Parish

Matt Brown

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781498204859, 9781498204873
• eBook ISBN: 9781498204866
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism

There are unexpected, beatific moments when Rev. Elijah Lovejoy Parish is swept up by the divine intrusion into the ordinary. Yet, he knows he cannot tarry there, for his calling also compels him to resume his shift as the traffic cop down at the intersection of Pathological and Whine. Told from the perspective of a deceased brother, freed from life's bondage to autism, Parish introduces you to the family of a young pastor and invites you to laugh and cry through the seasons of a year laced with everything from a redneck funeral that becomes a DEA sting operation to a grandfather's honorable relinquishing of his mind to senescence to an act of violence that impales the community and challenges easy Easter answers. Dismayed by rock-star-skinny-jeaned preachers preening and self-righteous demagogues decreeing, Elijah Parish balks when strangers ask him what he does for a living. Yet, he keeps at it. Why? Grace: undeserved and unsurpassed, ineffable and irrepressible. Living with the sinners and saints of St. Martin Presbyterian Church in the North Carolina foothills community of Edinburgh, Elijah and his family keep stumbling into grace as the seasons pass and as chaos dances with mercy.

1

The Tree

In the moment before he was hanged at Flossenburg for his involvement in a plot against Hitler, Dietrich Bonhoeffer uttered these last words: “This is the end—for me the beginning of life.” Wish I’d have said that. However, I have to admit that as the car careened down the embankment, the only words that escaped my lips in those last seconds of life were, “Oh shit!!” An indelicate closing statement to a life, but miraculous in its own way because I had not spoken a meaningful, cognizant thought in its correct context in so long.

Metal collapsing. Flesh tearing. Shatterproof glass shattering. Body flying. Black.

Tragic? Yes, particularly for my older brother who was driving when the teen queen heading toward us managed to slide the cassette into the player but failed to notice she was drifting to the wrong side, which also happened to be our side, of the road. Instinctively, my brother jerked the steering wheel, only there was no shoulder and the embankment was steep. My brother somehow survived with only bruises, but would live with the irrational guilt of feeling he had failed to protect me. How ironic, because my brother always protected me. He was fettered. I was free. My name is Zachary Parish.

“This is the end—for me the beginning of life.” Bonhoeffer said it before he was killed. I would know it after I was killed. You see, I’m a Presbyterian, part of that tortured, contentious, theologically misunderstood, feud-too-much-about-sex, mainline Protestant denomination with the gloomy statistical reports. My brother, who would become a Presbyterian pastor, had a friend who suggested that the Presbyterian Church create an ad campaign with the tag line, “Come worship with us. You can have the whole pew to yourself!” Well, Presbyterians are heirs of the confessional heritage of the Protestant Reformation, and so it is common for us to stand in worship to recite an ancient document called the Apostles’ Creed. Considering the head-whipping speed of change in this world, it is mind-blowing to consider that every Sunday without fail, Christians in the far flung corners of this earth have stood to recite this creed for nearly 1800 years. 1800 years! And within that creed you can find this assertion: “I believe in . . . the communion of saints.”

The communion of saints. This phrase, that is regularly uttered by rote and without much thought, is a profound affirmation of the idea that we stand on the shoulders of the faithful who have come before us. Their witness informs us and their spirit encourages us in ways beyond our understanding.

Following the wreck, I became a part of that fellowship of saints. I have joined that church triumphant, what some folks call heaven, what others call the Sweet Bye and Bye or the Great Reward or the Kingdom of God. No, I’m not sitting alone on a cloud, flapping my wings, and wishing they had buried me with my Xbox. Rather, it is a mystery I can’t quite explain, but I’ve finally come to comprehend those crazy words the congregation used to regularly sing—Ineffably sublime. Yes, it is.

On the cross, Jesus turned to the penitent felon who would score no stay of execution, and he said, “Today, you will be with me in paradise.” I was never the theologian of the clan. That was and is my brother, but I do know this. It is waaay cool here!

Bonhoeffer was right. “This is the end—for me the beginning of life.” You see, my days on earth were constrained by fence posts unlike the usual life inhibitors. I seldom ran a fever and had an impressive record of years without vomiting. I could read the smallest print and see the hyperactive squirrel dancing on the telephone line some eighty yards up the road. I had ten fingers and ten toes, the answer to every expectant parent’s prayer. But somewhere in the mixture of flesh, muscle, and bone there was an issue with the wiring.

I could tell you the complete results of every PGA tournament from 1990 when our father joined the Charlotte Country Club and began the twice weekly ritual of taking my little seven year old legs out to the golf course, allowing me to walk along as he taught himself the physics and skills of the game, until April 3, 1997, the day of the accident, ten days before Tiger Woods would win his first Green Jacket at the Masters. I could recite every detail from seven years of tournaments. My dad would clip the results from the sports page each Monday morning for me, and by the time my Lucky Charms were swallowed, I had them memorized. On April 3, 1990, Paul Azinger tied for fourth at the Greater Greensboro Open earning $51,666 in spite of two rounds of 73. I went through a score of spiral notebooks writing all the results, statistics, averages, and earnings of each tournament from memory. I even had a section recording the Stimpmeter averages of every course played during a calendar year.

