The Ryno Pen

Not these guys, they’re spelled differently.

I started telling about my growing dissatisfaction with, and eventual exit from, charismatic churches here. This begins the series of tales.

It’s a small city, and the events I am about to narrate took place in a small church. Eventually somebody will identify this Beastie, and all kinds of hooey will inevitably commence.

Let me assure both my readers that I do not mind if they believe in YHWH, Bob, Buddha, Ukemochi, et cetera or all/any combination of/ none of the aforegoing. My point, albeit a clumsily made one, is that faith is a personal thing, better proven by living example than by proselytising, especially when the person doing the Big Sell does one of the following Big Oopses:
* Doesn’t know what they’re talking about;
* Pulls a retcon on previous claims;
* Suffers a Catastrophic Failure Of Prophecy.

This story deals with an old grouch, older and grouchier than even your humble blogonaut. Brother Humphrey (not his actual name) was reputed to be rather cashed-up: this may have had some bearing on his influence within the tiny congregation.

It is not known just how the Humph arrived in a happy-clapper denomination: he was no clapper for a start, and his face ran the gamut from Not Amused to Smite ‘Em Now, Lord.

I first locked horns with the old guy after I’d been in town a few weeks. My excuse for being there was valid: my folks attended. A combination of Pastor Jolly finding out what I did for fun and the congregation demographic (the age distribution curve skewed heavily toward the Cradle and Grave ends) led to me getting the gig of Doer Of The PA System.

Brief Digression: I’ve flown a desk for live acts in a place that seated 500, and done the honours for acts ranging from acapella folkies to Pistols-style yob-and-gob. Thanks in part to good luck and also to good management, I still audiogram above average for my age. I also don’t believe in excessive amplification. Let’s get that out of the way, and I’ll change the CD.

Anyway, the place had brick surfaces every-bloody-where, and a low ceiling. Seeing the church only rented the hall, every week was a super-fast bump-in, set-up and ring the room from when the pastor unlocked to Go time. There was no feedback on my watch, unless one of the singers stood directly in front of a speaker column or similar. It happened from time to time: you simply cannot educate some people. Third week on the job, I was lapel-grabbed by the Humph as I took my seat behind the Rinky-Dink 8-Channel.

“I went to Brisbane the other week, and Someotherplaceville Uniting Church has lots of little speakers. You can hear everything but it’s not loud.”

Hmm, it’s not loud here either, matey, I thinks. “That’s a larger building, isn’t it, and don’t they have all their gear permanently wired-in?”

“Humph! The music here is too loud.” (Later, I discovered he didn’t like the TEMPO and MODERN MUSIC IN GENERAL. Made faces in every song like he was having his haemorrhoids wrapped round a rotating drum under the seat, too. Fingers-in-ears like a two-year-old. Ah, the dignity it takes to be a Church Elder…)

And if you think the above was childish, you should have seen his antics when I said that I deferred to his experience and judgement, and that I looked forward to enjoying the service while he looked after the sound. Some people are never satisfied.

Okay, the digression wasn’t that brief. Still, you had to get to know the old geezer to appreciate the rest of the story. Not long before I crashlanded in town, the old Humphster had been diagnosed with a few spots of what appeared to be cancer on part of his grouchy liddle insides.

A couple of months along, and he’s back for more X-rays, and wa-hey, no more spots! Okay, any hypothesis from Miracle to It Wasn’t Cancer All Along is acceptable here: the facts don’t make a whit of difference. Humph got up in front of the congregation and there was much rejoicing. Credit was given to God: the term here refers to the deity who is franchise owner for Christian churches in general. Note that….

… and fast forward about six months. Humph is still old, twitter and bisted. He still makes faces at the music, and saves his particularly grotesque Old Man Steptoe looks for your humble blogonaut on the sound desk.

A sort of informal rota existed for speaking in the church. Most often it was Pastor Jolly himself doing all of it, but we got visiting preachers now and then, and the Jolly One would fall back to giving a little blurb around Communion, leading up to the usual ritual. Occasionally, the pastor would pick a trusty man (and very, VERY infrequently, a woman) from among the faithful, to do the Communion Talk.

Humph got the nod. Oh dear. Ye Ancient Git was over 70 in the shade,and we were all getting to feel rather old ourselves… on and on and bloody on about his X-rays and his innards and Not A Spot…

…just about the ten-minute mark, I was only kept awake by the irregular wet clacking sounds of eyelids slamming shut and heads lolling into other heads which had slumped in the opposite direction. Seeing I was about the only soul left awake, I listened intently as Humph started on about the New Wonderful Thing which he was now claiming had Saved His Bacon Offal.

The claim had been revised. No longer did the Almighty reach down from Cloud Nine and flick the specks off the X-ray plate: now it was some guff about Carrot Juice and a diet of green crud.

Adam had a juicer, apparently. Now I dunno if he got his fig-leafy bum kicked out of the Primeval Park for scrumping apples to make something tastier than carrot, celery and Miracle Stain-Yer-Teeth-Green-Muck ($49.95 a teeny capsule or nearest offer), but Humph was going on like he’d been into Bob Marley’s greens too. Onandonandonandonandonandonandonandon…. Aargh .

Jolly tipped me the wink and gave me the Cut His Mike Feed signal. I did. It didn’t matter: Onandonandonandonandonandon Unplugged. I don’t remember what happened in the end any more than you’d remember how a big dog disengaged itself after humping your leg for ten minutes. The shock of the process at peak just kind of obliterates any memory of how we got out of it. Eventually Humph sat down. The rest of the service was short for some reason.

And dammit, I still don’t know who retconned the biblical translation, though it’s fashionable to blame Erasmus, if only so we can say “Complutensian Polyglot” with a knowing sort of shrug. That picnic on the Mount was obviously celery juice and wheatgrass extract lozenges, not sardine sammies at all…

Jesus himself would tell you in the Queen’s English.

At this point, I was keen to attend the next week in a t-shirt reading:
“Blood of the Lamb? YAY!
Juice Of The Carrot? NAY!”
You can see I didn’t belong, but there’s a way to go before I actually make the break.

Next Time: Vege Tales II or something similar.

PostScript: In case you were wondering, the Humph-meister wasn’t corrected, censured, de-eldered or prevented from touting the Way Of The True Veg.

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From a page about the Funny Diet:

Although low-fat, high-fiber diets can be healthful, the Hallelujah Diet is unbalanced and can lead to serious deficiencies. The overall program is expensive because the recommended supplements cost over $2,000 a year. Reverend Malkmus’ sales pitch includes beliefs that are historically and nutritionally senseless, as well as health claims for which he lacks appropriate substantiation. Using his diet instead of appropriate medical care is very foolish.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 8th, 2007 at 3:03 am and is filed under charismatic churches, ex-charismatic, ex-church, fundamentalism, religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.