Tara's Teahouse: Chapter 4

We didn’t see Tressa again until Sunday, October 21st. I remember the date clearly, because it was the day when I would give my first sermon to the church. Reverend Law had taken ill the week before, and finding no better alternative, had called me at my apartment to ask if I would prepare a service for the following Sunday.



I was a megalomaniac, so naturally I loved preaching. I had discovered my knack for public speaking as a high school graduate – about the same age as Tressa, in fact. I had been called upon to give the valedictorian address, and had driven myself to somehow memorize a four-page speech in less than a week. Was it only a coincidence that our graduation was held in the auditorium of one of the “megachurches” – that I stood there that evening behind a pulpit, with my face projected on the screens on either side? Standing there behind that pulpit I had been given a taste, not of communication as such, but of the unique reciprocal relationship that exists between speaker and listener. As my words hammered on the audience, I felt their minds slowly give way, until at last I was inside, ravishing their thoughts and impregnating them with my own desires. It was the supreme triumph of the high school geek to simultaneously knock up three hundred minds at once. And I loved every minute of it.



“How did it feel being up there?” Someone asked on my way out of the auditorium.



“Great.” I said. “It felt almost like being a rock star.”



How immature, I told myself, crumpling up a sermon manuscript and tossing it over my shoulder. That codependent relationship between speaker and audience must not exist in church. I wasn’t to speak for myself, afterall, but for the creator of the universe – I had best get my act together and do it right. I had to check my ego at the sanctuary door, remind myself not to be too eloquent – but then, I was speaking for God, how could I not be eloquent? A lack of eloquence might be perceived as a snub; a gross display of verbal laxity in the face of the divine mystery.



I went outside for air, convinced that I had become a mental rapist. I needed an outlet, and the rallies against Governor Roberts proved to be just the mental and emotional orgy I needed.



The news crews had interviewed several of the demonstrators at the previous rally – which had been held in May – resulting in a confused montage of impressions and images. What were the rallies really about? There were some vague references to Governor Roberts, and the “elite axis of power,” and a socialist plot, but the nearest I could come to a coherent answer was that none of us wanted to pay our taxes. Fair enough. I didn’t care for taxes anymore than the sweating man with the shaved head who stood next to me, waving a sign that said: “Freedom is Lie! Escape the Slave State!”



I took my place among the protestors, shouting incomprehensible roars of agreement whenever the rally leaders spoke of the oppression that the “liberal elite” had foisted on us. Here, there was no need for eloquence. I was on the receiving end, lying prostrate and numb while other minds forced themselves upon me. They did not speak thoughts, but emotions – a frothing volcano of pent up frustration – that penetrated deep into my body, and I replied not with words, but with guttural roars of agreement that came tumbling out of my throat and chest, forgotten memories that my cells had carried over from a past life in which I was a lion.



I dove into the midst of the crowd, a willing participant in this act of intellectual sado-maschosism. I was aware of what was happening, and I basked in it – my spine tingling, my ears hot with excitement.



In a moment, I was both spectator and participant, victim and perpetrator. The political pulpit was the same as the religious pulpit, and I trembled, seeing the power of the speaker to move the audience to his whims. A blast, like foghorns signaling the approach of an ice berg as the rally came to a close. Bjork’s “Declare Independence.” I pressed myself between sweating bodies, was shoved up against a wall, screamed until my temples were throbbing: “Declare independence! Don’t let them do that you!” Lost in the frenzy, I no longer knew whether I was screaming at Governor Roberts or at the men behind the podium, or at some other spectral form that held me against that hot concrete wall, paralyzing me to rational thought…



“Declare independence! Don’t let them do that to you!”

   

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Danika comes and crouches at my side, her autumn-red kimono brushing my cheek. She tells me that we must talk later, that she will meet me in the library when the noon bell rings. I do not know where the library is, but I nod, consent. What else can I do?



All of the heroes and villains of history – the Governor Robertses and Mahatma Ghandis and Pol Pots – have all been characters in the pages of a book written by Their hand. I wonder now if we were wrong to rebel like we did, summoning up the old animal consciousness there in the streets and calling – with our roars and shouts – for an end to homo sapiens and all that he had wrought.



That morning, it had occurred to me that the line between the political pulpit and the religious pulpit was a thin one, but I had not yet drawn the logical conclusion – that the rough, weed-strewn border between jungle and city could be crossed with a single step. I understood now. Eloquence was simply the beastial roar of modern man, separated by only a hair from the roars and shouts of the jungle. Like the elephant’s enraged trumpeting, a man’s eloquent words are a signal to the herd – follow! Charge! Trample, tear down and destroy!



Had I the ability to go back, I would have kept silent – not only there in the streets, but also in church, behind the pulpit. I would have stood silent, my eyes unmoving, for an hour, and then descended the sanctuary steps, quietly closing the door behind me. I would have communicated all that there was to communicate about God in my silence. The best sermons were those without words. It was only in silence, afterall, that one could escape the cacophony of the jungle.