“I thought you said you broke up with the Mormons.”

He laughed at me.

“What? You stood right here in this kitchen and told me you’d broken up with them.”

“I did! I told them I didn’t want to be evangelized to anymore. But there’s apparently a very fine line between them just wanting to “hang out” and Bible study.”

“Well. I’m sure we’ve all had that problem in a relationship at one time or another.”

The first thing you notice is the suits, even when the jackets are off. No young business man worth his PS4 stays in a button down after he’s come home from work, especially with the tie still knotted and neat. And yet, here they were, two strangers sitting at one of the kitchen tables beside my housemate at more than half past dark looking like happy hour incarnations of Agent Smith. Their postures were struggling to be relaxed, their jackets over the backs of their chairs with food on the table in front of them, and I knew within the time it takes to take a breath what they were and why they were here. I once interviewed a nun at St. Cecilia’s about why clergy and religious wear costumes. She said something profound about eliciting sacred spaces and holiness and God’s presence. That’s not how I felt when I saw these guys. No. I felt like being naughty.

I knew they knew, because there was no way they couldn’t have known. They were sitting in the heart of the Disciples Divinity House, where – with few exceptions – Disciples divinity students live. And Disciples, like other mainline Christian denominations, train women as ministers along with men. You know, all God’s children. Beside these facts was the most important one: they were not on their turf. They knew this. I knew they knew this. And in light of this knowledge, I knew my presence would be both discomfiting and intimidating. So, I did the logical thing. I got a plate and joined them for dinner.

They had been talking about the Holy Spirit before I came in, based on the snatch I caught as I came through the door. My presence effectively damped this flame, because after I sat down, they asked about me, never getting back to the Bible. They may have decided that weapon too double-edged for a conversation with me. And because they couldn’t really avoid it, they decided to be proactive and get it over with.

“So. Do you preach?”

“Yes! I have a church about forty miles away. I’m the interim minister there.”

“Wow.” Smiles. “You must be very intelligent! How old are you?”

The conversation drifted, and I finished my dinner and began to clean up. They gathered around in a polite way, offering to clean their own plates. They had an appointment at the hospital and would have to leave soon. Before they left, they thanked us for being so nice and my housemate for always being welcome to their presence.

“You’d be surprised at how often people are mean to us when we come to their doors. They won’t even listen for a second, just slam the door in our faces.”

“Really?” He’d been talking about Church of Christ members, representing the denomination of my childhood. “That’s strange to me. I think it used to be different. My grandmother used to invite Mormons in and feed them.”

“And then try to convert them?” My housemate smiled.

“Of course! But she was always open to them. But, you see, you’re treading on their mission fields.”

“We know,” one of them replied. One had come from Utah, the other from California. They had never been anywhere else before they were sent to this mission field – Nashville, TN. They’d never been in a place where so many people were actively religious, and I got the feeling they were a little thrown by it. Where else would you meet so many professional ministers, ranging from the crash-and-burn conservative to take-no-prisoners liberal and everywhere in between?

They left out the back door. Immediately I turned to my housemate.

“I thought you said you broke up with the Mormons.”

He laughed at me.

“What? You stood right here in this kitchen and told me you’d broken up with them.”

“I did! I told them I didn’t want to be evangelized to anymore. But there’s apparently a very fine line between them just wanting to “hang out” and Bible study.”

“Well. I’m sure we’ve all had that problem in a relationship at one time or another.” I paused. “How old were they?”

“Oh, young. Eighteen or nineteen. That’s why I called them kids.” This from a twenty-three-year-old.

I shook my head. During the conversation, one of them had let slip that they couldn’t watch sports during their time in Nashville, which was two years. “At all?” I said. “What can you do?” “What do you mean?” “Do you sleep?” “For the energy. Otherwise we preach.” “Wow. Wow. That’s dedication.” “Yeah.”

“Why do you ask?”

“They just struck me as young. That’s the first time in a long time that someone has looked at my chest.”

“Really? Sorry.”

“That’s ok. It’s just – getting caught is a teenager’s mistake.”

We talked some more, and then I asked him if they would be back.

“Probably. You can see that they’re dedicated. They had to raise the money for the two years before they came, and they weren’t allowed to ask their families for help. They’ll come again for another “hang out.””

