Welcome to the Faith Family
With my first performance drawing ever nearer, I decided to check out some local storytellers, beginning at the First Baptist Church of Gatlinburg.
As I’m walking in there’s a girl about nine years old standing by the front door dressed in a pink pant suit with pink tulle at the cuffs that had to have been a dance recital costume for an ABBA song. This, I think, is a very good omen. I take a seat in a back pew and within seconds Pastor Larry, smelling fresh, unbaptized meat, introduces himself:
“Where’re’ya from?” He asked amicably.
“I grew up in Connecticut but I’m living in Philadel-“
“No kidding! I’ve flown into the Philadelphia airport dozens of times!”
“Oh? That’s-“
“Lotsa history up there.”
“Ye-“
“Well you enjoy the service, we’re glad to have you here.”
“Thank-“
Now, I’ve been in a lot of churches in my life but I’m not what you might call Religious. Something Pastor Larry may have picked up on. I was raised atheist and still identify as such but I love churches. Empty churches. Old ones. Probably in other countries. Churches with keystones and spiral staircases leading up to pulpits that are always blocked off with a velvet ropes. Those churches. They’re thermically sealed, full of stories, and deeply, profoundly, heart soothingly quiet.
Pastor Larry is the opposite of quiet. Even his girth is loud. But he is, as I’d hoped, a storyteller. He begins “The Message” portion of the service (subtitled “Welcome to the Faith Family”) by talking about what it takes to be a Baptist, specifically about a movement he’d pioneered to require that all Baptists must undergo “believers baptism by immersion at the hands of a Baptist.”
“We wouldn’t want a church member to be baptized by a Presbyterian would we?” He said, inciting mirthful laughter throughout the flock.
As I’m listening to this I’m thinking, exactly how big a problem is this? Like, how many people show up to church claiming to be Baptist who were ritually immersed by Presbyterians? But as The Message went on and the content shifted gears toward general goodwill I found myself becoming rather captivated by Pastor Larry’s powerful strides from one end of the dais to the other, the hilly, ebb and flow of his voice, and his insistence that his way- the lords way- is the way.
Someone who is that sure of something is either the most soothing or the most infuriating person on the planet. Our mothers are sure they love us. Soothing. An old friend is sure Trump will save the country. Infuriating. Perhaps it was because I had sought this experience out and wanted to make the most of it or perhaps it was because I am generally unsure of things and curious about how that other half lives but I kinda liked Pastor Larry. I wasn’t about to empty my pocketbook into the tithe and swear fealty to the Lord Baptists but there’s no denying that he could hold an audience’s attention.
That said, I won’t be returning any time soon, at least not on Wednesdays from 4.30pm-8.pm.
After the service, I sought out my own full immersion at a place called The Sinks. The Sinks is a deep gorge just bellow Meigs Falls on The Little River. It’s the place to go if you want to cliff jump.
But did I want to cliff jump? 30 feet up I wasn’t so sure. I’ve jumped 10,000 ft from an airplane without breaking a sweat, twice from a bungee cord, heart racing, and I was beginning to think that the only way I was going off the edge of this cliff would be to faint off. I could have pondered this all day but the sun was beating down on me and even with SPF 70 coating my Irish peasant skin, I couldn’t stay there forever so I walked to the edge of the cliff and jumped.
30 feet gives you time to formulate exactly one full sentence in your mind from the moment you become air born to the moment you hit the water. In my case, that sentence was: Holy shit, I’m ten days off crutches and I’m about to land feet first on a deep well of the world’s most powerful destructive force.
As I came up for air, feet throbbing, the solution was obvious: dive. But here’s the thing, if it’s scary to jump feet first from a cliff, it’s doubly scary to jump head first. Back on top of the cliff, staring into the watery grave of a few foolish divers over the years, I chickened out. I went back down to the 10 ft rock to practice. I watched the higher rocks as some incredible divers flipped and spun and I watched some kindred spirits chicken out. Finally, unwilling to accept defeat, I climbed to the middle rocks, about 20 ft up and prepared to dive. Welcome to the faith family.
My first thought upon hitting the water was, Dear God, I’m blind. I wasn’t, but how it was that my eyes were the thing that hurt was beyond me. I have no idea what I looked going over that cliff eyeballs first like but I’d put money on Really Stupid.
I embarked on one more church excursion that evening. One of the firefly volunteers had told me about a Sunday church service at an amphitheater in the park so I persuaded Biologist Ben to join me on a churchventure and we set off for Elkmont. Not only did we get lost (strike two for the trip) the service was moved up an hour today and we had just missed it.
In the mean time, the trees are green, the air is sweet, my hair smells like river, and if that’s not spirituality I don’t know what is.
