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Gray plastic bag
Topics: church, calvary chapel, westbrook, coffee shop, solomon's porch, God, religion, reality, truth, hope
Posted by ClaytonChancey Mon Jun 18, 2007 15:49:27 PDT
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0 responses 2 comments Solomon’s Porch is a little coffeehouse and bookstore on the premises of my church.
They do a lot of frozen drinks, dubbed “Freddos,” and iced coffees and stuff like that, but I think the best thing they have is the Americano. I like it in a 12-ounce paper cup, with maybe 1 and a half or 2 inches for cream, double shot. I use more sugar than most people, but less creamer than most (I consider it a healthy trade-off). 
People do all sorts of things in Solomon’s Porch.  Most of the time it’s pretty quiet. One time I saw an architect drafting a building on his laptop. He had a pressed shirt and a Rolex, and close-cropped hair. A pair of those rimless Ray Ban spy sunglasses rested on the table next to his leather laptop bag. I think he was the only interesting person I’ve seen there who wasn’t from the church.
So I was at the coffeehouse today with my mom and my brother. My mom wanted to say goodbye to one of her friends, Katie, who was leaving with a church group to go to Israel. The rest of them were coming back in a week or something, but not Katie. Katie and her sorta-fiance, Donny, are going to stay in Israel indefinitely. They’re probably going to get married there, and they’re probably going to live an amazing life in the name of Jesus Christ.
Donny was talking to me before he left. They were only allowed to take one 50-pound bag for the trip –– church regulations –– but since he and Katie are actually moving away, they really had to pick what they’re taking and what they’re not. 
He’s a musical guy. He was in a band called Venerate. No one was sure how to pronounce it, our youth pastor was Hispanic, so he said it “Venerahtay”, and I think everyone started calling it that too. They played a few times at our church. But anyway, he wasn’t able to lug along his guitar or his bass or anything. He had a harmonica, and he was blowing through it while we were talking.
 He was saying how excited he was to get going. “It’s just saying goodbye to everyone that’s so hard. That’s what I didn’t want to have to do.”
“Yeah.  I remember when my family picked up and moved out of the states, it was so tense. Sometimes you wanna just drop everything and head out.”
He agreed with me. We started talking about music again, it was the only thing we had in common, except that we both wanted to be going to Israel. I have short, boyish hair and I’m not very muscular –– sort of a skinny little writer kid who’s kind of got his head in the clouds under his sunglasses. Donny is much more down to earth. He’s got that hip, bohemian appeal. Long red hair and a red goatee, his wallet is chained to his belt, baggy black cargo pants. Sometimes I wish I was more culturally relevant than I am. I just sit inside and write and listen to jazz.
Donny can’t wait to get over to the place he and Katie are going to be staying. He thinks he will really enjoy the worship over there. It’s in Hebrew. Katie is almost fluent in the language, but Donny not so much.
We saw them off, and my mom started to cry a little when people were taking pictures and getting in the cars. Donny and Katie got in a red sports car with Donny’s mom, and they just drove off.  So that was that. I sat outside in the boiling Southern California heat for a while, trying really hard to not mind it, because I didn’t want to go inside and have to talk to people. It must’ve been 10 minutes, maybe two hours. 
I started to think really heavily, as I tend to do if nothing else presents itself. I was thinking about Israel, and wondering why I wasn’t going over there, or already over there. Everything relevant happens in Israel. Not just Biblically, but politically, economically. Did you know that Tovia Luskin discovered oil reservoirs at a Meged-4 drilling site, containing 100 million barrels of oil?* That’s a lot of power. Everything is happening in Israel or around it. I wondered why I was here and not there, why churches were visiting Israel on sightseeing tours instead of moving there like Katie and Donny, where they could relay information back to the mother church, instead of garnering their facts from bus drivers on the way to the Temple Mount tourist trap.
 I was thinking about all this, and at the same time, watching a gray plastic bag that the wind was blowing across my field of view. Outside Solomon’s Porch, there is a very small parking area, 12 spots or something, and next to it there are railroad tracks. It was really hot when I was sitting there; I was sweating enough to feel all sticky just sitting there doing nothing.
That plastic bag floated across the asphalt, snagging on a curb or a parking block, then continuing its journey. It finally went over one of those “no parking” curbs and stopped on the railroad tracks.
I wondered about that bag. I think we’re all sort of like it, in different ways, floating with the wind, here one moment and gone another. In my perception, I interpreted it as an allegory of my walk with God. Like that plastic bag, I’m not really driven. I sort of find my way for a week or a month or even a year, and then it gets too hard and I just settle. Settle for church instead of God, or for religiosity instead of excitement, and I know it’s my fault, but that’s not what I’ll say.
“Hey, don’t blame me that that snag was there. Hey, don’t blame me that the wind brought me here or there. Hey, I’m just going with the flow, man. Hey, take it easy!”
I was in the middle of wishing that I could work up the emotion to start crying, or have an out-of-body experience or a vision or something equally profound, when the door opened from Solomon’s Porch and a guy came out.
He was probably 40 or 45, with close-cut black hair and thick eyebrows. He was sturdily built, but his eyes looked like everything pained him –– like he was really struggling to keep up with his image.  He looked like a good guy who used to be a druggie or a war veteran or something painful, that God took and turned around. He sort of saw me for the first time.
“Hey man, how you doing?”
I said “good” way quieter than I meant to. I probably sounded like I had been crying. I hate it when that happens, it’s sort of like a junior-higher who squeaks and then gets embarrassed, except when it happens to me I sound like this sensitive little guy who watches reruns of “Doctor Quinn: Medicine Woman” every week.
“You OK, bud?” The guy kept walking but looked back.
I cleared my throat.  “Yeah.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I’m just waiting.”
“OK.”
The guy walked stiffly, sort of like a neurotic robot, past the parking lot, over the red “no parking” curb, to the railroad tracks. He bent down and picked up that gray plastic bag, and then walked back. He bunched it up in his hand like he was going to throw it away, and then disappeared inside without really looking at me.
I don’t know why that is so profound to me, but it is.  It seems sort of like an intervention, like I wonder if that guy was an angel or God or something. No, wait. God looks like Morgan Freeman.  I forgot. But anyway, it hit me then, that that guy was actually doing something in the world. He was making it his. Checking on a sensitive little buddy sitting outside, picking up a plastic bag –– I mean they’re not the hugest things, but somehow that guy really earned my admiration today. I hope I see him around.
* (I got this information from a fantastic book I was reading, nonfiction by Joel Rosenberg called “Epicenter.” Great reading.)

 

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Comment From: ssmoff3

Hey Clayton... nice article! :-) Keep writing! God Bless You! Comment From: sunnica

Wow! I picked up a copy of the Southwest Voice today, having not yet read it because I live in the Northwest. I am SO GLAD I didn't miss this issue! This was the most well-written, uplifting story I've read in a long time. What a talented writer. Please, keep up the great work!!!