A Pastor and His Satellite
This was some time ago on a Saturday in New England, in the home of a family of domestic missionaries from the South.
“Quiet,” said Saul, “Father is in there with his sermon.”
“If he’s finished, we can knock,” said Faith, his younger sister.
“No, he’s finishing his sermon. Let’s make him breakfast.”
“Let’s serve pancakes.”
“Do you think he can eat while he works?”
“Have you ever seen him work?”
“No,” said Saul, “but he is so often in there working. It is why we do not see him.”
“I have never seen him reading from his Bible except from the pulpit.”
“Where else would he read from?”
“I hear his voice.”
“He watches his old sermons to prepare new sermons.”
“How do you know he’s preparing his sermon?” asked Faith.
“The door is shut.”
“Have you seen him today?”
“The door remains shut and locked.”
“So you’ve tried the knob?”
“When a door is shut in our home, it is locked. That is why neither of us are allowed to shut our doors.”
“It is not a fair rule for me.”
“It is a fair rule for me,” said Saul.
“It may not be locked,” said Faith, reaching for the knob.
Saul grabbed her hand.
“I would not. He is preparing the third part of his sermon series, called ‘Weakling Parents.’”
“I should not attempt the knob because of the sermon he is preparing?”
“His mood has seemed dark lately.”
“I have not seen him. Is he angry at the congregation again?”
“It must be the material that causes him to brood.”
“Do you mean us?” asked Faith.
“I mean the subject matter.”
“You have an advantage over me,” Faith said. “You attend his sermons. You know what Father is thinking. I learn nothing in children’s church.”
“The lessons are appropriate for you. I heard them when I was your age. No, that’s not accurate. I was older than you when Father saw the light in a parking lot, changing our lives forever. What are you not learning in children’s church?”
“They tell us feeding the five thousand is a lesson in sharing. I suspect it is not.”
“You may ignore that lesson. We share everything.”
They were in the kitchen opening the doors of the refrigerator.
“We have two eggs,” said Faith, “They will make eight pancakes, large and runny. Two eggs making eight pancakes means everyone can have two.”
“Sister, I’m impressed.”
Saul was short and pale, with a stub-nose and one long eyebrow that ran the distance of his temples, making his eyes appear crowded together in the center of his face. His hair was dark and coarse with a part on the left that remained fixed all day, complete with comb marks. Faith had very similar features. Their parents also had these features. They all wore glasses with round metal frames, except Faith who at seven years old did not need them yet.
Their mother entered the kitchen and the children served her pancakes.
“We will be going to the church soon,” said their mother. “We must vacuum and organize the food pantry.”
“We’ll be done very soon then,” said Faith.
“I like when our efforts serve our parents doubly,” said Saul. “By leaving Father alone we are helping him write his sermon and we are cleaning in preparation for it.”
“It is as close as I can be to having my own ministry,” sighed Faith.
“There are many roles for women in the church,” said Saul. “Children’s church leader, for instance.”
“That would give me a chance to reform the curriculum,” said Faith. “It is a small role.”
“It would fit your congregants,” said Saul.
“I do not believe in shrinking the Gospels to child-size. If an adult is to be like a child, a child is also to be like an adult.”
“Your father was on to this point in his last sermon,” said their mother. “You must be where he gets his ideas.”
“In some way I think you are right,” agreed Faith.
“You are further along than I was at your age,” said Saul. “We may even be equals. Is this what is meant by being ‘equally yoked’?”
“Is it strange to consider I was conceived in salvation, but Saul was conceived by you secularly and in sin?”
“It is a little strange,” said Saul.
“I have considered it,” said their mother.
“I have been a Christian nearly as long as all of you. It is why am I so advanced. Can you think of Mother and Father as once being damned?”
“Sister, careful.”
“I am saying I cannot. Does this make me a John Calvinist?”
“Where have you heard of John Calvin?” asked their mother. “Not from me.”
“At the Christian bookstore. In a Little Golden Book.”
Their mother instructed them to leave their father’s two pancakes on the kitchen table, then drove them to church.
The church was tucked in an industrial park. Next door was a paint factory. Across the street sat G.O.D., Inc. trucks, Guaranteed Overnight Delivery. Behind the church was a yellow bus, recently donated.
Every Saturday, while Faith and Mother vacuumed, Saul would pick up cigarette ends outside. They would clean until evening. On this day they stayed at the church into the night to allow Father time to prepare his sermon.
Saturday gave way to Sunday.
The congregants arrived and many were standing outside of the church smoking cigarettes. This was permitted, for it provided Saul his Saturday labor. It was also his Sunday labor to let the smokers know the service was about to begin.
