Finding Jesus by Sunday - Part Two

So we Vlaming brothers grew up, sporadically attending Sunday school as long as it was offered to us and then around the "grown-up" age of 15, I, being the older of the two, attended confirmation class.   Unlike Sunday school, where you could zone out, listening to the teacher read or watching a 16mm film depiction of some Bible story, confirmation class was a CLASS.  

It had an instructor (the youth minister) and a textbook.  Some of my fellow confirmationees were classmates from high school -- who never did a day of Sunday School time -- drawn by the fact that Colonial Church of Edina was a "cool" church.   Could they Do that?  Was it LEGAL?  Our textbook was GOOD NEWS FOR MODERN MAN, a hipped-up telling of the New Testament, complete with stylized line drawing illustrations.  We read a lot and "rapped" a lot about what we read and then halfway through the year the REAL minister (with long, hip, salt and pepper hair)  

started lecturing us about the specifics of Congregationalism.

After the year of instruction was finished and with the big Confirmation ceremony approaching, we each had a one-on-one sit-down with the good Reverend.  Although we must have talked about other things, all I recall of the meeting was his final question to me.  THE ULTIMATE question.  The one all our hard work had been about: "Jeff," he asked in a quiet, serious voice, "Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your savior?"  The question threw me -- one of those, "This wasn't supposed to be on the test" moments.  And if I'd been in the presence of my peers, of the whole confirmation class my answer would have been different, but I wasn't -- I was sitting alone with Reverend Rouner, dead serious and so I answered just as seriously.  "No."  And the guy didn't blink or grimace or throw me out of the room.  He simply nodded and asked, "Do you think you could do that by Sunday?"  

Four days later, throughout the entire Confirmation ceremony I sweated bullets, certain that in the midst of the pomp and circumstance, Reverend Rouner would ask if I had come through on my end of the bargain.  That when I told him 'no' again, this time he would throw me out, in front of the whole congregation.  But he didn't ask and I got my little certificate and lightning didn't strike me on the way out of church.

As confirmation stories aren't the greatest party anecdotes, I kept this story to myself until years later when I related it to Jonathan-- who told me that he had the same EXACT confirmation experience with Rouner... right down to "Could you do it by Sunday...?"  

If there had been a third Brother Vlaming coming through the Colonial Church, I imagine the Reverend wouldn't even have bothered asking.  

Finding Jesus by the Weekend

Although we weren't solid, church-going boys, the Vlaming brothers both occasionally attended Sunday school at the Colonial Church of Edina.  Not that we went willingly.  On Sunday mornings we'd rise early, not to ready ourselves for the House of the Lord but, rather, to catch the 8:30 AM rerruns of TOM & JERRY cartoons -- the old ones, you know.  The one's that won Academy Awards.  Even as kids, we had to wonder why on earth they didn't show these great old 'toons on Saturday morning when other cartoons were running.  But Sunday is where they landed and we would rise bright and early, ready to watch.  Trouble was, Sunday also was the sabbath and while our parents weren't regular church-goers by any stretch, every once in a while they got it in their heads to get us dressed up in our little suit jackets and clip-on ties and go to church. 

Not that we weren't total heathens. The Vlaming family attended church often enough to come away with a fair amount of Sunday school teachings imprinted on our brains.  The 23rd Psalm, the Burning Bush, Noah's Ark and other fanatastical tales in the Good Book.  One thing my young mind couldn't get a grasp on was the third part of the Holy Trinity.  The Holy Ghost?  I knew who Jesus was, God was a gimme -- paintings of the two were plentiful enough but when trying to imagine the Holy Ghost all I could envision was Charlie Brown's costume in his Halloween special.  The other thing that befuddled me was the fact no ever seemed to refer to Joseph as Jesus' dad.  I had a bountful imagination but as a kid the word 'virgin' meant nothing to me, and therefore "virgin birth" was equally hard to grasp.  As a result I always thought of God as Jesus' sorta-grandpa.  A silver-haired, bearded guardian angel (who, considering how the story turned out, wasn't much of a guardian).  

I later learned I had it all wrong. 

(No) Joke On The Pier

Jonathan and I were standing on the Santa Monica Pier in Los Angeles on a cloudy day.  We'd walked all the way out to the end, past the amusement park rides to the fish gut, bait-stained planks and rails where local anglers were casting their lines into the dark green water thirty feet below us.

A homeless guy approached us and asked for a dollar in exchange for a joke.  We agreed and the man told his joke and we gave him his dollar.  It was later when I asked Jonathan what the joke was, ashamed to admit that, as the man reeled it off, I'd been steeling myself for some attack on his part.  I had been so intent on figuring just how high and hard I'd have to hoist the guy to throw him over the railing into the Pacific Ocean that I hadn't heard a word of the joke he was trading for a buck.

So what was the joke exactly?  Jonathan couldn't tell me -- he had been too occupied with how it was he could throw the man over the railing in the event he attacked us.

We're brothers all right.  

The Flight of Old Nicky

I remember, it was in the city of Duluth I believe, when Jonathan and I would take our mongrel dog, Nicky, place him in an old blanket and then, with each of us holding two corners, we would pull taut on the fabric, thus sending the mutt sailing into the air.  Nicky would reach the apex of his vertical ascent and then drop back (wholly unharmed) back into the suspended blanket.  We would do it again and again until we were exhausted.  I'm sure the dog loved it as much as we did.