There was an air of dry humor throughout, an attitude I had let run as an undercurrent as long as they had been there, but at some point, the attitude mixed with respect. I found myself wanting to know more about them – not so much their beliefs, but them. I had used to be like them, in a way. I had wanted to be a missionary when I was their age. To be honest, I had wanted to die for my beliefs on a foreign field – how glorious would that be? My religion hadn’t been a facet of my life. It had been my life, the only nonnegotiable point. And so the only point, really. No doubts were allowed to break through, all bets were off. Where had that dedication gone? It had not collapsed wholly in a mushroom cloud of nihilism. No, it had chipped away, become more seamless with the rest of me until it had faded to faint scars, at last. It had taken the way of an old romance settling in for a long winter of age and loss.

I found myself asking despite myself: what if I had that kind of dedication again? And then, before having to think about it, answering: then it wouldn’t be me anymore. Then: can you have that kind of devotion, that evangelical devotion, mixed with mainline, social justice practice? Can you have one without killing the rest?

I make fun. I poke genially at their boundaries and throw them slightly off balance and smile. I am polite. I am kind. I am interested. And I am not afraid of them. I love them. Because – and this has taken me a good part of three years to realize – because there, but for the grace of God, go I.

The House

We call it The House; the capitalization is audible. From my post about the common kitchen, you might have gotten the impression I don’t like living here, but that would be a mistake. And since there will be more posts that find their background in this place, I’d like to give you a brief tour.

It’s a divinity house and all that that implies. It harbors fledgling ministers who wander the halls in a state of divine doubt or evasive drunkenness, with a few Ph.D. and masters of theological studies students (who aren’t sure how they landed here) avoiding the confusion by holing up in their single rooms or their apartments, which are much better equipped for this purpose, seeing that they have a kitchen and common room all their own. It has four floors, the lowest a basement that resembles the McCallisters’ in Home Alone to a tee. It took me two months to take the plunge and wash my clothes. In order to reach the basement’s laundry room, you have to take a flight of stairs down into the ground, pass years of stored items that are no longer stored but lost (their owners now different people than the ones who cherished a broken bookshelf or a set of dusty albums), take two right-turning halls (one short and one long), until finally you find the washers and dryers where they hum and rattle, surrounded by exposed pipe and cinderblock. The next three floors are not so cavelike and call to mind a dorm, small and quirky, where none of the rooms are exactly the same, absorbing tiny bits of the personalities of their occupants over the years. Mine is a fourth floor corner room, facing north and a little east. The large windows made me believe for the first time that I was living in a city, the surrounding high-rise apartments expensive and chic; the stairs made me believe for the first time that I knew too little profanity.

I’ll describe the residents of The House later, because each of them – all twenty-one – deserves their* own post. Each of them is now a part of me.

The outside is nothing if not anticlimactic, and that’s generous. Being surrounded (as I mentioned) by high-rise apartments and over-priced, destination restaurants, you would most likely miss it on your first visit. You’d pass it a couple of times in your car, and finally, shaking your head, pull into the gravel parking lot behind the house and wonder how it got there. My guess is that it was here before the rest and held its grip. Have you ever seen Howl’s Moving Castle? This one doesn’t move, but you’ve got the right idea. A plain, beige brick building with a large concrete porch and a home to weeds is what we have to offer, but we offer it with all our hearts. There’s a single light that illuminates half of the porch at night, whatever season, and it does it on purpose. Much of why I love this place is encompassed by that light. We recognize that you are a fellow traveler, and because we recognize that, the light stays on.

And here I sit. The weather is perfect, in that it is impossible to tell where my skin ends and the air begins. I’ve dragged out one of the many lounge chairs that stay folded up by the door in the lobby, and on the table beside me on the porch sits a chilled bottle of wine, half full, with a glass of wine, half full. A pack of cigarettes and a lighter, an empty cookie bag from Panera, and my backpack form a protective circle on the ground. Already the Friday night crowd has passed by and in front of me, some who are close calling out that I look comfortable, and some who are not as bold whispering to their partners as they saunter by, “That’s a good set up,” waiting until I can hear them, barely. Yes, this is a good set up. I’m glad you agree.

* If you are a grammar nazi – and being one myself, I do not consider this a pejorative term – you are welcome to email me, and we can talk about pronoun-verb agreement via message. But I promise you: I will win.