“The service is about to begin,” said Saul to the smokers, and they followed him inside.
Saul sat with his mother on the front row.
“I am ready for the third part of Father’s sermon series,” said Saul to his mother. “I expect it’s his final installment. During the previous parenting sermons, I felt I was hearing something I am not supposed to hear. It’s like how I feel when I hear women speak to each other, when men aren’t around. The next time we go to a church couple’s home, may I stay with you and the wife, instead of going with Father and the husband?”
“It is unclear to me,” said his mother, “how you have arrived at these thoughts from the past two sermons, and in your readiness for the third.”
During the musical part of the service, Saul’s role was to sit in the aisle seat next to the projector and replace the transparent sheets of lyrics, song after song. A guitar played, accompanied by tambourine and harmonica. The music was bright and in contrast to the popular music of the time.
“Time for the next transparency,” said his mother. “The next song has begun.”
“I am laying down the transparency after the song begins but before the singing starts, to build the anticipation. We all have our gifts.”
After a few preliminaries Saul’s father, Pastor Lester, began his sermon:
“The schools have failed us, have they not? We are left with one option if we are to raise up our children in the way they should go and so when they are old they will neither depart from the Lord nor from us.”
“It is strange that Father says this when you were both saved in your middle thirties.”
“Quiet,” said his mother.
“We will form a school here,” said Pastor Lester. “Sunday school rooms will be Monday to Friday school rooms. Classes will be taught by highly qualified teachers coming to us from a satellite on the roof. I will be the Math class facilitator. My wife will be the Science class facilitator.”
“We will be seeing even more of this church and even more of each other,” said Saul. “I don’t know what it will do to our bond. I like things as they are now. Watching TVs with my mother at school — what will we do at home? I see why Father needed so much time in his office. He was planning a school!”
“Saul,” said Pastor Lester, “you are talking while I am talking. Clearly this school will benefit you. Saul is like me, born in darkness, brought to light, like many of you here today. What to do with Saul? Would we like to hear a story about Saul? We were reenacting a Bible story at home as a family . . .”
“No,” said Saul. “Please!”
“The Book of Genesis. Saul played the role of Adam. In his excitement — he has such devotion to the Scriptures and the accurate portrayal of them — there came the moment in our reenactment when Adam and Eve were banished from the garden. I thought he was only going to take off his shirt . . . haha. He ran through our house completely naked! He convinced his sister, as Eve, to join him. Now, this was not an intentional violation of our family rules and so I felt there was no reason to punish him. I gave him guidance, a little correction. Understanding the difference between this and an intentional violation of our rules, that’s discernment. For talking when I am preaching, I will need to spank Saul when we get home tonight. I will tell him I love him very much and then I will spank his bottom. I will not hit him in anger. He will not welt. I will spank him in the same spirit that I teach him anything. I will spank him so that when he is old he will not depart from the Lord, nor also from me. Dear Saul, I have forgiven you already. We will be strict with your children, but we will love them. Now enrolling grades nine through twelve. Let us pray.”
Every Sunday between morning services and night services, Saul and his father would knock on doors. Afterwards, they’d go to church and tell of what happened on their walk, testify if any souls were saved, often have the new converts with them. Then straight home, Saul to bed.
Tonight was unusual in that Saul was to be spanked or shown mercy.
“I am always a little relieved when they don’t open the door,” said Saul to his father, after knocking on many doors, all unanswered.
“I am not relieved when they do not open,” replied Pastor Lester. “I am relieved when they do not slam it.”
“Would it be better if we knocked on Saturdays?”
“These are Catholics. They’re more receptive on Sundays, after Mass.”
“Will you help me understand something?” Saul asked. “You promised me you would not include the Adam and Eve incident in your sermon.”
“That is a sharp tone.”
“I’m sorry. I said I would rather be punished than it be mentioned in a sermon.”
“I admit it was an improvisation. I veered away from the sermon I had in my mind. But why did I veer, Saul?”
“I was talking while you were preaching.”
They reached the last house in this neighborhood, the oldest and the most rundown.
Saul knocked this time. A man in a Marlboro windbreaker opened the door.
“Salvation not through works alone,” Saul began, in medias res.
Behind the man appeared a woman also in a Marlboro windbreaker. Where the man’s windbreaker was black, the woman’s windbreaker was white.
Saul took a deep breath and began again, “Salvation not through works alone but by acceptance of salvation . . . of the Savior . . . of God.”
The man invited them inside.
