WHEN MY FATHER reached his 40s, he discovered the eight-track tape. To his delight, he found was able to record services at church, letting them play again and again over the speakers in his auto-body shop, without ever having to change the tape.
Even worse, my father would sing along with the songs or shout "Amen" if a preacher made what my father thought was a particularly powerful point.
I was required to work with my father in his shop. So I tried to ignore his enthusiasm as we ground rustholes, sanded primer, or masked cars. My father was not the coolest dad in the neighborhood.
AS A CHILD, I had a great fear of death. I suspect it was my imagination -- stimulated by sermons threatening hellfire to the sinner.
It's the logic of the sadist: If you want to ensure that your child doesn't play with fire, stick his hand into a fire. And hold it there. The evangelists I knew often bought into this concept. The way to convert the sinner, they believed, was to frighten him with tales of a fire that never stops: eternal damnation.
I ALSO GREW up in a world where the Deathbed Story was an honorable, evangelistic tool. These dramas occurred in a world without pain-killing drugs -- today, they read like bad horror movies.
The story I remember best came in a gospel tract. It told of a blasphemous wretch who had committed the Unpardonable Sin. This reprobate knew he couldn't repent -- and he felt no remorse for his sad-sack life.
On his deathbed, which the writer attended, the blackguard said that he knew he was damned. As Death drew nearer, he screamed and sobbed. He described in detail the flames of hell, now beginning to lick up past his feet. Crackle, crackle.
Yet because the miscreant's sin was unpardonable, he couldn't pray. So he went to hell. True story, the writer said. The tract finished by inviting the reader to come to Christ. Below that was a handy-dandy box where the sponsoring church could stamp its address.
You don't want to commit that sin, I learned. Strong stuff for a child to hear, but I lapped it up.
MY OBSESSION with dying, with the smoky, fiery hereafter -- resonated throughout the whole of my life as a child. I reacted in an equally vivid fashion with panic attacks: running through the house, suddenly unable to breathe: "I'm dying, I'm dying," I would cry out to my older sisters or parents.
When I was about seven, while the family visited my father's relatives in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, my parents finally took me to a pediatrician. Dr. Lemon, a kindly man, checked me for any maladies or diseases, something that might be endangering my life. To my complete surprise, he found nothing.
After the checkup, Dr. Lemon asked me to take a seat on the examination table. Then we talked. He asked me what I was afraid of. After listening to me, he explained that the fear of death is perfectly normal -- it keeps us alive. I was young and perfectly healthy, and it was likely I would live for a very long time.
Actually, I don't recall what he said. But what I do remember is that he took the time to pay attention to me and my fears. And with that, the childhood panic attacks were over.
AS I GREW older, it wasn't only death that fascinated me. I focused my sights on a bigger subject: The End Times.
When I turned nine, the Christian blockbuster Thief in the Night (1972) first hit the Crooked Screen of evangelical fellowship halls across America. The film, written by Russell S. Doughten Jr., Jim Grant, and Donald W. Thompson, played steadily in churches well into the '90s.
It told of Patty Meyers, a young woman whose husband, Jim, wants her to accept Christ. He knows what's coming, and he doesn't want her to be left behind. But the young wife is having too much fun. She's got great friends who know how to party.
Patty figures she'll become born-again, eventually. But not yet -- she's got plenty of time.
THEN ONE NIGHT Patty has a dream. In it, she wakes up to the sound of a radio announcement: millions across the planet have just disappeared. She finds her husband's razor still buzzing in the sink. He's gone -- leaving her behind.
Things get worse. Since millions of drivers have exited the planet without giving notice, the world's highways are clogged with empty cars and sometimes frightened passengers who can't drive (think Los Angeles during any rush hour). Thus, the United Nations declares international martial law. Above the freeways hover big black helicopters, each bird marked with the new UN logo.
To show their support for UNITE (United Nations Imperium for Total Emergency), all peoples everywhere must line up to get a permanent tattoo: the number 666. People get a choice: forehead or right hand. When Patty refuses to cooperate, she finds that her bank account and even the cash she carries have gone to Useless. She can't buy food or water or even hairspray.
What's a girl to do?
OUR HEROINE seeks refuge in a church. There she finds two pastors who have spent too much time watching Monday Night Football instead of warning their flock about the End Times. They've been left behind too.
Patty informs them she's truly sorry that she didn't become born-again, and would it be possible to say the Sinner's Prayer now?
