God Is Red - Liao Yiwu [34]
Soon all my friends began calling me Ruth. I volunteered to work at a school in a poor region deep inside the mountains. The school was sponsored by the church, and I was given three hundred yuan a month to cover food and basic expenses. Living conditions were really harsh. For a while, I wavered in my faith. One morning I woke up feeling awful and depressed. So I covered myself with my quilt and started praying. I asked the Lord to direct me to the right path. I prayed for about ten minutes before I heard someone mumbling something. There was a little girl in the bed next to me, and she seemed to be talking in her sleep: “Take it easy, Ruth. You will be fine.” I woke her up and asked what she was saying. She was still half asleep and didn’t understand my question. I gently raised my voice and said, “You just said something to me. Try to remember it.” The girl sat up, and after a while she remembered her dream. “You were crying. Angels were patting your head with their wings and telling you to take it easy,” she said.
Ruth’s story was interrupted when a woman sitting next to us signaled for us to hush. Another round of hymn singing was about to begin, and then some of the members gathered that evening would talk about their experiences, an opportunity to pour their hearts out to their Father in heaven. Village women, many of whom were semiliterate, had long been deprived of the right to speak and did not so much “tell” their stories as perform them, articulating their ideas with eloquence, as if each had been a professional trained actress. Their stories were told with vivid anecdotes. The variation of tone and occasional outbursts of tears enhanced the effect, carrying their performances to a high emotional level. They were true storytellers. I was a meager scribbler compared with their gift.
Each time a story ended, the audience would respond with “Amen.”
The fellowship meeting lasted about ninety minutes—an incomparable piece of theater quite unlike anything that might have been staged or contrived. Then came the “curtain call” and everyone stood: “In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.” There followed a brief silence before the room began to return to a secular state with eddies of chatter and laughter rising steadily in volume. My mind lingered on the scene that had just ended, turning over in my mind sounds and images. I found my notebook and, taking advantage of the relaxed and open atmosphere to interview the “brethren,” learned that the fellowship group was started by Ruth’s family. Many of her relatives were core members. Growing up in a family with generations of farmers, Ruth was the first to leave the village. Her fifty-nine-year-old mother had been a believer for nine years, and Ruth had joined the church six years before; they were the “veteran” Christians in the village.
Two of Ruth’s uncles and aunts on her mother’s side had just converted. The elder uncle, in his fifties, worked as a truck driver at a county electric power station. He was baptized at the end of 2008. In the old days, he lived in constant fear because his truck moved in and out of deep valleys and dark tunnels where mudslides and tunnel collapses were frequent, but since his conversion he had found that prayer kept him calm in danger zones and banished his fear. He was thus more energetic.
The younger uncle was a farmer, quiet and shy. He looked a little over forty. He had only joined the church two months before. The conversion was prompted by a sudden illness. The younger uncle suffered a myriad of illnesses, including gallbladder inflammation