The Religion of Rehab
Last night I attended the Friday night service of the mysterious church that has the healing ministry. I arrived at 7pm and found my way to the former gymnasium of the elementary school that the church uses as its headquarters. A woman outside the door escorted me inside and introduced me to three family members of hers. The inside of the gym has been made to look like a church, with the gym walls covered with curtains from ceiling to floor. The floor was carpeted, with about four hundred padded chairs set up. At the front was a podium with band instruments behind the podium. There are a few reclining lawn chairs around the room, which have padded, lawn chair cushions on them so as to accomodate any church goers who were too weak or disabled to sit up. This church uses both karaoke technology and open mic technology in their presentation. After about two hundred people arrived the Pastor Donna began explaining the order of worship for the benefit of any newcomers that were there. Then the karaoke screen lit up with lyrics to the songs that began playing through the hidden speakers of the p.a. system. It was fairly loud rock music playing that I was unfamiliar with; plus, I was not wearing my glasses and could not read the words on the screen. The congregation would hold up their right hands and slowly wave them toward the stage as if they were waving to a person who was a great distance away. Their spirited singing morphed into jumping up and down and then into dancing in the aisles. Then a mass of about one hundred people ran to the area in front of the stage and began dancing as if on a dance floor of a club. This eventually morphed into a huge line of country line dancers, dancing to ” Spirit in the Sky” by Norman Greenbaum! I have never seen a spectacle quite like this in a church before. This ritual went on for about forty five minutes. Since I was not singing or dancing, I was rather obviously an outsider within this group. The closest thing that I can compare this event to would be a Pentacostal worship service; but without the faith healings and the speaking in tongues. If you have never been to a Pentacostal service, I doubt that that explanation will help. Although many of these people do have faith and have been healed, there was no annointing of oil or rapid fire speach involved in this service. This part of the service went on for about forty five minutes and I had to sit down and rest before the next part of the service began. The second part of the service made use of the open mic microphones. People were welcome to step up to the mic and witness as to how they had been healed by the ministry there. One woman was cured of deafness. A man was cured of manic depression. Another woman had been cured of alcoholism and of a lump on her tendon. This part of the service ended after about forty five minutes, although it does traditionally last as long as it takes; sometimes until midnight. This service ended at 9 pm. I said my polite goodbyes and drove to Taco Bell for a quick meal.
I then drove home; changed clothes and went to the local music venue where Rehab was playing. Rehab were in top form, with the singers voice sounding strong. The audience was fortunately good this time. They were waving their hands in the air with a gesture that I do not know the meaning of. ( A lot like the religious people at the church) They were familiar enough with the lyrics of the songs to sing along during the choruses. ( Also like the religious people) They were dancing and enjoying themselves and enjoying life in a way that had a lot of similarities to the church goers. Some people might call me a hypocrite for running out of church and driving straight to a rock club but I enjoy moving from one world or universe to another. One place is for people who want to party in a clean and sober situation and the other place is for the drinking and drugging crowd. There was a lot of energy at both places and lot of celebrating of life. I enjoy exploring different atmospheres as if I were some kind of intergalactic cowboy or something.
 Tomorrow, I have an audio job.
 Have a good weekend,
I.C.