179 - The Passion of the Reverend Mr. Alberrt Flaugh

The Passion of the Reverend Mr. Alberrt Flaugh
By Lewis Chamberlain

It was 1969
In the 9th year
Of the decline of the Church
And it was
Holy Week.

The Rev. Mr. Flaugh's
Struggling
Mission
Church
Was sharing the decline.

Monday

Holy Week bothered
Flaugh
You have to understand
That Flaugh
Was just a little bit spooky
About such things
Flaugh thought
The Season was something special
He thought Heaven itself
Cast some kind of spell
On the whole earth
During those days.

For many years an active church layman, Lewis Chamberlain decided to go to seminary and enter the ministry. He is a graduate of Dubuque Theological Seminary, and is presently pastor of the Meneely Memorial Presbyterian Church, Dallas, Texas. His poems, written from the point of view of the man in the pew and the man in the pulpit, have a relaxed, even detached, mood but also an unmistakably astringent quality. See his "The Church in Dallas" (THEOLOGY TODAY, July, 1969) and "Dummy Theology" (THEOLOGY TODAY, Jan., 1970).

180 - The Passion of the Reverend Mr. Alberrt Flaugh

And Flaugh longed for
Great services of
Repentance and
Communion
With mournful anthems
All climaxing in a golden burst of splendor
On Easter morning.

But such things were not to be
As Flaugh darned well knew
Flaugh would be lucky to have a decent crowd
Easter
And couldn't possibly get anybody out
For special services.

So Flaugh approached Holy Week
Depressed
And
Dispirited.

Flaugh had gotten up late
That morning
It was his day off
Which didn't mean much
Because he really didn't have
Any days on.

And Flaugh began to ponder the Easter sermon
But he was so down
That he decided to preach an old one
It was a good sermon
Written when he was in a good mood
And he would use it again
After all there are just so many things
You can say about Easter

He's up
He's out
It's over
We won.

181 - The Passion of the Reverend Mr. Alberrt Flaugh

Having solved the sermon problem
He began to contemplate
How he would spend his
Day off.

He decided on a visit to the Y
And a shopping expedition.

A visit to the Y
Consisted of sitting in the steam room
For 10 minutes
Flaugh was a chain-smoker
And the heat and moisture made his lungs
Feel better.

Shopping consisted of a trip to
A fine store
In another part of town.
The store was salted
With some bona fide bargains
And Flaugh would ferret them out
He rarely bought
Mostly he looked
The clerks sort of hated to see him come in.

Tuesday

Flaugh got up wishing the phone would ring
And anybody would say anything
About anything.

Flaugh's parishioners didn't call him much
He liked them
And they liked him
But there never seemed to be much reason
To call each other.

Sometimes the drunks would call
Flaugh worked a lot with drunks
Flaugh loved the drunks

182 - The Passion of the Reverend Mr. Alberrt Flaugh

And the drunks loved Flaugh
They understood each other
Instinctively.

But today
Nobody called
So Flaugh decided to read
He was reading Thomas Aquinas
Flaugh enjoyed Thomas Aquinas
Flaugh thought that anybody
Who could make it all seem neat and reasonable
Even in theory
Was pretty damned smart.

But Flaugh could stand just about
So much
Of Thomas Aquinas
And after awhile he decided to go
To the Zoo.
He didn't particularly like the Zoo
But he went a lot.

The Zoo
Always inspired him
To write a Zoo sermon
It would be an attention-catcher
An interest-getter
He would encourage people to emulate
The qualities of the
Lion
Eagle
And elephant
And to abhor the qualities of the
Serpent
Jackal
And snail
But he knew that it would be a bunch of crap
And tried to quite thinking about it.

183 - The Passion of the Reverend Mr. Alberrt Flaugh

That night Flaugh
Went to a healing service
At a large Episcopal Church
In the city.

The speaker was a fat woman
Whose red nose ran
Constantly.

Flaugh wondered if faith-healing
Did not extend to
Obesity
And running noses.

But when the time for the healing ceremony came
He went down
And the Priest
Laid his hands
On Flaugh's head.

Flaugh's cynicism
Never quite got to despair
He always thought that
This
That
Or the other
Might be the Answer.

And he kept the Ridiculous Jesus
In mind
That was one reason Flaugh
Went down
Because it was all so ridiculous.

Ash Wednesday

Flaugh sat around the house
Lonely
He missed his wife.

184 - The Passion of the Reverend Mr. Alberrt Flaugh

She had taken a job
Partly to make some money
And partly to get away from Flaugh.

