Bombs Over Baghdad

After the wedding, Mimi and I went on a brief honeymoon—enjoying California’s diverse landscape by staying at bed-and-breakfasts on the coast and in the mountains. Upon returning to Golden Gate, I went back to work at the environmental company and prepared for another semester of seminary, while Mimi began working full-time for a greeting card company across the Bay in Richmond.

One January afternoon, a co-worker poked his head into my office and made a chilling announcement: “We’re bombing Baghdad.” This news raced through the building, as everyone tried to absorb the fact that our country was at war. In the coming weeks, traffic around the Bay area was snarled by sporadic gatherings of protestors with “No blood for oil” signs and conversations around the company break room were dominated by the latest word from Iraq. Among my work colleagues, the general attitude toward American justifications for the conflict was questioning, if not outright hostile.

It would not be entirely accurate to say that I witnessed a different reaction to the war among my Christian friends, since there really wasn’t much of a reaction to witness. Around church and the seminary, the war was discussed to a point, but it did not seem to be a central concern. As far as I could tell, everyone more or less accepted that our government was basically trustworthy, and its attack on Baghdad was viewed as a regrettable necessity. At the end of the day, no temporary crisis was going to detract us from the ongoing business of spreading the Gospel to a world that would always be racked by violence in one place or another.

In my journal from those days, the cultural divide I shuttled across daily was plain to see from one entry to the next. On one page, I recorded brief musings on local responses to the Iraq war—which included a protest designed to shut down the Bay Bridge—while the very next page contains notes from one of Pastor John’s sermons that addressed an entirely different war. Drawing on the Old Testament story of David and Goliath while speaking to the church’s leadership team, John compared us to a plucky, outmanned, young David who was battling not Goliath, but the twin giants of spiritual apathy and New Age deception in Marin.

Looking back, I’m not sure how well a military analogy works in reference to an apathetic foe, and, too, we Christians had New Agers outnumbered exponentially if you counted the whole world and not just Marin. So, really, it made more sense to cast us as Goliath when you stopped to think about it. But the bottom line is that this supposed spiritual war got top billing, even as a real, physical war was raging in Iraq. I would like to believe that this disconnect between the Christian circle I inhabited and the world outside it led to a growing dissatisfaction with my own insular thinking. But for the moment, these were still seeds that had yet to sprout.

The Wedding

You would think that getting married in California on December 22 would not be a problem. But as luck would have it, Mimi and I were wed on the coldest day Marin County had seen in 25 years. Though the skies were clear, the temperature hovered well below freezing, leaving patches of ice in the parking lot of Tiburon Baptist Church. Inside, the sanctuary was decorated for Christmas—awash in holly wreaths and brilliant red poinsettias.

And that’s about all I can remember of our wedding day. I know that at some point, Mimi and I exchanged solemn vows at the front of the church, flanked by my brother, Mimi’s sister, and an assortment of seminary friends. But the specifics are pretty hazy. That’s normal for weddings, where nerves and stress combine to render the mind incapable of accurately processing the surreal events that are unfolding. Which is why video cameras were invented, right?

Well, here are a couple of tips for you. Tip #1: When your father offers to record your wedding for posterity, don’t suggest that he just enjoy the wedding and give his camera to your mentally imbalanced friend Bill. Because Bill will use up 90% of the camera’s battery power shooting inane footage in the frozen parking lot.

Tip #2: When your father offers to mail you your wedding tape so you won’t have to deal with it on “your big day,” take it from him immediately. Otherwise, six months later, you will receive a tape labeled “Wedding,” only to find that the 10 minutes the ceremony that got recorded before the batteries failed have been taped over with a college bowl game.

I could add a third tip on things to say to your wife upon realizing that your wedding has been taped over, but you’ve probably already figured out that “Well, that was a good game” is not the smart choice.

The reception is clearer in my mind, mostly because Mimi coaxed three of her bridesmaids into singing Tennessee Christmas after dinner was served. My mother, who had been holding it together admirably to that point, was reduced to a whimpering bucket of tears by the poignant strains of the Amy Grant classic. Her breakdown was so complete that it seems to be the most memorable part of the day for anyone who was involved, to the point that I can never hear Tennessee Christmas without expecting to be asked “Hey, isn’t this the song your mom went ape over?”

“Yes,” I always say. “That’s the one.” And I wonder if getting married during the holidays was such a smart thing.

Marriage, Sexuality & Family

As part of our continuing preparation for marriage, Mimi and I decided to take a seminary class together on Marriage, Sexuality, and Family, thinking it would help solidify our relationship. However, the professor immediately announced that the course would be taught entirely by the students, with each of us selecting a topic of interest, researching it, and presenting our findings to the group.

On the one hand, this meant a class with minimal work. On the other hand, it meant that Mimi and I would be receiving the wisdom of our fellow students on marital issues rather than that of a professor with credentials in theology and psychology. That worried me a bit.

Once things got underway, the first presentation was on “The Six Stages of Childrearing,” with the student in charge presenting several case studies designed to foster group discussion. The first one described a scenario in which a pregnant couple comes to you, their minister, with questions about how love-making will affect the development of their baby. My first panicked thought was, “Do people really go to their pastors with this kind of stuff? It’s not like we’re pediatricians!”

Keeping such thoughts to myself, I tried to keep an open mind during the next presentation on “Choosing the Right Mate,” though I myself had already cleared that hurdle. But the student leading this session appeared to see himself as a friend to the lovelorn, offering advice to singles that included such helpful nuggets as “cultivate a relaxed attitude about dating” and “make yourself attractive to the opposite sex.”

