Jesonian: Reverend Meningsbee (Part 27) Carpet Bombing … October 30th, 2016

 Jonathots Daily Blog

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You can’t have valleys without mountains. It’s the beauty of the landscape of life.

In the midst of the sludge of mundane activity and the alarm of tragedies, there are everyday decisions which either tickle the funny bone or leave us with a tiny ball of aggravation which tends to growl for weeks after the infestation.

Mike and Maggie had been wed for thirty-two years. They were married at the Garsonville Church. They had served on almost every committee, and faithfully performed the duties of nearly all positions. Although they loved each other dearly, they rarely agreed when it came to matters of what should be done with the sanctuary.

Ten years earlier, they had a huge conflict–long before Meningsbee arrived–about carpet.

Maggie was a traditionalist, a woman whose grandparents came to America from Ireland during the potato famine. She had fiery red hair, now streaked with gray, and possessed a Catholic passion with her Protestant faith.

Her husband, on the other hand, was a progressive–well, as progressive as you dare be in Garsonville, Nebraska. He nearly convinced a majority of the church board to sell the organ to put a down-payment on a project to build a gymnasium, so the local kids could come and play games on Saturday, with the intent that they might decide to stay over for Sunday services out of curiosity.

The measure lost by one vote. Maggie’s.

Even though the two loved each other faithfully, they rarely agreed on God’s will for Garsonville.

So when it was time to purchase carpet ten years earlier, Maggie insisted the only suitable color for the sanctuary was red. She had two reasons. Red carpet was a sign of welcoming and also a tribute to the blood of Jesus.

Mike strongly disagreed. He contended it was “just too red.” He led a group which desired cranberry carpet from Dalton, Georgia. Amazingly, this time, unlike the gymnasium, the “cranberries” won.

So the sanctuary was covered with cranberry carpet, much to the chagrin of Maggie and her crimson cohorts.

Now, recently…

There had been complaints that the cranberry carpet was looking dingy and needed to be cleaned, so it was agreed to find a contractor to remove all the pews so the carpet could be shampooed. It was quite a job.

Several local carpet cleaners bid on the job but it was the Garsonville Bubble-Uppers, a new firm in town, which underpriced the competition and was given the contract.

Arrangements were made to hold services elsewhere for two weeks so the cleaners could have full access to the church and be able to do a great job.

Everyone was elated. Maggie thought cleaning the carpet might make it more red, and Mike was convinced that such a cleansing would restore the original beauty of his cranberry vision.

But no one was prepared for what happened.

One of the young men working with the Bubble-Uppers thought it might be a good idea to add a little bleach to the concoction which was traditionally used by the company. He didn’t inform anyone of his decision–just poured it in.

So they scrubbed the carpets faithfully, only to discover when they returned the next day that the cranberry carpets had been transformed.

They were orange.

Bright orange.

The Bubble-Uppers were very apologetic, and refused to charge the church for their services, but a very shocked and bewildered congregation restored its pews on top of a carpet ablaze with bright fall-colored pumpkin.

Everyone was afraid to say too much about it–they knew there was no money in the budget to get new carpeting.

So for the first time ever, Mike and Maggie came to consolation.

Mike decided that orange was better than red and Maggie was convinced that it was closer to red than that horrible cranberry.

 

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Not So Much … February 19, 2013

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I was wearing an old pair of running pants and a stretched out T-shirt, certainly a bit askew of GQ.

I was sitting in my chair, waiting for the final tally of the groceries I had selected, when two young boys came walking by, one of the lads poking his friend in the ribs, pointing at my protruding belly and laughing. The other young man seemed completely uninterested, so they scampered on their way, with the first little guy maintaining his chuckle.

There was a time in my life when I was quite aggravated by such youthful assaults. But on this particular day I didn’t give it another thought. I realized that the reason I did not give it much attention was not that I had “grown in maturity,” but because it has lessened in occurrence. Yes, over the years, as a fat man, I have observed less giggling from bored youngsters than once was the case.

I was suddenly struck with a great wave of gratitude–because in this time, when people are complaining so ferociously about all the difficulties and “simmering pots,” it is nice every once in a while, to look back and realize that we have made some human progress.

For instance, it used to be in this country that people of different races couldn’t date, marry or be together without receiving ridicule and persecution. Not so much anymore.

In our history–quite recent, may I add–it was a favorable thing to segregate and even do harm to those who did not exactly match our skin hue. Not so much now.

Catholics and Protestants in Ireland massacred one another at one time, in the name of Jesus Christ, to establish the dominance of their spirituality. Not so much.

Water supplies in towns across America were questionable in their quality because there were no restrictions on certain contaminants. Not so much.

Litter filled the highways with trash as a scar on our nation’s landscape. Not so much.

Politicians were able to get by with numerous scams and scandals without ever being caught by a press corps that was often in the back pocket of big corporations. Not so much.

Religion was blindly accepted for all of its inadequacies instead of being questioned and challenged to be productive in the human environment. Not so much.

Children were to be “seen and not heard”–set aside and basically ignored unless they were extraordinarily accomplished or equally in the other direction, naughty. Not so much.

Catsup was considered to be a vegetable by national leaders, who were gradually turning all of our children into guinea pigs for commercial poison. Not so much.

I just paused as I sat there and waited for my groceries, which are now so easy to purchase and much simpler to carry in their bags than they used to be, and was grateful that the little boy who ran by me with his ridicule was in a minority. Somewhere along the line, we have taught our children to be more tolerant of human space.

That’s good.

So in the process of trying to change our lives and improve the lot of the American populace, let us occasionally stop off at an altar of gratitude and realize that much of the crankiness, bigotry and controlling attitudes that once permeated our adult culture have been decimated by mercy, knowledge and appreciation for one another.

Am I optimistic? Don’t push it. But today, I am grateful.

And I can say this about stupidity: not so much.

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