And yet, if asked, I could not tell you whether I was happy or sad. I could not define, offer, or receive forgiveness. I could not grasp the value of a hug or the purpose of a handshake. I was not equipped for conversation, compassion, empathy, or responsibility. The test results offered up words like autism and savant, which meant nothing to me. My mother cried. My father lost his smile for weeks. My brother promised he would protect me. My sister made me a get-well card with construction paper and crayons. I was clueless about the meaning of those words and could not capture the emotions swirling around our house. I could see but not perceive. I could witness but not interpret. I could remember all the details but not understand their meaning.

To live without the capacity for wonder is like a kid going to Disney World and being told he’s too short to ride Space Mountain. Not cool. The closest I ever came to a sense of peace was walking with my father on the golf course in the hours before dusk when the fairways were empty and it was just me, my dad, the cardinals and crickets, lob wedges, and Titleists. I now know how important those moments were to my dad, an erudite attorney with a big heart, a small ego, and a Costco-sized reservoir of common sense. That place, that routine, and though I would never swing a club, that game, formed the closest thing to a relationship that I would know. I was obsessed with routine and on a summer Monday or Thursday evening, if dad hadn’t appeared in the driveway before 5:30 pm, I would become exceedingly anxious, pacing the floor, reciting the champions of over a hundred years worth of majors, and starting again if he had not yet arrived. Willie Park, Old Tom Morris, Andrew Strath, Young Tom Morris, Tom Kidd, Mungo Park . . .

“This is the end—for me, the beginning of life.” As paradoxical as it may seem, death is the final form of healing. The Psalmist sings, “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.” Affirming this promise, Revelation’s author speaks of that place where God “will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away.”

While my death has weighed heavily on my brother, I am freed from the tangled wiring that so restrained my ability to experience the joy, sadness, hope, and terror that mark life in God’s good, but also broken, creation.

And so it is that I’ve been given a front row seat on the balcony of my brother’s life, which could be called a sitcom with substance. I watch with bemused hope, untroubled by the wounds and traumas that may befall him, because I know the story ends well.

Elijah Lovejoy Parish is my brother’s name, the name on which our mother insisted at the time of his birth. It is a curiosity to most and only a few historians along with a select number of Presbyterians have a clue about its origin. Elijah Parish Lovejoy was a 19th century journalist, Presbyterian minister and abolitionist who was a terrible insurance risk when it came to printing presses. Seldom has a piece of ink-filled machinery been the object of such wrath.

Born in Maine in 1802 and educated at Colby College and Princeton Theological Seminary, Lovejoy settled in St. Louis, Missouri, started a Presbyterian church, and worked as the editor of the St. Louis Observer where he encountered growing hostility for his anti-slavery themed editorials. Pro-slavery activists destroyed his printing press three times, persuading Lovejoy to relocate across the river in Alton, Illinois. A fresh start? Not really. When Lovejoy attempted to defend his fourth printing press in the face of a pro-slavery mob, he was shot and killed, earning him the epitaph of martyr.

Well, our mom earned her history degree from the University of North Carolina in 1970. She marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1967 after writing a term paper on the brief but courageous civil rights crusade of Elijah Parish Lovejoy. In 1968 she burned the bra that had never been necessary anyway, and 1969 took her to Woodstock where she took a hit from a joint, drank her first beer, ate a loaded brownie, and proceeded to throw up all night. Dehydrated, she passed out and was transported to the hospital by none other than Joan Baez who was on her way out of the festival. The last song of the iconic folksinger’s set was We Shall Overcome, but mom wasn’t so sure because her father, a Presbyterian minister of the South, would be the one driving all day and night to pick her up.

She knew he’d be plenty pissed, but it wasn’t like he was the stern Calvinist clergyman seeking to repress everything but his own self-righteousness. Kindness seemed to be his strongest conviction. This would mark only the second time she heard his voice rise to a level that betrayed anger. And it wasn’t even that loud. It’s just that her hungover head was still pounding and every word ricocheted around her skull like a pinball. “Disappointment.” Bing!! “Responsibility.” Bing!! “Scared your mother to death.” Bing!! Bing!! Bing!! Bing!! And then there was some proverb. What was it? “It is like sport to a fool to do wrong, but wise conduct is pleasure to a man of understanding.” To be honest, though, my grandfather always envied her spunk and passion. As far back as her memory would allow, her father never failed to greet her with the words, “How’s my little Turbo Tess?”

The Right Reverend Jordan McPheeters, my grandfather, was a good man serving the church in the tempest of the 60’s. He had journeyed the route of so many Presbyterian pastors in the South, matriculating at Davidson College and then Union Theological Seminary in Virginia where he met my grandmother, Miss Adele Thompson who was a student across the street at the Presbyterian School of Christian Education.

Following Jordan’s middler year of seminary, Jordan and Adele were married in Union’s chapel, a...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1: The Tree
• Chapter 2: Summer
• Chapter 3: Fall
• Chapter 4: Winter
• Chapter 5: Spring
• Chapter 6: Palm/Passion Sunday
• Chapter 7: On the Third Day