Coop_ A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting - Michael Perry [131]
I loved our church of no churches. I loved the little white clapboard house.
I did not doze off because I was bored.
I dozed off because I was cozy.
Within the house there were the chairs against the wall, and a row of folding chairs before those. We had no assigned seats, but tended to gravitate to the same place every Sunday. There was Florence beside the Jungers, and her sister Vivian beside her, and their stepmother Myrtle—all three of them sturdy women who sometimes fished lace hankies from deep within their edificial busts, an utterly asexual move that nonetheless widened a young boy’s eyes. Along the wall, sunk so deep in an ancient wine-red velour couch that their kneecaps came to chin level, were the three Jacobson boys, teenaged grandsons of the woman who came here in the Conestoga. Mrs. Doury’s granddaughters and daughter-in-law sat in adjacent chairs, and depending on the Sunday, a handful of other worshippers might round out the congregation. Mrs. Doury’s son-in-law John served as elder, meaning he directed the service. The bread and wine (grape juice and a slice of Wonder Bread) sat beneath a white handkerchief on an end table at his side.
We sat quiet until exactly 10:00 a.m., and then John spoke.
“Would someone like to choose a hymn?”
I was always hoping for Hymn Number 1, “Tell Me the Story of Jesus,” because it was my favorite and I knew most of the words without looking, but it was usually reserved for gospel meeting. So someone suggested a number, and we paged to it in Hymns Old & New, and then one of the women—Florence, usually—would lead the singing, hitting that first note so the rest of us could follow in behind. Once she chose the range, you were stuck with it. Sometimes you’d have to drop an octave to hit the high notes and jump an octave to hit the low ones. When the first hymn was complete sometimes we sang another one. Then John said, “Let us bow our heads in prayer.”
The prayers rose around the room in no particular order, with the exception that John the elder always went last. The prayers were usually brief and simply worded: Lord, we pray that thou wouldst grant us stillness in our hearts; That thou wouldst improve our spirits; That we might find ourselves worthy of thy mercy. Some prayed in a rush, some prayed briefly; some prayed a different prayer every Sunday, some prayed the same thing every week. By and large the prayers were poetic in simplicity in rhythm, and everything remained resolutely in the spiritual realm—overly specific requests were seen as unseemly. (Thus I was quite unprepared later in life when I overheard a prayer session among a group of young evangelicals at a local coffee shop during which a young woman quite fervently prayed, “Lord, you have got to get me out of this lease!”) Throughout the time of prayer, we children were expected to keep our heads down and eyes closed. I do remember sneaking peeks, although not often, because somehow even with his own eyes closed, Dad would catch me and I would get the eyebrows.
When the prayers concluded, we sang another hymn, and then it was time for testimonies, when those who chose to participate shared a Bible verse or several that they had been meditating on during the week and then offered a homespun homily. The first time I gave testimony it took a while for me to get my gumption up, and I quaked as I said, “My thoughts this week have been on Matthew, chapter