UNFORTUNATELY, IT'S not that easy, explains one of the pastors. Sure, you can become a Christian. But the Tribulation has begun. The devil rules the world. And the Beast -- a sort of Pope for the Satanic Church -- is out to get any evangelical converts. Most important, the pastor says, no matter what you do, if you become tattooed with the Mark of the Beast, your soul will be eternally damned. That means lots of smoke and flames.
The rest of the film has Patty racing to escape the black helicopters and the tattoo artist. But she's not fast enough. They trap her on top of a railroad bridge. She slips and falls towards the water below. But then, just in time, she wakes up and discovers it's all been a dream. Thank God!
SAFE IN HER BED, Patty looks at the clock. She hears Jim shaving in the bathroom. It really was just a dream, she thinks.
And then the radio flips on and announces that millions have disappeared across the world. The camera ZOOMS in on Patty's face.
She screams and races to the bathroom, only to find that her husband is missing, and the shaver is buzzing in the sink.
FADE TO BLACK.
THAT FINAL twist was highly effective. Those who saw this evangelical classic in the '70s can't forget it. It's right up there with the Blair Witch in terms of an emotional freeze frame.
Except that at the end of Thief you didn't go blinking out into the parking lot trying to decide whether you wanted to go to Friendly's or McDonalds with your friends. Instead, you sat there in the fellowship hall, and the youth pastor soberly asked if anyone would like to come to Jesus now, because you never know when the Rapture could happen.
MY THREE OLDER sisters went to see the film at a neighboring, more liberal Mennonite youth group event. They came home that night all agog. They especially liked the movie's theme song:
Man and wife, asleep in bed
She hears a noise
And turns her head - he's gone
I wish we'd all been ready
There's no time to change your mind
The Son has come and you've been left behind
You've been left behind.
So they learned the song in a cappella three-part harmony and sang it at any venue that would have them: funerals, church services, family reunions, even the wedding of their friend, Grace Bennett -- if I recall correctly.
It was a haunting piece.
Of course, my father wasn't about to believe this version of the End Times. He taught us what he believed was the non-conference-conference-conservative-Mennonite theology.
According to my father, Christ would return in the clouds in the twinkling of an eye in full view of the world. Floating in the clouds, he would judge the earth. Then the devil and all his followers would be cast into the Lake of Fire. Finally, the Christians would go back to heaven with Christ while the earth is destroyed by fire. End of story.
BY THE TIME the '80s arrived, predictions about the End Times had begun to change. One of my absolute favorite theories was the "Jupiter Effect," which argued that in 1982, all nine planets would align themselves, causing turmoil in the solar system: solar flares, planetary wobblings, massive earthquakes, and jittery squirrels.
I remember listening to a sermon in 1980. The visiting evangelist predicted a planetary alignment that was going to bring about in the End Times. It all sounded very logical. I could just see it in my mind: the planets lined up in a row, including Jupiter, being destroyed by God's righteous anger, flaming like greasy hamburgers on the grill.
I guess the visiting evangelist must have been listening to Pat Robertson.
"I guarantee you," Robertson said in a May 1980 broadcast of The 700 Club, "by the end of 1982 there is going to be a judgment on the world." He then went on to suggest that this "judgment" would include the Soviets attacking Israel, nuclear retaliation, and the deaths of about two billion people.
Unfortunately, as The Pocket Book of the Apocalypse notes, "the Soviet Union refused to cooperate with Mr. Robertson and his ironclad guarantee."
IT WAS MY middle school science teacher, Roman J. Miller, who used literature to help me discover real insight about death.
Miller was not an English teacher, and never has been, as far as I know. But he understood language. He's a fine scientist with a host of scholarly articles published, including one co-written with one of my very distant cousins.
He also just happens to be the Daniel B. Suter Endowed Professor of Biology at Eastern Mennonite University, Harrisonburg, VA. He has taught there for 22 years, courses in physiology, anatomy, developmental biology, animal science, bioethics, and the philosophy of science.
While Miller was my teacher at Hartville Christian School, he was also earning his doctorate from Kent State University. I recall him saying to us that he had been born in Macon, Mississippi.
WHEN MILLER wasn't studying science, he had a theatrical bent. More than any actor I've ever heard, he captured the soul of the southern black preacher through his performances of James Weldon Johnson's poetry during evening church services.
His recitation of Johnson's "Go Down, Death" was unforgettable.
Weep not, weep not,
She is not dead;
She's resting in the bosom of Jesus.
Heart-broken husband - weep no more;
Grief-stricken son - weep no more;
Left-lonesome daughter - weep no more;
She's only just gone home.
Miller could have given James Earl Jones a run for his money. His voice rumbled and roared and tossed around adjectives and adverbs like that furnace Old Nebuchadnezzar tossed those three Hebrew children into.
