July 2, 2006
Sunday

I just felt so cool and hip and bloggerific this morning. I wrote part of this piece using the free wireless internet connection at the Atlanta Bread Company, where I went at about noon to have a bagel and some of the mango tea I’d seen advertised as well as to avoid the thumping noise/muic that emanates on Sunday mornings from the church that borders our property on the south.

It used to be the Susquehanna Valley Church of God, and before thast it was the Cloverly Heights Church of God, an old city congregation that outgrew its space and had no room to expand and thus renamed itself and built a new facility in the suburbs. The national denomination has always had a mission to Spanish-speaking Christians, and the local congregation has hosted occasional worship services for “these people.” (I am not trying to be rude here. The phrase “these people,” and the “otherizing” it implies, was used by the white midwestern Swedish-descended pastor of the congregation in a conversation I had with him in March of 2000.) Recently, however, the sign out on Progress Avenue changed, indicating that the property was now the home of Faith Church/Iglesia de Fe.

Rumor has it that some controversy developed over the congregation’s hospitality to the Hispanics, a schism erupted, the pastor was ousted, and the remaining congregants withdrew from the national denomination. Now the sign on the street indicates that instead of the occasional Spanish service (always announced by a temporary cloth banner that more often than not sagged under snow or blew down entirely in the wind), the permanent sign now advises that Sunday School convenes at 10:15, Worship at 11:15, and Adoración at 12:15.

As I reported in 2000, the denomination describes its style of congregational singing as “robust.” But as I wrote then, “Personally, I think the singing is a little TOO ‘robust’ when the individual notes and even the words being sung can be discerned by someone in another building 125 feet away.”

For the past several weeks, the robust thumping has begun at about 10:00. This has encouraged me to go out to Sunday School at my own congregation whether I’m interested in the week’s topic or not. I then attend the 11:00 worship service and afterward find something to do until I think Adoración is over, arriving home about 1:30. This morning, however, my congregation has a single service at 10:00, and it’s not our regular pastors, who are on vacation. It’s a “slump Sunday,” so I decided to do an Emily Dickinson this morning and keep the Sabbath “staying home, with bobolink for chorister and orchard for a dome.”

I had a pleasant as well as a spiritual morning. There was no thumping during the Sunday School hour nor during the English language worship time over at Iglesia de Fe. I left at about noon to go to the ABC for a bagel and some of the mango tea I’d seen advertised.

I enjoyed the bagel (the tea was not special enough to try again) and the people-watching. (I should mention here that I think middle-aged guys with mottled sunburns, saggy biceps, and lots of underarm hair shouldn’t go to an eating establishment in a tank top meant for the serious weight lifter to wear during a workout. Families with cherubic children chewing on the toy Lynn called “Wiggle Wiggle Wormie,” however, are a pleasant addition to the scenery.) The internet connection was the best (that is, reliable and non-fading) free public connection I’d ever used, but the height of the table made typing awkward, and since I’m unaccustomed to using the laptop’s own keyboard I inadvertently hit the “page down” button instead of the backspace several times, moving off the composing window and losing any work I hadn’t saved.

When I got home I was astonished to learn that Ron was so bothered by today’s Adoración that he actually went over there about 12:45. (Ron is more tolerant than I am of noises and other environmental intrusions.) He’d been trying to watch the golf tournament (our television is in a room on the other side of the house from the church property) but was distracted by the reverberation. (And understand that since we have central air conditioning we don’t keep the windows open.) He said that when he walked past the large stained glass window that is at the back of the sanctuary, he could see it pulsing. He spoke to a woman who came out onto the lawn with him (he said he couldn’t have conducted a conversation with her inside the building, not even in the vestibule that is separated from the sanctuary by a solid wall).

I think it’s probably time for another conversation with the powers-that-be over at Iglesia de Fe. I feel a little like Mr. Heckels, the downstairs neighbor in Friends, who kept a diary of instances of “excessive noise” created by his young neighbors. I don’t mean to be unneighborly nor un-Christian, but I also don’t think I should have to find something to do away from my home on a Sunday afternoon.

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