Patricia Paris

                                         Patricia’s Porch Talk ©

                                             A Matter of Faith

I was brought up in a small town in East Tennessee with the Chuck Wagon Gang and the Speer Family in the background.  On my grandfather’s knee, I learned every song by heart as he sat by the tall, wooden Motorola with its starched, cross-stitched doily, listening to whoever happened to be on The Cas Walker Show that day.  There was always a little bit of country mixed in with our gospel.

Sundays found me at the Methodist Church, starched and ironed with a floppy bow in my hair and stepping high in my black patent Mary Janes.  My hair, not exactly straight to begin with, had been washed the night before and tightly wrapped around pink rubber curlers in an attempt to duplicate the bouncy curls of Shirley Temple and the results were a mass of frizz and tangles.   I colored the pictures stamped on that week’s lesson while the Sunday School teacher, Miz Robbins, drilled into our little souls that God is Love.  

One particular Sunday, she got a little carried away and warned my class of six year olds about the evils associated with ‘dranking likker’.  Learning of such evils for the first time, we rolled our eyes at each other and hoped no one we knew was afflicted. 

We were Methodist kids.  We knew a little about John Wesley.  We knew for certain that God is Love.  We also knew we shouldn’t ‘drank likker’.

We stood up front near the pulpit and jabbed anyone who stood too close with our elbows as we sang ‘This Little Light of Mine’, off-key, but with no less gusto and showmanship than Carol Channing on Broadway.

It was a matter of faith.

Today, I’m struggling to keep the faith as it becomes more a matter of the courts’ decisions than teachings from the Good Book.

I’m struggling to keep the faith as I see everything we’ve believed in for over two hundred years become diluted, forbidden, or simply lost in the process.  

They say you’re not supposed to question, but, being the inquisitive sort, when I’m told I can’t question, I have a tendency to ask, “WHY NOT?”  

And lately I’ve been questioning the Love. 

I think it started when we learned of the many priests who had been shuffled from parish to parish.  When I think of all those children who were forced into that situation for so many years, I ask, ‘What happened to the Love?”

Or maybe it started as I watched the twin towers disintegrate into a cloud of dust and a heap of rubble, now known as Ground Zero, with hundreds and hundreds of faces flashing across the screen for weeks afterwards until hundreds became thousands.

Or maybe it started as I watched the nightly news and saw convicted sex offenders, turned loose on the streets to search for their next victims, quickly followed by the face of their next young victim. 

Or maybe it started when a national security adviser admitted to CNN’s Late Edition, “we were wrong” about weapons of mass destruction.  It wasn’t an apology, but, finally, an admission, after losing over 2,000 Americans and 26,000 Iraqis, and with no end in sight.   And I ask, ‘so why are we there?’

Or maybe it started with those who view ordinary events and errors in judgment as opportunities to promote racism or bigotry, even though neither had been on anyone’s agenda, but by their actions, they keep the bitterness and unrest alive; or those who make apocalyptic threats and calls for assassination, under the guise of Christianity. . .  faux Christians, not faux pas. 

Perhaps my ‘questioning’ state heightened as I gazed in horror at my T.V. screen, seeing a stricken family gathered around the hospital bed of their beautiful four-year-old in bandages, a tiny, innocent victim of a suicide bomber in a Jordanian hotel, this under the guise of Islam.

Or maybe it has something to do with the pain that sliced through my heart today as I drove past a downtown park and saw them, clustered together in the gathering darkness, their closely-guarded belongings in bags or supermarket carts, sharp reminders that the local weatherman had forecast sub-freezing temperatures for tonight.

Where is the Love?

Thinking back to that Sunday School class of long ago, I think the teacher was quite insightful about the evils of ‘dranking liquor’ and I suspect she had seen those evils up close.  Even though I have gone against my raising and partake of a  ‘drank’ of wine every now and then, there’s no denying the statistics on alcohol-related crimes.   Just ask any MADD mother.

I have changed from the child who stood next to the pulpit in my black patent Mary Janes, singing my heart out.  I no longer live by blind faith.  Doubt has crept in and become part of my faith. 

There. Maybe it’s good that I’ve asked a few questions.  The answers are out there somewhere . . . aren’t they? 

Please don’t give up on me just yet, Miz Robbins.  I never was real keen on ‘dranking’ and I’m struggling hard to keep the faith.

Copyright 2005 Patricia Paris
Contact: patriciaparis@gmail.com.
Patricia Paris is an author/columnist from East Tennessee.

Member:  Tennessee Mountain Writers, Int’l Women Writers Association, Tennessee Writers Alliance, Chattanooga Writers Guild