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.

Part Two — In the Time of MEGA

“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.” — Colossians 3:16

Our was one of the irst MEGA churches in the U.S. nestled in a Chicago suburb. Every Thursday night high schoolers came together as Son City where we’d meet for games, sports competition, Christian rock worship and the message of contemporary Christianity. Our Son City driver, Julie’s mom, had a bumper sticker on her Ford station wagon the words of which I emblazoned all over my school paper book covers — as a witness to my fallen and lost peers: “Warning — In case of Rapture, this car will be unmanned.” It seemed that all the Son City girls I spoke with had a crush in one degree or another on Joe the twenty-something blonde haired All-American Son City Christian Rock band leader. In fact, many of us seemed to re-dedicate and become Born Again every single Thursday night as we bawled our teenage hormones away and Joe led us to accept Jesus as Our Personal Savior for the umpteenth time. He said that God would collect every tear that fell from our eyes, that God knew the number of hairs on our Big Hair heads and that His thoughts of us were as many as the grains of sand on earth.

Part Three — The Four Humors

Next to the words of the Rapture bumper sticker, I made four sketchy drawings of the four humors of Greek medicine that we were learning about in Senior English class. I liked the fact that, for example, melancholic’s element was earth, choleric’s was ire, phlegmatic’s was water and sanguine’s was air. Blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile were used to describe a person’s temperament and in the case of Shakespeare used for his character development. I would soon have intimate knowledge of at least the melancholic and choleric humors in my own earthly mortal coil. As life imitates art, at 18 my doctor and 2 surgeons diagnosed me with having a blocked bile duct and a gall bladder illed to the brim with many

green raspberry looking stones. I had to hole up in the hospital for ten days with a tube attached to a bag that held a dark green blackish bile liquid from my recovering bile duct. My scar with staples measured 8 inches long across my belly — pre-laparoscopic times. As I lay in bed I daydreamed about Christian rock god Joe exorcising me of my melancholic black bile — the sadness I felt at my unrequited love for him. The bile that kept coming out of me was dark blackish green and yellowish at the same time. My choleric and melancholic humors were working overtime. On full faucet blast, I would soon learn about another sort of humors exorcism.

Part Four — The Poetic Rupture Before The Rapture

“And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, Neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things have passed away.” — Revelations 21:4

My recovery took about three weeks at home but I was still on time to go to my irst high school dance called Turnabout where the girls asked the guys to the dance. There would be no hot and heavy slow dancing or groping because A — I was a Christian girl who didn’t do such things even if she thought about them and B — I had this little green monster bile bag and tube hanging with tape of my stomach which would have felt awkward for Gary my safe Son City date to feel. I was missing Son City so much that I begged my Dad to go to Son City and he reluctantly agreed making me promise to not play dodge ball which was not a problem for me. I hated dodge ball. Even nice Christian youth group dodge ball. That irst night back at Son City, me and my little monster bag and tube reveled in the dark auditorium seats chewing on my new Bonne Belle cotton candy lip gloss while watching Joe’s piano lourishes and tickling of the ivories. I went into a — a dreamy state where I imagined he asked me to stand up and be recognized for God’s healing hand in my life. Then I loat to the stage and he catches me and gives me a brotherly kiss on the forehead as I melt into his arms. At the end of the night, Julie’s Rapture Mom, Julie and a few other kids and I make our way down the road to McDonalds. I walked into the French

fry smelling lobby and saw this familiar blonde head of hair talking to Dan our fearless youth pastor. It was Christian Rock God Joe. I had never met this god in person because he was in the band and there were at least 500 of us kids at Son City every Thursday night. I didn’t think he had ever seen my face or remembered me from the auditorium seats. Well, soon he would never forget his night at the smelly McDonalds. Standing in line within eyeshot and drooling distance of Joe, I feel a pop then a warm splash of about 1½ cups of warm luid pooling on the greasy McDonalds loor at my feet. Tucked under my jeans, my bile bag burst right in front of him. An unintended exorcism of my melancholic and choleric humors. I ran to the bathroom and wouldn’t leave until Julie’s Rapture Mom came and got me. The coast was clear and my now forbidden idol Joe had left with Pastor Dan but not before he introduced himself to all the kids in our group except for me, who was sitting on the toilet in the French fry smelling bathroom. For the rest of the academic year, my senior English class focused on the unit of Poetry — every kind, type, style and era were touched upon. When the time came for us to create our own poetry, I already had my poem written. Carolyn and the Melancholic Monster was good poetry. Can I hear an Amen? May it be so.

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SCHISM

I would rather share one lifetime with you than face all the ages of this world alone.

J.R.R. TOLKIEN

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