The Wrong Reasons
Part 1: Fix Me, Someone
I keep looking online for this church in Los Angeles with a rock band and a massive adjacent multi-level parking lot. Turns out there are quite a few — their electric guitars vibrating while hundreds of people raised their hands towards heaven.
I need to remember this church’s name because then I can locate myself, swoop in on young me, and wrap my big wings around her.
“It’s a miracle I’m standing before you today,” said the pastor with sandy blonde hair. “Last week I nearly had a heart attack.”
There were gasps. Some grabbed their hearts, wiped tears from their eyes.
He lowered his head, one hand pressed to his chest, the other extended out, gulping back emotion. I can’t remember now if it was Jesus or the Holy Spirit or simply God — only that he described it as a voice that told him to go to the hospital before it was too late. He prayed the whole way there. His pretty wife and two young children joined him onstage. We all clapped. I wondered if his prayers really did save him. I’m skeptical, but I’d do nearly anything to believe in magic
The first time I brought my best friend Ivy. When the rock band played, strobe lights flashing, she couldn’t stomach it. She’d had religion shoved down her throat growing up. I hadn’t. I couldn’t convince her to come back. If my artist parents knew I was there with my hips swaying, my head bopping to Christian pop, they’d just die. But was it such a terrible thing — people coming together to celebrate love, to hope?
I was alone in Los Angeles. And everyone here was so nice. People I’d just met seemed genuinely excited to see me. There were families everywhere, mothers wrapping their arms around their kids, children singing beside their parents. The joy was palpable. People coming together to talk about love, about how things are tough, but that something bigger held them. On some level, I believed that too. Just not quite in the way they did. I was straddling my own line, somewhere between judgment and longing. Wouldn’t it be nice, I kept thinking. Wouldn’t it be nice?
I had found Dr. Callahan— kinesiologist and chiropractor to the stars — after my previous chiropractor kept cupping my ass. A friend told me about him. I started seeing Dr. Callahan regularly, and he told me about the church. He had other patients who’d go too. He told me it would give me fortitude. After each sermon, some of us would form a line — a tap on the back to free your soul, a fix for a tweaked knee, stability through his touch and certainty.
I sat close to Dr. Callahan while the pastor preached about his brush with death and the congregation’s mission. The church was growing, the pastor said. There were new members too. Would they come forward?
Dr. Callahan looked at me. Go on.
So I inched toward the front with about ten others. I tried not to think about the world outside, the months without an audition, the money I didn’t have, the life that kept not happening, and still how badly I wanted everything to work out. I felt hundreds of eyes.
The electric guitar reverberated, rising and diagonal. The pastor told us Jesus would never abandon us. He loved us.
“He will be with you in the darkest hour. He won’t let you fall.”
I pictured myself like a broken plastic doll, my legs and arms always falling off. Put me back together. Fix me. Someone?
“If you feel the presence of Jesus, raise your hand.”
I looked around. Everyone was raising their hands, the steady pulse of the bass washing through the room. I was right up front. People would see if I didn’t.
I believe God is like the ocean and we are little cupfuls, individual and the same all at once. I believe in Christ consciousness, in what he represents. The kind of love that’s so big and bright it makes you choke. But did I feel the presence of Jesus? I wanted to. I wanted to mold what I believed into what they believed, so I belonged.
If only they knew I was just there for the free chiropractic adjustments.
I raised my hand.
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When I was in college, a lot of kids without much money went to the free weekend meals offered by Hari Krishnas. No one converted.