When my Mother remarried I was introduced to a few new worlds one of them was St Paul Missionary Baptist church. Before my mother and I arrived in 1979 the church was only attended by black folk as they called themselves or African Americans as we say today. I don’t know for a fact that we were the first non-black to attend but I can assure you that we were the first regulars. This was because St Paul was my step father’s “church home” and yes he was a very proud black man. The services were very charismatic, this was the first time I ever saw any one “fall out”, speak in tongues, “be filled with the spirit”, lay hands, and attempt to heal, cast out demons or scream gospel themed slogans at the top of their lungs. I was always amused at the fact that the men were all referred to as “brother” and the women were referred to as “sister” unless they were elder women, in which case they were called “mother”. Oddly enough no one was ever called father, except god. Because of my experiences there I’ve never been able to rule out the existence of a god, although my definition of god is probably different than yours.
We spent a lot of time at church, there was something going on every day of the week and usually I was forced to go unless I had homework. Let’s see, home work or church. Church was an all day event for the family back then. The schedule was 8AM to 9AM Sunday school, 9AM to 12PM-ish depending on who started speaking in tongues, or how longwinded the preacher got. The 6PM to 9PM-ish evening service ended my church dominated Sunday. Different weeks determined our 2PM to 5PM gap. I can recall that on 3rd Sundays we’d visit the sick, elderly and shut in and on 4th Sundays we’d visit and minister to prisoners. Just to be clear about this, about 30 church members went to an actual prison and sat in the same room with actual prisoners, I’m fairly sure this is no longer allowed.
Until St. Paul I didn't care for choir music and had no interest in gospel. One day I heard Sister PB (who was 17 at the time) sing a song called “this world is not my home” I’d never…. in my life…. heard any one perform with the emotion, soul, energy, and conviction that Sister PB did. To this day if I ever need to tap into my inner soul and bring out some emotion I think of her always flawless rendition of that song. I can remember listening and thinking “I want to sing like that” and as I’d look around I noticed that the people’s reactions and energy just feed her performance. After I’d worked up the bravery to approach Sister PB I told her how I love the way she sang that song. She hugged me and said “bless you Brother D” (I had a different name back then) sisters didn’t have to hug you but it was very normal for me to be hugged at least a hundred times on a Sunday. Not all the church embraced my mother and I with hugs, but there were many that did embrace us. Although I lost contact with most of my St. Paul church family I haven’t lost the memories.
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A random assortment of my thoughts.