And just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, the class took a decidedly bizarre turn. One week, a male student named Marvin launched into an in-depth analysis of the pros and cons of circumcision, during which he made a statement which is seared forever into my memory. With the most earnest of expressions, he said, “Another advantage of circumcision is that it prevents the accumulation of smegma—or, as I like to call it, ‘head cheese.’”

As I like to call it? Was this a topic that came up regularly in Marvin’s life? Maybe parishioners did come to pastors with anatomically explicit questions after all. I pictured Marvin in a well-appointed church office seated across from a matronly woman. “I glad you’ve come to me with this question, Mrs. Jones,” he was saying. “Your son’s problem is nothing more than a little old-fashioned smegma. Or, as I like to call it, ‘head cheese.’”

Strange as Myron’s presentation was, we hadn’t reached the bottom of the barrel just yet. Midway through the semester, the class was treated to a graphic discussion of pornography, which came complete with handouts. These free samples prompted questions about the student’s research methods, and I could see that our professor had begun spending class periods adding up the days to his retirement.

Of course, these efforts were all well-intentioned. But I couldn’t help thinking that somewhere in Alabama, a kindly Baptist grandmother in a floral print dress was dropping 50 cents in a worn offering plate—never imagining that her contribution was, in part, subsidizing my growing knowledge of head cheese and adult cartoons.

Volunteer Nation

By the time BayMarin got off the ground (as described in my last post), Mimi and I were officially engaged and actively planning for a December wedding. I tried to prepare her for what lay ahead by taking her to see my beloved alma mater, the University of Tennessee, play a football game in Southern California. UT was slated to face Colorado in the “Kickoff Classic” game that would launch the season, and I saw this is a unique opportunity to indoctrinate Mimi in the ways of the Volunteer faithful.

Thus far, she had proven doggedly resistant to my efforts to interest her in sports, having alternated between knitting and reading a book during an Oakland A's/Baltimore Orioles game I had taken her to a few weeks earlier. Thinking she might have a soft spot for the Orioles after growing up in Maryland, Mimi burst my bubble by stating flatly, “Their games always screwed up parking in my neighborhood.” I found it disturbing that Mimi valued convenient parking above the fortunes of her hometown team, but hoped for better results with football.

Once at the stadium in Anaheim, Mimi marveled at the throng of Tennessee fans who surrounded us, while I spent the first half grousing that “We've only got 10 or 15 thousand people here—you’ll never be able to get the full effect!” Certainly, the crowd was more subdued than the 100,000 die-hards who crowded into home games in Knoxville, but Mimi was still put off by their zeal. When the Vols quickly fell behind by two touchdowns, one man behind us repeatedly instructed Tennessee's coach to “Get your head out of your ass!” before going on to provide such helpful tips as “We're down by 14—ever hear of throwing the damn ball?!”

While impressing me as a voice of reason, this fan’s behavior seemed to diminish Mimi's enjoyment of the game, so I thought it best to keep my own coaching tips to myself. In the end, Tennessee was able to rally and salvage a 31-31 tie, but I could see that my dreams of converting Mimi into a Vol fanatic were hanging by a thread.

Shortly after returning home, we began premarital counseling with a favorite Golden Gate professor who had agreed to perform our wedding ceremony. The first thing he asked us to do was write an essay describing our expectations for marriage. I can no longer recall the content of my essay, but after our experience in Anaheim, I'm sure there were no visions of Saturday afternoons spent together watching UT football and yelling at the TV.

The Daughter Church

Shortly after Mimi and I returned from Tennessee, Pastor John decided to start a second church. Mt. Tam Community Church had grown to a respectable size—by Marin standards—of over 100 souls, but we had been more or less stuck at that number since the Easter marketing blitz of the previous spring. And John was sure that the buzz created by a starting a new “daughter” church would re-energize Mt. Tam and leave us with two thriving congregations instead of a single sort-of-limping-along one. (Of course, someone with a more pessimistic bent might have argued that expending our church’s limited resources on multiple fronts was likely to result in two sort-of-limping along congregations. But, assuming such a pessimistic person existed, he was probably worried about coming across as a no-faith naysayer, so he kept his mouth shut.)

So it was that BayMarin Community Church was born as my 3rd year of seminary got underway. I don’t remember who came up with the church's name, but it was perfectly seeker-sensitive: trendy sounding without a hint of religiosity. After all, words like “Christ” or “Redeemer” tend to remind seekers that they are, in fact, going to church, and nobody wants that. Better to have the realization dawn on them slowly. Very slowly.

The setting for the new church was an auditorium at a Catholic college in San Rafael. The space was dominated by a statue of St. Dominic de Guzman, who was perched front and center above the stage where he could keep an eye on things. Undoubtedly, St. Dominic was worthy of any such honors that could be bestowed upon him, but his presence did detract a bit from the neutral, religion-free zone we were trying to create. So Pastor John asked Mimi to sew a colorful banner whose dimensions were approximately equal to those of a certain 12th century Spanish saint. (Perhaps good Dominic can find it in his heart to forgive her.)

Once the location was set, we got things rolling with the same approach that had proven successful the previous Easter, sending out thousands of colorful invitations to BayMarin’s first service. And with the San Francisco Giants’ chaplain appearing as an extra drawing card, the seeker sensitive formula worked for a second time. Close to 200 people showed up, and even after subtracting for Mt. Tam people who dropped in after their service was over, it was a nice beginning. Best of all, no one seemed wise to the St. Dominic cover-up.

On second thought, the best part was that we pulled the whole thing off without a trailer. The college gave us some on-site storage space, so there was no need for Mike and me to venture further down Highway 101 with the Jed Clampett pickup truck.

Maybe this two church idea was going to work out after all.