Dodge

I need to stop walking down my block during daylight hours on Sunday or else suck it up and go to church more often. Since Sunday services at the nearly next-door Pentecostal church I've often attended last all day, the odds I'll see a fellow congregant I know on the sidewalk are apparently 100& at any given time. Plus, since I'm seemingly the only white person ever known to attend this particular church, my fellow parishioners remember me well.

It always makes me feel guilty.

Today I ran into a deaconess I like a lot while on my way to pick up some fruit.

"You been working hard lately?" she asked, which is a kind way to inquire about my unexplained absence from the church.

"Yeah. Too hard," I responded briefly.

"I'm off all summer. I work for the Board of 'Ed, so I'm free till September." She smiled.

"Lucky lady!" I laughed and shuffled off with a smile and a backward wave, happy to see her but not exactly thrilled to have to dodge her questions in advance about the nature of my work, etc.

Rough stuff. I do it to myself.

Bed

Unflattering in my opinion mind yet possibly sensuous to a certain sort of sensibility...

Almost universally, compliments now ring hollow in my ears. The pretty face or body one boy or man says I possess is ugly in comparison to that of another, more classically beautiful woman.

Yet how can I honestly say I refuse to derive my identity from my physical characteristics on one hand while vowing to "improve" certain "flaws" through surgery?

I am so confused.

For the first time in a couple of months I wandered into the Pentecostal church near my home Friday night after work, immeasurably worn out after a day of dancing, and heard, for the first time, the songs sung by the congregants as if through a layer of cotton.

Was it simple exhaustion, the demands of my job or the sin that allegedly attends it that made me feel so cut off from the lightning bolt of spiritual intensity and connection I usually feel in that humble, yet vibrant sanctuary?

Time will tell...