foot started to rise. My muscles tensed just a little and I felt a sense of impending adventure, like the moment just prior to peeing in the swimming pool, as a child (thought I’d better add that note), despite all the admonitions to the contrary.

His foot settled back to the sacred marble floor and he trotted away, down the steps and into the congregation, heading right for a pew about halfway back. He went to sleep on the floor, his head hidden from view under the seat of the pew, beside a prayerful congregant who made a point of demonstrating his pious and dutiful nature by paying no apparent notice to the dog.

I elbowed my wife. “Did you see the dog?” I asked.

I don’t know how my mom does it, or how women do it, for that matter. Communicate, I mean. I’ve listened to every conversation that my mom and wife have had on the telephone or via computer. (They’ve never met in person.) Not one time has my mother ever said, “… and if he acts up in church, give him one of those condescending, sidelong glances that indicate disgust and carry a heavy threat of consequences.”

With my head down and my tail between my legs I sat back quietly, envious of the dog.

Church, Beer, a Crazy Lady and Bloody Underwear: A Perfect Sunday.

Sometime in late 2010

I was in church this morning when the crazy lady showed up. The timing was right, as I was about to do whatever a good, tired Christian does on a Sunday morning when the sermon lulls him into thinking he is at home with a cold beer, in front of the T.V., during half-time’s thrilling commentator assessment.

If she wouldn’t have had that 12” X 12”, quarter-inch piece of plywood, things would have worked out all different. As it was, when she slammed it down on the elbow resters in front of her, the bang cleared out the first three rows of believers. I never saw a fart clear pews that fast.

The ushers always sit in rows 1 and 2. They had on their usherly uniforms of pastel-yellow dresses. These handsome, aging ladies were crowned with lacy, matching head covers bordered in white. They looked like two rows of yellow birds on the telephone wire. When they got up in a hurry, and cleared away with equal haste, I thought for a moment I might save a few pisos at collection time. It wasn’t my luck. They only flew back a few rows and resettled, leaving one lone woman in a blue top, front and center in the first pew.

People around me were chattering away about the incident. Emelie was talking to the two women in front of us. Here in Ginatilan, I am used to being on the outside of a conversation, without a clue. And I must say that I am thankful for my ignorance – Father, Son and Holy Ghost, Amen. English is my first and only language, thus far, but I am learning the local vernacular with a bit of ambivalence about the outcome.

Gossip is tiring! I never realized to what degree. Nor did I notice the extent. When one person leaks a little of it over the backyard fence, that woman doesn’t realize that the few drops she spills into the ears of her neighbor has anything to do with the flood that results from the thousands adding theirs to the town bucket.

People probably talk about me a lot. I know they do. They look; they laugh. I smile. I hope that doesn’t change. I like to think that all of them have only friendly and endearing thoughts about me. Education could ruin the bliss of my ignorance. Maybe it’s fortunate that I’m a slow learner. I memorize about 4 or 5 words of Cebuano a week and by the following week have forgotten 6. It’s taking a bite out of my English vocabulary.

So, I knew that the church gossip was about the lady in blue, in the front pew. And I was happy just to sit and listen to the twitter around me, the way you listen to the important chatter of the chicken coop and allow it to be the pleasant background noise that it is.

I’ve drifted. I was talking about the crazy woman. I will get back to that in just a moment, but a preface to this morning’s events, though not necessary, adds a little color to the story. Last night we slept just as peacefully as we usually do, with the fan on high and blocking out all sound shy of the thunder resulting from a direct lightning strike, which is slightly louder than the horn of the bus from Cebu City as it passes and toots right in front of our door, in the hours between midnight and 4AM.

Emelie was the first to get out of bed this morning, an occurrence so rare as to make itself a suspect of cause when the day veered from straight and narrow to twists and bends of a most unusual nature. For instance: usually, we don’t have blood smeared on the porch, in front of the door; usually, there is not a pair of women’s jogging pants hanging from the bamboo fence, with fresh blood in the crotch; and usually, there is no piece of cardboard with a pool of liquid smelling strongly of piss, on the porch.

There is no point in boring you with the intermediary details, so we can just go back to the lady in the front row of the church with the blue top. But to fill in where lengthy description is lacking, that woman smelled like bladder control was an issue, not only for the present, but in days passed as well. A discriminating nose would be able to discern the several day’s worth of aging urine, with the added bouquet of monthly blood.

She was instantly dubbed “the crazy woman”. I was proud of Father Jerry. His sermon gave no evidence of interruption when the ungodly slam shook the congregation from whatever reverie held those parishioners in their inattentive state (I was one, remember?). Thanks be to God.

I watched the ladies in yellow as they attempted to hide their ruffled feathers with nervous laughter and giggles. They were scared shitless.

The gap in the congregation around the crazy woman had as subtle an appearance as a missing tooth in an ear-to-ear grin.

Surprisingly, the woman sat quietly throughout the rest of service. After communion she got up and went to the back of the church, where she communed with God solely in the company of her own stink and pew. So be it.

The really funny part to this whole story is the gate to the bamboo fence that surrounds our house. The whole incident, be it good, bad or indifferent, is worth the tickle it gives me every time I think of that gate – the same one which the crazy woman passed through on her way to pissing on our porch, except that it has been “updated”, with Fort Knox style fortification, since her visit..

Bamboo is a grass. Let that serve as a hint to the crux of the issue I am about to present. Bamboo has a certain kind of strength. But that kind of strength is not the sort that can prevent a weakened, mangy dog from getting to the other side of the fence for a meatless and sun-parched bone. (I hope you’re getting my drift.) In addition, the spaces between the horizontal pieces of bamboo are large enough to allow passage of anything a fence could possibly be designed to keep out.

Aux contraire, the gate. A charging herd of elephants would pile themselves up on the outside of that gate, if they could be convinced to charge in single file and not cheat by stepping out of line to blow down the fence.

I know who made that gate. I’m not telling you. No sir, Chinese water torture and the rack couldn’t persuade me to do so. My marriage means too much for me to go around blabbing about a thing like that.

Amen!

Living Paradise

Just a NOTE!

Three Posts from the Parish Pew

A Chunk of Evening, Well-Spent