1
CONFRONTATION
(Thursday, Week One)
With no destination in view, Bryan Manning was now parked motionless on the edge of his bed. As inner-city Cincinnati continued from twilight into full night, his half-opened eyes focused on the street beyond his basement studio apartment. His eyes stung. His neck ached from staring upward. Still, his only movement was the occasional involuntary blink. Through the dusty venetian blinds and the vertically barred windows, streetlamps monochromatically outlined shins and shoes, tires and fenders, all moving on. But he was going nowhere, not now, not tonight, maybe not ever.
After the mindless outside procession subsided, his torpidity deepened. The room grew colder, the street quieter. In the suffocating silence of this cramped dank space, in the faintest whisper, he mouthed, "God is dead."
Nothing in life had prepared him for this moment. Days of compounding losses felt like years-marriage fractured, children hesitant and cordoned away, career in tatters-a trifecta collapse. Now shunned, tossed out, and drained of all resources, both tangible and intangible, his formerly agile and expressive self was bound in this trance-induced body. Its only action was languidly moving eyes within a head found on a torso forgetting to breathe. Without undressing, falling onto his right side, he stared into and through the night.
Thunder exploded through the room, shaking Bryan from his stupor. Rain pounded the sidewalk. Lightning shocked the power off. As the alarm clock blinked 2:39 a.m., he flatly stated to the darkness, "This must end."
Fumbling through the randomly stuffed closet at the end of the room, he found a tattered vacuum the former tenant had abandoned. With the vacuum hose clenched in his left hand, he stumbled up the outside stairs. The chilly rain soaked his skin as he walked into the alley behind the building. Standing in mist and pools, he mentally measured the rear bumper and exhaust pipe of the Lexus. Robot-like, he reached down, assessed the fit of the hose to the pipe, and stretched it to the rear left window. From his stock-still haze, he stared at the perfectly fitted hose on the exhaust pipe. He'd performed the sequence so easily. Bryan shuddered. He was thinking about unintended consequences.
***
Last Monday, like all Mondays except for emergencies, was the pastor's day off at Hilltop Community Chapel. It was Tuesday morning that Bryan was at his desk at the church office, a ten by twenty soft-lit, all but soundproof room furnished more like his personal man den than a business office. Bryan treasured the luxury of the built-in bookcase claiming one of the nine-foot walls. It made a striking first impression, followed by the mission-style desk and coffee table, the casual settee, and an incongruous, oversized, sink-yourself-in leather affair everyone knew as "his chair."
The day was routine-staff meeting from nine to ten thirty, correspondence until noon, lunch with the finance committee chair whose standard preference was Skyline Cincinnati-style chili, afternoon calling on seniors' residences, then back to the office late afternoon. While he wouldn't call it mundane, it was predictable and less than invigorating.
He still found sermon preparation challenging. It used to be that the challenge was to arrive at an accurate interpretation. Accuracy not only involved language and historical context, but also interpretation that could survive the test of approval within the fundamentals of the American Evangelical Protestant church community. For Bryan, increasingly, the struggle was to provide contemporary relevance. In other words, "So what?"
His Bible was open to the Gospel of Mark chapter three, the selected passage for next Sunday's sermon. He read, "Jesus entered a house and a crowd gathered. When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, 'He is out of his mind.' Jesus's mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. A Crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, 'Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.' Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, 'Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God's will is my brother, sister, and mother.'"
Bryan's training normally took him to center on the two words God's will. "And what is God's will?" he asked out loud to the muzzled silence. There was a day when the answer would come spilling out unchecked. But not this evening. His life was fractured, inauthentic, taking the edge off genuine insight. He knew it and felt helpless to change.
This passage of Scripture jarred another thought, This is a statement of an adult male who was differentiating himself from his family of origin. This is a question of declaring his own footing and direction in life and deciding how and with whom that would be lived. That thought revitalized his interest. Why is that more interesting? he mused. Because it is my work. The work I have not yet done.
As if someone had punched him in the gut, his upper body arched violently, his head bouncing off the burgundy leather high-backed executive chair. This was the voice of conscience, a word from God, a voice he had not been paying attention to recently. His upbringing, his parents, his readiness to conform, to please, the family he'd fashioned,-all had operated within the prescribed script. There was a contrast between a definitive statement about God's will from Jesus's mouth and the vacillations in his thinking and behavior. He made a few random notes that didn't make sense. Life no longer made sense.
He sat silently, hunched over his desk, Bible open, reference books and notes askew. The green-shaded desk lamp now barely overwhelmed the six o'clock twilight that had all but darkened the room. Bryan's reverie was abruptly interrupted as Greg Smithson strode through the open door unannounced. Somehow, Greg, the church board chairman, had bypassed Linda Barlow, Bryan's executive assistant, the loyal sentinel who watched, protected, and assumed the role of traffic cop for this interminably sought-out clergy-magnet of a man. Beyond Greg's bulk, now occupying the doorway, Linda's office was dark. She'd left about an hour ago to pick up her son from soccer practice. Until now, Bryan had been preoccupied and unaware that he was alone in the silent glow.
Towering over Bryan's desk, Greg stood more outlined than visible, with fists on hips and legs in a defiant stance that made the absence of a greeting seem appropriate. This didn't look as if it was going to be a friendly visit. It wasn't. Without sitting, Greg leveled a silent ten-second glare down at Bryan. He acknowledged Greg's brusque entrance by raising his head from his open Bible and silently staring back with as controlled a vacant look as possible, waiting.
Greg intoned what was clearly a warily rehearsed statement. "Don't ask me who and don't ask me when, but it has been reported to me that you have been and may still be involved in gay sex. Is this true?"
Bryan's chest tightened. He forgot to breathe. His head spun; He focused on his pounding heart. When at another's mercy, should one plead for clemency or remain proudly unbent? Neither. Without getting up or answering the question, Bryan leveled his response. "You will have my resignation in the morning."
A quick resignation was like bailing out of an airplane that just lost power in both engines. It's going down, and the pilot can't change the trajectory so "hitting the silk" provides the escape from the inevitable crash of the flying shell that, until a moment ago, felt secure and solid. Bailing out provided a slower, deliberate drop, sustained by air and chute that could hold him just long enough to stop the spinning in his brain. Pushing back his chair, Bryan moved quickly, leaving Greg standing in front of his desk. Ignoring the lighted desk lamp, the open Bible, and the reference material for his next sermon, he grabbed his jacket as he headed for his car, a two-month-old new 2005 Lexus GX 470 sport utility, parked in front of the Reserved for Senior Pastor sign. The only other car in the staff parking lot was Greg's navy four-door e-Class Mercedes. Both cars were emblematic of Hilltop's prosperity gospel message.
Bryan could only imagine how this event was going to torpedo the carefully choreographed patterns of his life and plunge him into a new venture which had been brewing since birth. Life until now had been framed by Old Testament Biblical guilt along with life-long pressures to culturally conform, policed by familial shame. All this was instantly changed forever by Greg's question, "Is this true?"
This was not how he wanted to come out. He was never certain that he was going to come out because he had not convinced himself he was gay. He had thought of himself as a good husband, a devoted father, a faithful provider. He had tried to contain his lingering worry that having his secret life exposed would bring greater shame and humiliation on family and church than would making an open declaration. His inability to take ownership gave power to others. Now not in charge, he was outed and thrown into the very dynamic he had feared.
He hit the button on the key fob. The Lexus greeted Bryan with a warmly illuminated cabin. This car was his personal space of...
