February 11, 2024: What We Have in Common -

I commend this podcast to you, even if you burned out on podcasts a while back. It’s one of the best things I’ve listened to in ages, food for thought about our current polarized situation. It rang true for me more than once. There’s even research! Enjoy!

It brought back a moment from 20+plus years ago, when I decided, on a sudden whim, to sneak into a big fundamentalist church one Sunday morning, just to observe. (This is hard to explain. I had this wonderful new work friend* who went to said church. I knew it was not remotely appealing to me, but I wanted, I guess, to see if it was really as scary and foreign as I had always imagined, or if I had been catastrophizing. I know, it was an odd thing to do, but there you go.)

I had to shake some guy’s hand on the way in, but fortunately, I didn’t see anyone I knew in the crowd (except my work friend, way up in the front row, where I hoped he’d keep his attention riveted forwards). I didn’t want him to know I was there. (Oh, hi, don’t mind me, I just wanted to observe you in your native Martian habitat, please, carry on!)  

I didn’t want to chat with anyone. And I needed a nearby exit, if things got strange. (Snakes? Altar calls? Glossolalia? Forced conversions upon pain of death?) So I sat in the back, behind some Very Tall People, and I practiced invisibility.

As expected, the church was Not For Me. I knew that going in. The literalism, the room, and the music, for example, were not my style. But I wasn’t shopping for a Church Home. I just wanted to see for myself what that tribe of people did.

Two things WERE weird, though.

They guy who shook my hand on the way in had been wearing rubber gloves. (This all happened around 2002, long before COVID. Rubber gloves were for cleaning the bathroom, not for greeting people.)

And Rubber Glove Guy turned out to be the pastor. His sermon was Weird Thing Number Two. I don't recall what passage he was preaching on, but as he hit the home stretch, he began repeating the phrase, “They are coming for us.”  The last repeat went, “They are coming for us. But you don’t have to worry about being caught unprepared, because they will come for me first, and then you will know you are next.”

Holy, as they say, Moly.

I didn’t feel at home there. I knew that I was not, and didn’t want to be, one of “us.” 

Which meant I must be “them.”  

I wanted to rush to the defense of us “them”s! I wanted to leap up and say, OH, DON’T BE SILLY! WE ARE NOT COMING FOR YOU.  WHY WOULD WE? YES, WE FIND SOME OF THE STUFF YOU DO OFF-PUTTING, SURE, BUT WE’RE NOT OUT TO GET YOU! KNOCK IT OFF WITH DEMONIZING US!

(Old joke.  Him:  The problem with women is that they take everything personally! Her: I DO NOT!!)  

And yet.

And yet.

Here we are, decades later. Do I read, over and over and over, that they are now coming for us? I do. Do I sometimes believe it? I sometimes do. Is there another way we might do this? #notallofthemarethem. I don’t know. I do think things are not working optimally.

Anyway, I liked the podcast a LOT, and you might too. 

*We’re still friends! Eventually I told him I’d snuck in and watched, like a cultural anthropologist. Awkward conversation, something like:

“Uh, listen, I decided to sneak into your church a while ago, and some things weirded me out.  Why does your pastor wear rubber gloves?” My friend said he remembered that happening just the once, and someone thought maybe the pastor had a cold that day? And was trying to keep from spreading it?

“And uh, okay, so, uh, also, the ending of the sermon went like this (…), and - for the record  - I need you to know that I am NOT coming for you. And I don’t know anybody who is.” 

He did know that. We were good, and have been for a long time.