Day before yesterday morning,
God was looking down from his great, high heaven,
Looking down on all his children,
And his eye fell on Sister Caroline,
Tossing on her bed of pain.
And God's big heart was touched with pity,
With the everlasting pity.
And God sat back on his throne,
And he commanded that tall, bright angel standing at his right hand:
"Call me Death!"
And that tall, bright angel cried in a voice
That broke like a clap of thunder:
"Call Death! -- Call Death!"
Even today, 30 years later, I can still hear Miller's rolling voice. I can even recite much of the poem from memory. Because Miller didn't just stand and deliver. He brought image and musical drama to the pulpit, adding a bold, dramatic element to the performance. He clearly felt the words deserved it.
And the echo sounded down the streets of heaven
Till it reached away back to that shadowy place,
Where Death waits with his pale, white horses.
And Death heard the summons,
And he leaped on his fastest horse,
Pale as a sheet in the moonlight.
Up the golden street Death galloped,
And the hooves of his horse struck fire from the gold,
But they didn't make no sound.
Up Death rode to the Great White Throne,
And waited for God's command.
Miller also provided image for his performance through the Chalk Drawing, one of the most unique forms of art used in the Mennonite community. In principle, it bore a vague resemblance to the paintings of Monet, except that it was done with various colors of chalk on black canvas.
So as Miller recited the words, the lights were lowered in the entire sanctuary, with only a dim spotlight on the Mennonite woman working at her easel. Her white bonnet caught the light as her hands moved swiftly, shading here, adding there.
And God said: "Go down, Death, go down,
Go down to Savannah, Georgia,
Down in Yamacraw,
And find Sister Caroline.
She's borne the burden and heat of the day,
She's labored long in my vineyard,
And she's tired -
She's weary -
Go down, Death, and bring her to me."
And Death didn't say a word,
But he loosed the reins on his pale, white horse,
And he clamped the spurs to its bloodless sides,
And out and down he rode,
Through heaven's pearly gates,
Past suns and moons and stars;
On Death rode,
Leaving the lightning's flash behind;
Straight on down he came.
As Miller ended each stanza of the poem, there was a burst of music from an octet of a cappella musicians standing in the back of the sanctuary. Their songs caught the essence of emotion found in Johnson's poem, songs like "Sunset and Evening Star" or "Jerusalem the Golden."
While we were watching round her bed,
She turned her eyes and looked away,
She saw what we couldn't see;
She saw Old Death. She saw Old Death
Coming like a falling star.
But Death didn't frighten Sister Caroline;
He looked to her like a welcome friend.
And she whispered to us: "I'm going home,"
And she smiled and closed her eyes.
And Death took her up like a baby,
And she lay in his icy arms,
But she didn't feel no chill.
And Death began to ride again -
Up beyond the evening star,
Into the glittering light of glory,
On to the Great White Throne.
And there he laid Sister Caroline
On the loving breast of Jesus.
I can't be sure now, but it must have hit me then as I sat listening to my teacher perform. Death didn't scare Sister Caroline -- her death had been a welcome relief after a life well lived. She had welcomed him as a friend. How does one do that?
Johnson's perspective was a vibrant one -- he didn't need to invent hellish deathbeds in order to frighten the lost into submission. By presenting this sermon on death to our community of Swiss/German Mennonites, Miller threw open a window of insight. Did he realize what an alternative he was presenting?
And Jesus took his own hand and wiped away her tears,
And he smoothed the furrows from her face,
And the angels sang a little song,
And Jesus rocked her in his arms,
And kept a-saying: "Take your rest,
Take your rest."
Weep not - weep not,
She is not dead;
She's resting in the bosom of Jesus.
Miller gave us poetry as live theatre in our conservative Mennonite sanctuary. His unique blend of words, music, and image revealed the emotional depth of Johnson's words.
THE PROGRAM also included a recitation of Johnson's "The Creation." After Miller finished, the octet sang several more hymns, allowing the artist to finish her chalk drawing.
The resulting artwork always told a story: the creation of the world, the death and resurrection of Christ, a blind man healed.
After the service, I watched the artist spray her chalk drawing with a protective coating. It would be framed for someone to hang at home.
MY FATHER CAUGHT one of these performances on his new eight-track device and played it around the house again and again. Although I hated listening to most of his recordings, I never complained when he played Miller.
As I look back now, it strikes me that the reason I internalized the power of Johnson's poetry is because of my father's annoying habit of recording church services on his new eight-track recorder.