Angry Conversations with God (7 page)

My brother Jim was studying classical music in college. He told me that if you put two violins next to each other and plucked
a string on one, the same string on the other violin would vibrate. Music was a sound wave. The string responded to its own
wave, its note. Maybe that’s what happened when I watched Monty Python or
Saturday Night Live,
or when I first saw
Annie Hall.
I vibrated. I wanted to write comedy and make movies and make people laugh. That was my note, and I wanted to play it.

“Why do you want to do comedy?” My father scowled. Dad didn’t sit me down to discuss my future or agonize over college choices
like he did with my brother Rob. He just lobbed the snipe at me from the couch after I’d come home from a rehearsal.

“I like comedy,” I replied.

Dad sighed contemptuously. “Susan. You can’t get a job in comedy. You can get a job in engineering. You got an A in physics.”

“I got an A in everything. And I don’t like physics; I love comedy.”

“Well, I love Laurel and Hardy, but you don’t see me throwing a piano out a window for a living.”

My mother was more concerned about my spiritual life than about classes. It wasn’t enough that I went to church every Sunday.
Why didn’t I want to go to Luther League? She sniffled.

Lots of reasons. One: it was called
Luther League.
Two: Kirsten Shanahan was the president. And three: Luther League conflicted with drama rehearsal.

“I don’t like that skit I heard you and Julianne rehearsing,” Mom said.

“It’s Monty Python. They’re on PBS.”

“One of the characters’ names is Hugo Vas Deferens!” Mom snipped.

“So? He’s Dutch.”

My parents never grounded me from Drama, but they never approved it either. We never sat down and had a clear conversation
about my future or anything about my life. But their sniping and guilttripping left me feeling like who I was and what I loved
weren’t okay with them. I was pulling straight A’s, and I didn’t drink or smoke! Friends liked me and teachers believed in
me, and most of them were non-Christians. I developed a nagging suspicion that, like my parents, God wasn’t okay with me either.

My mother must have put me on the women’s prayer chain (“Help! My daughter has fallen in with the comedy crowd!“) because
Miss Toft, my old fourth-grade teacher, approached me out of the blue. “Susie! Your mom says you like to write skits! Would
you like to write some Bible skits for the children?”
Like what?
I thought.
David seduces Bathsheba? The rape of Tamar? John the Baptist gets beheaded? How about Joshua climbing the hill of foreskins?
Who was she kidding? There were no funny stories in the Bible, and no one at church had a sense of humor. At least, not in
any kind of intellectually challenging, creative way. And church bulletin bloopers didn’t count.

Nancy seemed to be doing it right. She and I still went to church with Mom on Sundays. (Rob and Jim were at college. Dad was
at home with his TV.) But Nancy also went to a midweek Bible study at the local hippie church. She memorized Scripture. She
sewed a denim cover for her Bible and embroidered a cross onto it. But I had never been like Nancy. When she was reading the
Little House books three times over, I was outside playing. Now she was in marching band and I was in Production Drama. She
was a geek; I was cool. I wasn’t a total prodigal. I had Julianne. She introduced me to Monty Python; I introduced her to
classical music. Whenever she spent the night, we camped out in the back room, sitting in the dark and listening to my brother’s
copy of Dvorák’s
New World Symphony.

“This part makes me think of a plane, flying over the Appalachians,” I mused.

“I see the Grand Canyon in that motif,” she replied.

“Motif?”
I teased her. “I do believe the Grand Canyon motif isn’t introduced until the scherzo!” We congratulated ourselves on being
both smart and groovy. But all our lofty thoughts and groovulosity inevitably led us to the feet of the God who created the
Appalachians and the Grand Canyon and music. And behold, it was very good. We were both in awe of God. And the more we talked
about God, the more I was sure that Christianity offered a logical explanation for why the world was the way it was: why there
was beauty and tragedy, why we could believe Jesus provided a way to heal the world. It made sense. The problem was: You’re
not ruled by sense or logic in high school. You’re ruled by hormones and the overwhelming longing for one hot guy to look
at you and say, “Behold, it is very good.”

Julianne and I differed in our conclusions about God and in another respect: she didn’t think sex was a big deal. Her mom
was young, and her mom said sex was beautiful. The only restriction her mom gave her was, “Don’t get pregnant. You’re Catholic;
you can’t get an abortion.” The only thing my mom said to me about sex was…nothing. Mom was too scared to talk about it.

