Consequences #2 — Meg

“Nor­mal ser­vice will be resumed in the near future.” Or so we hoped.

Every­one stood and stared nervously at their hymn books. No-one wanted to say any­thing, partly because there was noth­ing to say, and partly because when some­thing like that hap­pens, you just don’t, do you?

My dad was a Meth­od­ist min­is­ter. I say was, which is strange, because he still is, but I don’t think of him that way. He was a min­is­ter when we were little, going to church reli­giously (pun inten­ded) every Sunday, but now he’s simply my father.

When I was little, I thought my dad was God — not in a “someone get that girl some ther­apy” way, but in a con­fused “my dad has a big beard and wears a long white cas­sock, and talks a lot about Jesus, and besides, every­one says Our Father …” sort of way. You don’t even want to know what that made me think about my brother, his only son. I was pet­ri­fied that dad was on the verge of giv­ing him away to save the world — but that’s another story.

The church that my father (ad)ministered was in the middle of Lon­don — a rough, shabby neigh­bour­hood with a high quo­tient of eth­nic minor­it­ies — Span­ish, Por­tuguese, Irish, West Indian, African, India, Banglade­shi — which together made them more of a major­ity, I suppose.

But back to the church.

There was this man, John Shan­non, an Irish man, angry and schizo­phrenic and alone, who would get steam­ing drunk on Sunday morn­ings before the pubs would open and then come into the church dur­ing the inter­ces­sion­ary pray­ers (where the con­greg­a­tion prays for those in times of trouble and need) and would stand in the middle (cir­cu­lar seat­ing arrange­ment: most pro­gress­ive) and shout. And rant. And wail. And shout at the top of his voice in a broad Irish accent:

“What about ME? What about ME? Why doesn’t God care about ME? God doesn’t exist! There is no f*****g God! WHAT ABOUT ME?!!”

Every­one stared at their hymn books and prayed, or at least kept very very quiet with their eyes mostly closed, which is almost the same thing, isn’t it?

No-one said a word. Every­one froze. For a few angry months in the late sev­en­ties, every Sunday morn­ing ser­vice was punc­tu­ated by the sound of angry shout­ing, and the tense silence of people pre­tend­ing not to notice.

No-one said any­thing to him, or to each other. Even my dad, stand­ing in his white frock at the lec­turn, didn’t shout back answers to his grand theo­lo­gical ques­tions, but let him say (or shout) his piece into the peace, and then gently ushered him into the vestry where the rest of the ser­vice would con­tinue, led by the lay-preacher and accom­pan­ied by the muffled rant­ing of an angry man arguing with my dad, or God, or pos­sibly both. Per­haps John Shan­non was as con­fused as I was about the whole beard thing.

I haven’t been able to deal with shout­ing since then. He was the most ter­ri­fy­ing man I knew when I was grow­ing up. Anger scares me.