I already wrote fairly extensively about the four eccentric Christians who lived here all sharing the same bedroom. I moved in with the Bucolic One for the second time shortly before Christmas. I knew it would be a bit challenging but I liked these people and they reflected to me the same kind of spontaneous freedom that was precious to me. The church hated us. I had been involved in the stifling network of house fellowships and home Bible and prayer groups that made me somehow marginally legitimate to the evolving status quo of St Margaret's Community Church. They had gone from being a crowded church full of people from all walks of life enjoying the presence of God together to a bunch of middle brow middle class dullards. They were becoming frighteningly fundamentalist and seemed obsessed with keeping out and throwing out anyone who didn't adhere to the letter.
I had been particularly vexed by an upwardly mobile Newfie, previously known as Hallelujah Dave (his real name. So sue me!). He had no respect for boundaries and one morning as I was just waking up at eight marched into my bedroom to shout me out of bed. He was under the assumption that I would be sleeping till noon (and I really ought to be out pounding the pavement looking for a job), though I was really five minutes from getting up. I let him have it afterward. His wife, Sylvia, had gone from being a beautiful self-possessed woman to his fawning slave. A submissive Christian wife, or a dog used to being beaten and still loving unconditionally her boorish master. They, like everyone else at St. Margaret's, were decidedly anti-feminist, as well as anti-gay, and the took the Bible to the letter, especially some of St. Paul's more questionable teachings. Women had no rights and they all more or less happily lived as though the Sixties never happened. I don't know what happened to them since. Either she had a mental breakdown from being married to the idiot or she woke up one day and divorced his sorry ass.
They lived across the street from us. One day I knocked on the front door to say hi. Sylvia eyed me suspiciously, would not let me in and told me we couldn't be friends. I had not contacted them in the six weeks I had been living across the street (because I anticipated this rejection) and besides, I was living with the presumed enemies of the church. "Look at their lives", she hissed, and before closing the door in my face she warned me that I would end up falling on my ass (though she used a much politer word)
I really didn't know what she meant by "look at their lives." Perhaps she was referring to the Bucolic One's casual grooming (though his hygiene was impeccable), or that D., the Bob Dylan wannabe smoked cigarettes (agreed, not a good thing), and drove taxi at night. Maybe she meant all the various foreign cars in our front yard, including the Bentley, that the Bucolic One fixed for a living. She might have also taken offense at the stream of visitors we would entertain with the warmest hospitality, mostly Christian souls from a variety of dominations including those dreaded Catholics (the Bucolic One was an ecumenical Catholic).
We had our differences in the Strange Little House and sometimes we were too harsh on one another and at times to laughable extremes (D., the Bob Dylan wannabe tried to scold me for looking sexually attractive. Like, I mean, HUH!!!?)
We were also involved in weekend Christian retreats, ecumenical, called Live-In, where we prayerfully spent a weekend together, up to forty adults from diverse backgrounds and Christian denominations) would dwell together in an atmosphere soaked in the love and joy of Our Lord Jesus Christ, revelling together in the Holy Spirit's healing, restoring love.
While living in the Strange Little House I left St. Margaret's. I have never regretted this and I have never gone back.
In April I left the Strange Little House. I was feeling increasingly shut out from the tight little two person clique that my housemates had turned into. I was also anxious to live alone, to get on with my life and find out for myself just where God was taking me.
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