There are plenty of jokes about coming of age: that horrific realization that your parents must have had sex at least once
or you wouldn’t be here. No one wants that image in her head. I didn’t have a single image of my parents being affectionate.
Dad spent his evenings on the couch; Mom spent hers in the Bible. They never held hands; they rarely went on dates. Dad’s
idea of an anniversary gift for Mom was a box of candy, which he ate himself. Years later I found my mother’s college photo
album. I was shocked to discover she had been a knockout. When I asked her why she married Dad, she said, “He made me laugh.”
He sure didn’t make her feel like a catch.

And I didn’t feel like men were a catch—not if they were like my dad. Sure, I was attracted to boys. But
men
were different. If they were like Dad, they’d belittle me, turn me into a servant, and ignore me. I wasn’t about to get close.

Here’s where God had the perfect chance to intervene! Pastor Ingebretsen was retiring. Now God could bring in a hot, young
pastor who could model Christian machismo and give me a picture of how sexy a godly married life could be!

Instead, God sent Norman Nordvik.

Pastor Norman looked like a Christmas elf: tiny, thin, with double-knit slacks and white golf shoes. Pastor Norm was so polite
he began every prayer in the antiquated subjunctive: “O Lord,
we would that you would
be present with us.…” “Lord,
we would
that
you would
answer our prayer.” He couldn’t even ask a direct question of
God.
How was he going to speak directly about sex?

One night Pastor Norm gave a special talk to the Luther League, and Mom forced Nancy and me to go. He stood at the front of
the sanctuary with an easel. I prayed he wasn’t going to use felt forms to demonstrate…plumbing.

Instead he produced two large pieces of cardboard that had been glued together. “Sexual intercourse is made for the covenant
of marriage. It is a binding act that unites two into one flesh. But if you engage in sexual intercourse outside of marriage—”

Pastor Norman yanked the two pieces apart. They shredded into chunks, one side clinging to the other, destroying the cardboard
completely. “This is what happens if you have sex outside of marriage.”

Well, okay then. Not doing that.

He began reciting from his notes. “Sexual intercourse…” His Fargo accent turned the words into a sourball: “SECK-shull INN-turr-course.
While it is indeed a pleasurable activity, it is more importantly a foretaste—a harbinger—of the rapture we shall one day
experience when we are united with our Lord as the Bride of Christ.”

Okay then. Not doing that either.

“Are we going to have sex with Jesus?” Stevie Sutherland deadpanned.

“Yes, we are,” Pastor Norman replied.

Now even Nancy looked scared.

“We will have
union
with God,” Pastor Norm clarified. “SECK-shull INN-turr-course is the one human experience that best describes the rapture
we shall one day enjoy with Jesus, the Lover of our souls.”

“Do you and your wife pray before you do it?” Stevie pressed.

“Why, yes!” Pastor Norman responded, and gave us a foretaste of his pre-connubial prayer. “Oh, Lord,
we would
that
you would
be present with us in our intimate union. And we would that you would unite us, flesh to flesh.…”

I knew there was something true in what Pastor Norm was saying: something akin to the longing I felt watching kites in a March
sky or seeing the look on my mother’s face after Communion. But likening that to SECK-shull INN-turr-course for a room full
of teenagers was not a masterful use of language.

TV and movies made sex look groovy and exciting. My parents made it dull and depressing. The Christmas elf just made it creepy.
I wanted nothing to do with it.

There was only one problem: John Lennon.

The Beatles had been part of my childhood. All those nights I sat waiting for the green Sears sign to come on, my brothers
were playing “A Hard Day’s Night.” Later Jim bought the
Sgt. Pepper’s
album, and it became the background music to my childhood. By the spring of 1977, Beatles music came front and center.

Beatlemania hit Broadway, and revival cinemas played Beatles movies and concert footage. There was even a Beatles magazine
and a Beatlefest convention. A group from Production Drama went to see
A Hard Day’s Night
at the Balboa revival theater. Julianne had her driver’s license; she gave me a ride.

When John played “I Should Have Known Better,” I was mesmerized. I found out later that was the B side of “A Hard Day’s Night.”
I’d probably heard it waiting for the green Sears sign and filed it into my subconscious. Now it blasted back into my conscious
imagination and knocked me over.

The Beatles were cute, cuddly, and dangerous enough to be exciting—especially John. He was funny; he loved to crack jokes.
He was a rebel; he talked back to his road manager. (Well, he did in the
A Hard Day’s Night
movie.) Who cared that the Beatles had broken up long ago and John was married to that weirdo, Yoko? Maybe he’d meet me and
divorce her. Every girl needs an unattainable rock star to swoon over. It’s her way of indulging her budding sexuality without
having to experiment on a real boy. I chose John Lennon.