“I am Dave and this is my fiancée, Dawn. She speaks only a little. I will do most of the talking. We are very interested in what you are saying about salvation. I really have been having a difficult time of late, and I think salvation not through works alone is what I need. If you will just take me through what I need to do.”
“You need FAITH,” Saul said, remembering his father’s preferred method. “F is Forgive, as in ask for Forgiveness. A is Accept, as in accept you are a sinner.”
“You have me there,” said Dave. “I need forgiveness, and I am a sinner. Dawn too, a little.”
Saul proceeded. Dave and Dawn worked their way through the letters, and both seemed to receive salvation.
Pastor Lester invited them to the Sunday night church service.
“At this time,” said Dave, “I am without a vehicle.”
“We’ll take you in our car,” said Pastor Lester.
Dave and Dawn road in the backseat.
“Do you live together?” asked Pastor Lester.
“We all live together in the house.”
“Are you married?”
“We live as if we are married.”
Pastor Lester did not reply but Saul understood his father’s look.
“Faith,” said Dawn. “Faith.”
“Good Dawny,” said Dave.
“You will have to meet my daughter. She is named Faith.”
“It is a word that follows us,” said Saul.
“Look what the Lord hath done,” said Pastor Lester from the pulpit that night. “Meet Dave and Dawn. I have never met a man so convinced he is a sinner and so ready for salvation. As Legion recognized Jesus, so too did Dave. Dawn is shy but she has also professed faith.”
“Dave, I want to talk to you about Dawn,” said Pastor Lester on the ride home.
“I see, Pastor.”
“To live together outside of marriage is sin. You are living in sin.”
“Pastor, you read my mind. I said to Dawn the same thing during the service. Dawn is smarter than people think. She cannot stop talking about faith.”
“Faith,” said Dawn.
“There is something else,” said Pastor Lester. “I must tell you my deacons expressed concern about you and Dawn. About you being with Dawn and Dawn being with you.”
“Pastor, I see you are alluding to what I am about to address. When I tried to marry her before we had a little problem. People think Dawn is not smart enough for me. I consider this a complement. She is plenty smart. Smart enough to be a woman of faith is smart enough for me. The Catholic Church refused to wed us. But Dawny demands we have a church wedding. So, until then, we live together, as you said, in sin.”
“Who is this on the porch?” asked Pastor Lester.
“That’s Dana, Dawn’s daughter. Dana deserves a father. She’s going into the ninth grade this year. She is wicked smart. She’s even smarter than her mother and fully a woman at fourteen. Aren’t you Dana?”
Dana wore a red Marlborough windbreaker and pinched a cigarette.
“I am pleased to meet you,” said Saul. “We would be pleased to have you at church. We would also be pleased for you to attend our school. There will be a satellite on the roof.”
Saul and his father returned home late. Faith was asleep in her bed, having drifted off reading a chapter book adapted from the Gospels.
Saul went to bed not spanked.
Dave and Dawn’s wedding was the next Sunday at the church, between the morning and the evening service. Dawn wore her white Marlborough windbreaker. Dave wore his black Marlborough windbreaker with a tie. Dana wore her red Marlborough windbreaker. The three of them walked down the aisle to the theme song of a popular cartoon about children in precarious situations.
The satellite was installed on the roof and the school year began.
The Church at 19 Lark Industrial Pkwy
It starts with a wedding. My father joins together a man and a half-witted woman in holy matrimony, and with her daughter between them they walk down the aisle (and back) in matching Marlboro windbreakers.
Months later, a phone call. Before I recognize the husband’s name, I accept the charges, pass the phone to my father who for the man’s fifteen minutes says, You’re saying God says to lie? There’s no freaking way I’ll testify!
My father starts a high school at the church. He is principal and teaches Math. Or rather, he facilitates Math and mother facilitates Science because the satellite on the roof teaches the students. But the students have so many questions and transmissions are one way, the lectures recorded in advance.
Father sends back the satellite at the end of the year. The students (the daughter included) must repeat their grade in the public schools they’d been protected from and Father gives a fiery final sermon — never transferred from the VHS, I am not your pastor but a caregiver to a dying flock. You idle people who expect everything . . .
How did I feel about any of this? I was literal-minded. I was young. I was known for hiding. A deacon once found me in the church pantry, considering the cereal, Is your father still outside on that ladder in the dark changing lightbulbs, with it raining? And I said, No, sir, I don’t see rain.
Mitchell Galloway lives in Florida. His writing appears in Forever Magazine, The Panacea Review, R&R (Relegation Books), and Subtropics.
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Scary stuff. The power parents have to influence children.
Brilliant, horrifying, and, I dread to consider, autobiographical. Very well done indeed.