Tag: tent meeting

writing

The Angel Christophe

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Written with some friends in Capitan

Christophe was a part-time guardian angel for a shop assistant in Henley. He also had a side gig driving a lorry from Dover to Boulogne and back twice a week.

He was getting tired of driving and was thinking about asking the boss if he could move to full-time work in Henley, where he looked after Miss Ginny Holmes. Miss Holmes worked at the bookshop on the High Street. Lately, he was feeling that he might be falling for her. Lord knows she needed his help. This year alone, she would have suffered from innumerable paper cuts if not for his diligence. He had also kept her from once being crushed beneath the wheels of a taxi. He had physically pulled her back and cautioned her not to read as she wandered the streets.

She was young, a true rose of a girl. Always with her head in the clouds or her nose in a book. He wanted to ask her to join him for coffee at “The Angel on the Bridge.” Would she accept? Would she turn him down? There was a pretty significant age difference. Do you think she knows just how sizeable a difference it is?

  1. he hung up his halo and accepted sin
  2. Christophe was a guardian angel when he wasn’t driving a truck
  3. more than just the servant of a higher power
writing

Salvation

tnkerr4 Comments

Written for the helluv it

The Reverend Clifton Reist was a travelling preacher. He was known for his ecstatic Pentecostal fervour; today, he was on a roll. Filled with self-righteousness, he spoke down to the unfortunate souls seeking redemption at his feet.

Everything changed when Sister Mary Claudette Çiller burst into the revival meeting and interrupted. “Sisters and brothers,” she shouted to the gathered worshipers, “Pay no heed to this charlatan. Gather your loved ones, gather your possessions, and leave this place. Go home and seek salvation on your own. You need not this imposter for salvation. Seek your own peace and place with God.”

Momentarily taken aback by the interruption, Reist quickly gathered his wits. He drew himself up to appear ever larger, standing on the dais. He shouted for quiet, “Hush, you false prophet. Keep away from these good people.” He spread his arms, “I do not allow a woman to speak,” he said, quoting St. Paul.

Mary Claudette rose on her toes and squinted her eyes, “and since when does any woman need your permission to speak?” she asked aloud, then she added, “all ye, seeking deliverance from the power and penalty of sin should immediately leave this place and seek penitence on your own, seek penitence elsewhere.”

Almost as one, the crowd dispersed, leaving Reverend Reist and Sister Çiller staring at one another across the empty tent. As the dust slowly settled, Mary Claudette spread her arms and raised them high. She paused for only a moment before she shrieked.

Piercing

Loud

Long

Lightning struck

Down from the heavens, it came and ignited the tent. In a flash, the shelter was gone…

…So was Clifton Reist…

…So was Mary Çiller…

There were no prompts – There was no time.

Daily Prompt · Random Scribbles · writing

Daily Prompt: Finite Creatures

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Daily Prompt: Finite Creatures

At what age did you realize you were not immortal? How did you react to that discovery?

The old woman leaned back in the rocker; closed her eyes for awhile, smiled, and let the sunlight paint her face the color of warmth. Finally she looked up at the younger lady sitting on the porch next to her, holding a tall glass of lemonade.

“Diedre, why are you asking such a question as that?” she said. Her arthritic fingers with their stiff, swollen knuckles gripped the arms of her chair.

Diedre stayed silent. She didn’t answer she just sipped her lemonade and watched her grandmother over the rim of the glass.

Finally relenting the old woman said, “I guess the real answer is I never realized it. I just always assumed I would live forever. At least that’s what I thought until yesterday, when the doctor told me different. I never considered what might happen next.

“Do you know what a ‘Tent Meeting’ is, Diedre?”

The slightest headshake answered her question.

“It’s high theatre. That’s what it is. It’s all about salvation. When I was a girl, they would roll into town two or three times during the summer. They would set up big tents at the edge of Johnson’s field. Folks would dress up in their good clothes and go down to the ‘Revival’ to be saved, or born again. To be baptized in the Holy Spirit. There’d be preaching, there’d be praying, singing, dancing, rolling on the floor and speaking in tongues. But what I noticed was that a lot of money changed hands. I thought it was all about the money.

“I listened to what they had to say and then promptly dismissed those preachers and their messages out of hand. I lived my life for me.

“All for me.

“I have two daughters and a son. I love all three of them. They each have a different father.

“I only loved one of those three men though. Your grandfather left right after your daddy was born. He went off to war and never came back. The girls? Well the girls were what happened when I was living loose and free. I’m not even sure…

“I’m not proud of much of what I did in those days but I don’t regret any of it. I never paused to consider the consequences either.

“Anyway last night I got to thinking about those travelling preachers and their talk about salvation. I kind of found myself hoping they might have been right, hoping there might be something next. Those holy rollers said all you had to do was ‘ask for forgiveness’ but I don’t know how to do that, Diedre. Do you?”

Diedre shifted a bit in her chair and took a deep breath, “I think you just did Grandma. I think you just did.”

Nice one Swoosieque

writing

07 September 2013

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07 September 2013

I am going to change formats a bit here and rather than continue the same post for an entire month I will make each week a separate post.  Not sure anybody but me will really care but it should make it a bit easier for me to manage.

The prompts are:

1. I thought ________ I can do that
2. He glanced furtively around the room
3. Mementos

Begin writing
There we sat on the side of the highway.  The four of us in the car with the Texas sun beating down and smoke pouring from the engine compartment.  I remember as though it was yesterday but, I was probably only about six years old and my shirt was soaking wet, stuck between my back and the plastic seat covers in my dad’s Buick.  My older sister’s page boy haircut was limp and strands of her brown hair stuck to her face.  My younger sister escaped this heat as she was yet to be born.

We had gone on a long car trip from Corpus Christi to Abilene to see my grandmother.  My dad had been chain-smoking and driving, cigarette clutched between two fingers of his left hand; while that same left hand mostly hung out the driver’s window.  My mother, as always, had been constantly busy trying to tune in a radio station; looking for Glen Miller, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, or one of the Dorsey brothers.  The car problem announced itself with a large bang – followed almost immediately by a sudden loss of power and a cloud of dark smoke.

My father was an artist.  He knew nothing about automobiles so we sat.  We sat and suffered in the heat for what seemed like forever but was probably less than thirty minutes when a green and white Chevy truck pulled over in front of us, a local farmer and his wife on their way to a “Revival” meeting just up the road a piece.  We took a ride and all jumped into the back of the truck.

When we got there the tent meeting was going full tilt and featured not one, not two, but three different “fire and brimstone” preachers.  I listened to them with rapt attention, fascinated by the cadence of their voices as they testified to their faith in an awesome God, about which I had never heard before.  People were singing, dancing and speaking in tongues.  The effect was one of controlled chaos and elation.  I was drawn into the tent and as I walked in a man handed me a sheet of paper listing the day’s schedule of events.  I kept it to this day as a memento of that meeting and when I got out of seminary school I had it framed.  That’s it on that wall over there.

The Reverend Theotis Baker is the one who inspired me to the church.  As I watched him work the crowd that hot afternoon I recognized, even at that tender young age, that Reverend Baker was going to make a lot of money that day.  I listened to him talk, shout and sing with the congregation and thought to myself, Shit! I can do that.
Time is up. Put down your writing implements and step away from the paper