You see
Flaugh was wont to go in and out of the parsonage
Many times each day
And each time he came in
He sat Mrs. Flaugh down
And told her
All that he had thought
Seen and done
In the last little while.

And Flaugh's accounts of what was on sale at the store
And what Aquinas said
Were driving Mrs. Flaugh
Batty
So she got out
And got a job.

The phone rang
It was a wrong number.

It rang again
It was the neighboring Methodist Minister
And he wanted Flaugh
To preach
His Good Friday Service
And assist with Communion.

Flaugh was delighted
He would preach on love
And how human loneliness
Could be overcome by love
It would have to be
A fine
Warm experience.

185 - The Passion of the Reverend Mr. Alberrt Flaugh

Around noon
Flaugh
Began to hope for the mail
It was this way
Every day
The mail had an absolute mystique
For Flaugh
He always thought
It just might contain
Something so wonderful
That all of life would be transformed.

What it contained on that particular Wednesday
Was
The gas bill
A letter to his wife
From his mother-in-law
An ad for a mimeograph machine
An offer of a free trip to the Holy Land
If
You could persuade
25 of your members
To go along
At $2,000 per.

Maundy Thursday

Flaugh got up
Made a pot of coffee
Smoked
Prayed
Read the Bible.

Then he got out the dictionary
And looked up
Maundy
For the life of him
He couldn't remember what Maundy meant.

186 - The Passion of the Reverend Mr. Alberrt Flaugh

For lunch
He decided to open a can of sliced peaches
He would eat half-a-can
He ate a whole can once
And almost puked.

Good Friday

Tonight he would preach
This was the day
Flaugh loved to preach
He reviewed his sermon material
Got his notes together
And girded his loins
Preparing to do battle
For the Lord.

They had a small
Indifferent
Crowd
The people stared indifferently at Flaugh
And at each other
All through the sermon.

Communion was messy
They were using the New Methodist Order
And it contained many big words
And involved getting up and down a lot
And somehow
Big words
Getting up and down a lot
And Methodists
Don't go too well
Together.

Saturday

Flaugh usually set aside Saturday
For a very special kind of hope

187 - The Passion of the Reverend Mr. Alberrt Flaugh

He hoped that Sunday
Would bring a pulpit committee
From a Great-Church
And they would joyfully carry Flaugh off
To his manifest destiny.

There had been
One or two pulpit committees
From one or two not-great-churches
And they hadn't carried anything off
But the morning bulletin.

Easter Sunday

Was overcast
And coolish.

Flaugh woke up
Ashamed
He was ashamed
That he was preaching
An old sermon.

He drove over to his Church
It was a tiny brick A-frame
Set on 8 acres of land
Flaugh often wondered
Who the stupid ass
Was
Who thought
They would ever need
8 acres of land.

There was a fair crowd
Some visitors
No pulpit committee
The sermon came out all right
It was delivered without much zeal
But it was a good sermon.

188 - The Passion of the Reverend Mr. Alberrt Flaugh

Flaugh went home
To roast
And mashed potatoes.

Flaugh called himself
An ingrate
For not being happy
With his
Roast
Roof
And mashed potatoes.

He decided to try for a nap.
But mostly he tossed
Turned
And thought.

His mind went to a trip he made once
A trip to New Mexico
He had seen the Taos Indians
And decided to visit the
New hospital
The government had provided for them.

It was a fine looking building
Set back in the trees
It was very quiet
There was one car there
And one man working underneath it
The man came out from under
Introduced himself as the
Resident Physician
Conducted a tour of the well-equipped hospital
Explained that the Indians liked their medicine-men better
Said a pleasant good-by
And crawled back under the car.

For some reason
Flaugh thought about that
A lot.

189 - The Passion of the Reverend Mr. Alberrt Flaugh

He also thought about
His children
And loved them
For a few minutes
In his mind.

He remembered
A visit he had recently
With a little girl
Whose father was in Vietnam
She said he was in the front lines
She said
She was very proud
That only the bravest
Made the front lines.

Flaugh wondered
If his children
Held a similar myth
About him.

That night he ate a roast beef sandwich
It savored of victory
A cold roast beef sandwich
Meant
That Sunday was about over.

Before he went to bed
He glanced at the back
Of his right hand
And saw
That the red blotch was there.

Sometimes when he was very tense
A tiny vein would break
Just underneath the skin
And produce a red blotch
On the back of his right hand.