THE RAPTURE AND THE RUPTURE Carolyn Bevington Part One — Priorities of Youth “Thou art beautiful, O my love as Tizrah, comely as Jerusalem, terrible as any army with banners. Turn thine eyes away from me , for they have overcome me. Thy hair is as a lock of goats that descend from Mt. Gilead.” — Song of Solomon 6:4-5. While most girls were swapping Bonne Belle root beer lavored lip gloss for bubble gum, I was mostly concerned about being a righteous Born Again teenager. Well, at least sort of. I grew up Catholic — the whole shebang-from baptism, and irst communion to conirmation. But when I was 14, I was sucked into a vortex of emotion, friendly loving faces, heavenly promises and the shushing of sinful desires which made them even more tempting at a non-denominational evangelical Christian church. To cement my thinking into the mold of Born again-ness, I attended what were called Memory Parties at my youth group leaders house. Every Monday night we’d memorize Bible verses. We each found our own spot on the basement loor. We were cramped, deliciously closequartered in a weirdly pleasant co-ed mix of Dad’s Old Spice, pheromones, teenage spirit Pre-Nirvana, and Love’s Baby Soft perfume. When everyone took their assigned verses to memorize and recite back to our leaders for pizza party points, Julie and I muled our laughs and felt a rush from reading the book of The Song of Solomon. It wasn’t one of the books we were supposed to be memorizing so we got in trouble but it was worth it. The words were so enthralling that we could actually picture that if a guy told us our hair looked like a lock of goats descending from Mt. Gilead — that that was an awesome thing in 1984, the year of Our Lord and Big Big Hair. The importance of what we were accomplishing as we fed our hearts with The Word tempered itself as we lay around laundry piles and dusty bowling trophies. The best part of the night was the plate of warm Everything Bars and yes Kool-Aid-but it wasn’t grape. It was neon lime green.
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