Mercedes Memory

I must confess I haven't been searching for churches much lately, instead mostly walking along the beach with my wife on Sunday mornings to meet my son Jay at the Lighthouse to listen to Jazz. I've always been someone who just loves God and the world He made for us to enjoy rather than someone particularly religious, anyway.

However, one semester in college, I started the year by bringing a Bible with me when I went to school. I wasn't bringing it to convert anyone. I was in the process of reading it cover to cover, just as I had recently read "Autobiography of a Yogi" in hopes of understanding more about the subject and giving me extra things to contemplate during my self-directed yoga sessions. I really didn't think much about how others would interpret my reading the Bible between classes. If anything, I was trying to find my inner Kwai Chiang Cane, who of course was a character from one of my Friday night, pre-nightclub favorite TV shows, “Kung Fu” (with "Sanford and Son" being the other).

At one point in a Manpower Management class breakout session where I worked with a group of six students, somebody let a curse word slip, and then looked at me directly and said, "Oh, excuse me." Now at the time, I was someone who outside of school hung out with rockers, so I certainly was used to hearing worse, though nothing compared to what passes for normal these days in the hip hop community.

Seeing me read the Bible had changed their perception of who I must be. To put it in perspective, around the same time frame my friend Chris Crabtree picked up the Bible from my coffee table and wrapped a "Playboy" magazine around it to pretend to hide what he was reading.

Anyway, reading the Bible between classes led to meeting a girl named Mercedes, who was Asian rather than German as you might have guessed. She approached me as I read under a tree at college and invited me to go to church with her on Sunday.

When we arrived at her church, there were hundreds of people already there with their arms in the air, swaying back and forth to the pre-service music. It turned out I was at one of the churches of Reverend Moon, who later became known as a cult leader to his critics.

Mercedes had asked me to spend the day with her, so after church, we headed back to her house, which it turned out she shared with another half dozen people from the church. After lunch, which of course involved preparation time, we all laid down to rest and meditate. I was hoping this was one of those Paul Simon things, where the "young girl in the parking lot preaching to a crowd...crept to my tent with a flashlight," which happened to be a song in my repertoire, but it wasn't. We eventually headed back to church for the afternoon service, which was more of the same from the morning service.

I never returned to the church, and I never called Mercedes again.

Are you saying yes to life? Are you ready to embark on a new adventure? Call me, and book a cruise. I think you'll like it and call me back.

Mercedes Memory

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