She Sees Things in Impossible Technicolor

Sunday was the master of one-liners, which she would use to clinch her technicolored, illustration-filled sermons. One of her famous: “Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian, any more than going to the fishing hole makes you a fish.”

Wearing the brightest of colors, Pastor Ida would use her whole body during her sermons. Habitually she’d slam her fist on the pulpit. Always she’d have her hellacious head-worn mic perfectly placed—guaranteeing that none of us sinners would dare journey to the land of Nod.

Every cell in my being was unspokenly ululating in dread coming here on Sundays. I falsely convinced myself that my piteous whining would soften my mother’s stance on forced church attendance. It proved inutile, she tested immune, she upheld my sentence anyway.

She understood fully that science was the only gospel I could ever buy into—it had the ability to explain things in black and white. My scientific explanations didn’t appeal to supernatural entities, miracles or fallen angels regardless of her feeble attempts to convince me otherwise.

I was nudged. The church service had wrapped up, and I had once more taken a deep-sea dive into my neocortex. Mother collected her Bible, audibly sighed and effused, “Were you not listening at all?”

He was raised from the dead three days later… resurrection, that’s scientifically impossible. How could she believe in such fallacies?

“Yes, He did it for all of us; I get it mother… can we go home now?” My eyes fixated on the gold lettering across the black Holy Writ.

“Listen, I know you’d rather be elsewhere,” her exhausted tone ceased my train of thought. “None of these folks are equipped to perform resurrections, it is scientifically impossible, is it not? Just try to sit here and look alive next time, do we have a deal?”

I nodded.

I’d try for her…

Laughter broke out between the two of us. The war between religion and science was quietened—even if only temporarily. Maybe, just maybe, there’s some space for her technicolor in my black and white universe after all.