The Reasons I Might Be a Terrible Person

The first reason comes down to prep time. I never predicted that frozen fish could take so long to thaw or that the onions, celery, and tomatoes could take so long to dice. By the end of four hours in the kitchen, I was sure of many facts that had been hazy before that time transpired. The surest? I would never peel and mince my own garlic again. Never. An hour elapsed bending over the tiny ivory-then-beige bulbs, sweating over the smallest jerk of the dull knife. That was the first reason.

“Why do you think you’re a terrible person?” my sister’s voice came dryly over the cell phone, amused.

The second reason comes down to the kitchen situation. Living as I do in a community house that resembles a dorm so nearly that there is no distinct difference, I have found a shaky balance between the private and the common that is fragile enough that any small disturbance can upset it. The common kitchen is a great source for such a disturbance, and – compounded by four hours already upsetting in its small stresses – there are times when it takes on the character of a battle field. Four hours of peeling, mincing, and baking had left me little energy, saved up to sit down quietly and eat, looking forward to a full glass of wine and no more work.

“Well, I don’t hate them. But I get annoyed,” was my answer.

The third reason comes down to what seems to be the rule of the common spaces in the house. Unwritten rule number one: If someone is alone and doesn’t seem critically occupied (i.e., if they aren’t fighting a fire or juggling knives), they must be spoken to. They become the free property of the members of the house, like the common room and kitchen are free property. The unoccupied, lonesome person begins to resemble a receptacle for small talk and the guilt resulting from shared silence. In other words, I was alone in the kitchen sitting down to dinner, so obviously I wanted to be spoken to.

“Why were you annoyed?” she was already laughing, as if I had just said something spectacularly funny.

The fourth (and last) reason comes down to the people, the ones I know will talk to me for half an hour without easy escape routes.

“Hey! Whatcha eatin there?” he said, opening the refrigerator behind me and glancing around. I had shuddered as he walked in, my eyes down, the future of this conversation unfolding rabidly – no quiet meal, no reading the poetry book lying open in front of me beside the wine bottle. I’m eating a Greek baked fish called psari plaki, marinated in white wine and fresh lemon juice. It sounds expensive because it is.

“Fish.” Maybe short, monosyllabic answers would put him off.

“Did you make it yourself?” No. The mountain of dirty dishes in the sink was left there by Santa Claus last Christmas.

FINE. Yes, it has taken four hours – I’ve been here since three o’clock – can you leave me alone please? He mumbled something else, standing now across the huge kitchen with tupperware open on the counter. I answered him gracefully – well, nearly. He asked another question, too low this time to hear anything.

“I’m sorry,” I said desperately, “I can’t hear you.”

“Yeah, I’m a mumbler. Let me finish my sandwich real quick and I’ll join you.”

God, no.

“So, you’re part of what program again?” I know he was being nice. I know I wouldn’t usually care. I know I’m training to be a minister, which means I love everyone. I know all these things. He sat down beside me to eat. I started galloping through my painstakingly-prepared meal like there was a time limit on my taste buds.

Then another person walked in. It was going to be that kind of night – you know, the kind with murder. By that time I had eaten enough to justify washing my dishes and finding the nearest exit. Guy number two sauntered over, watched my shaking hands scrub fish off a baking dish, and launched into a tangential story involving Miyazaki films, a pizza party, and meeting his wife for the first time. When I indicated he had told me this before, he put in some amusing details solely for my benefit. I turned, nodding and backing away smiling, as I picked up my wine from the table. Maybe I could get away. I just had to return my dish towel to my drawer….

“So, there I was with five other guys and she’s already cooked and she’s the only one cleaning,” he went on with his story, shaking his head over the memory, “I started feeling really bad about my gender. So I helped her clean. I finally guilted the rest of them into helping. Can you believe that?” And then he leaned against the drawer in front of me. I was now trapped between the guy at the counter and the other finishing his sandwich at the table behind me (waiting to ask me another mumbled question), with a dish towel and a wine glass in my hands. I hung there in the space between, contemplating the many horrible things I had done growing up and the virtues of karma.

“Is that the whole story?” She was laughing louder now.

“Am I a terrible person?”

“Ha! No. You’re fine.”

“You sure? Because I feel like a terrible person.”

“You’re not a terrible person. You’re just an introverted one.”

“Well, they seem really similar.”

“Well, they’re not. Just don’t murder anyone and you’re fine.”

“Easy for you to say. He was blocking my knife drawer.”

“HA.”