By George Pence (guest contributor)–
My grandmother, Thelma Pence, was a stalwart in a charismatically charged congregation of holy rollers. Yet my parents were more secular people who frequented an Episcopalian church that practiced a refined style of worship.
Back then an Episcopalian Communion service would begin… “Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid; Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy Name… ” etc. etc.
Going to church was not unlike going to the Globe Theatre and watching Hamlet.
There were also occasions when my grandmother would pick me up in her aged Pontiac Tempest and take me to her Assembly of God church. That service was much more spontaneous and enthusiastic. Brother Bailey would begin in a low key way, but soon he was mining a scripture passage for the high octane fuel of accelerated emotion. His face would contort into a complex pattern of crimson sinews.
The passions of the congregation would race to keep up with their preacher. They would jump from their pews, raise their hands above their heads and call out, “For the sweet love of Jaa…eee…sus!” They would dance and sway, sometimes falling to the ground as if they had expired on the spot – a temporary demise described as “slain by the Spirit.”
My grandmother had hopes that one day I would answer the altar call and be baptized by the holy spirit. That didn’t happened. Not because I didn’t appreciate the authenticity of her faith, and the faith of her community. Rather, it was made impossible because of the incomprehensible gap separating my two radically different forms of religious practice.
However, for Grandma Pence, and for others on that side of our family, there was some consolation in my circumstance.
At least I wasn’t Catholic.
The Episcopalians might be uncomfortably close to Roman beliefs and practice, but after all they were Protestants. To be in league with the Pope, known as the Anti-Christ, was a virtual guarantee of eternal damnation. For little Georgie there was still hope.
In the eighth grade my family relocated from the small town that was our home. Subsequently my parent’s allegiance to the Episcopalian Church began to fade, as did my experience in divergent forms of religious worship. We became Christmas and Easter Christians with a loose sense of affiliation, and that is where things remained until I started college.
On a Fall day in my freshman year I walked across the quadrangle of the University of Utah when, on a whim, I stopped by the Catholic Newman Center. For reasons not easily itemized or explained, I fell utterly into the lap of Catholic belief.
In an unforeseen way, this development had a wonderful effect on my relationship with my grandmother. She was that one person in my family whose faith was the most profound, and the most constant. It was with her that I shared my new Christian faith and that sense of joy was a motive for frequent correspondence and the occasional phone call.
We celebrated our relationship with Christ, and that joint faith became the idiom of our common conversation. No detail of my new spiritual belonging escaped my willingness to share, save one thing – I didn’t tell her I had become a Catholic. Even members of my family who sympathized with my new spiritual circumstance feared the effect it would have on my grandmother. “Please Georgie, keep it to yourself. If she finds out It will kill your Grandmother,” was advice I received repeatedly. And it was advice that I followed.
Then, many years later, and again on a whim, I decided to visit my grandmother with my four year old son as a sidekick. It was a trip that extended over a weekend and it required us to fly cross country from Chicago to Reno and once there, to travel eighty additional miles by car. That trip was an opportunity to tell my son that yes, we would be going to church on Sunday, but it would be to a service unlike anything he was used to. And it would be best if he kept how different this experience was to himself.
This return to the small town of my youth was a wonderful experience, for all of us. However, there was also dread as I anticipated the awkwardness and the potential risk that Sunday represented.
I remember getting up that Sunday morning and reminding my son once again of how over valued candor could be. We marched down the front porch to that same Pontiac Tempest that had somehow survived the intervening decades. My son and I remained mostly silent as my Grandmother fired up the engine and turned down Weatherlow – a street that intersected with the avenue on which the Assembly of God Church was located.
But then, when we arrived at that very intersection she kept going straight. “Oh,” I thought, “She’s moved to Gospel Tabernacle; a similar if somewhat more Pentecostal denomination.”
That different destination would require a right turn on Main Street, but instead she took a left. “Perhaps my memories are insufficient,” I thought, “and other newer churches have been established.”
But no, when we finally stopped it was on Union Street, right in front of the oldest church in town – Sacred Heart Catholic Church.
Without a word we exited the car only to find that the church was full, and people were being directed to a side entrance that led up to the choir loft. As we reached the stairs my Grandmother took her place directly behind me, and on the landing at the top we met an usher. My Grandmother paused briefly in front of him and confessed that a Catholic service was new to her, and she wasn’t clear on when, exactly, she was supposed to stand, sit and kneel.
“That’s alright,” the usher replied, “just drop anchor and rise and lower with the tide.”
Even to this day that remains pretty good advice.
(George Pence is a writer, photographer and resident of Salt Lake City. Most of his life has been spent outside of Utah in places as various Chicago, the Sierras and the piedmont of North Carolina. He is a Catholic convert who came to the faith as a college student at the University of Utah. In 2008, forty years after his conversion, he returned to Utah and again became a member of the Newman community at the University of Utah. There he has served on the Parish Pastoral Council and co-teaches a third grade Sunday school class. He is married to Glenda Fredrickson and they have six children.)
