Vocation

Today I went to an ordination. This being the first ordination I've ever attended, maybe you're expecting a thoughtful reflection on what ordination is, or about the work of a deacon, or about service in the church, or maybe about vocation.

Well, I am going to talk about vocation. Specifically, about the vocation of the guy sitting behind me, whose vocation was apparently singing "Alleluia sing to Jesus" loudly enough in Christ Church Cathedral (Oxford, England) that my family back in Los Angeles could appreciate it.

Put that video on full blast, and you still cannot appreciate the volume. It was like all the voices of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir combined, became Anglican, and were being channeled by a single man in a clerical collar. The only other time I hear singing that loud is when I'm alone in my car, driving along a mountain road with treacherous curves, and Ringo Starr's "Photograph" comes on the radio.

Now this isn't a complaint, mind you. No, I salute this man. I'm so embarrassed by my own singing that literally eating myself is a less terrifying prospect than singing in front of other people. When I look back at some of the most embarrassing moments of my life, such as peeing myself at age 12, or (falsely) coming out as a lesbian to my 10th grade students, or accidentally correcting someone's pronunciation of a word when actually they had a lisp, or the time I had to give an impromptu speech in Hebrew in front of a room full of executives about a project that I had not actually done, or the time my friend pantsed me outside Gelsons and I ended up mooning some poor old woman who was out doing her shopping, or the time I was 8 and I played a brick in a musical and had to dance around onstage in a bright yellow unitard ...when I look back on those moments, I thank God that at least I wasn't singing. At least when I was the unitard-clad brick I was only pretending to sing.

It looked a bit like this, except mine had the added asthetic benefits of childhood obesity.

And yet here's this man, surrounded by Englishmen in suits and some women who are dressed vaguely like the Queen, and he's singing this hymn with the same amount of gusto that primary school children have for totally random topics, like whales or cacti. I wanted to turn around to give him a thumbs up and a "you go, girlfriend!" But I figured that might make him stop.

Instead I post this silly bit of writing as a tribute to this man, whose enthusiasm for Jesus manifests itself in singing hymns louder than the drunken idiots sing soccer chants on the street outside my window at 3 am on school nights. And, may I say, YOU GO, GIRLFRIEND!

I've reached some new lows.

Let’s get one thing straight, since so many people pity me when they hear I’m a lone tourist. I love it. Until I find a traveling companion who is just as vile as me, I prefer walking around foreign cities by myself because it’s the only time I can walk around publicly belching like a cheap prostitute without consequences. And people who burden me with oppressive hospitality rob me of this joy.

You know what I mean by oppressive hospitality—the most I want from you for breakfast is a finger pointing me to the nearest McDonald’s still serving breakfast. I appreciate your effort, but your three-course breakfast that you watch me exhaustedly cram into my mouth like a chore under your eager, almost evangelical eyes is about as welcome to me as an extended tutorial with my professor who wants to talk about nothing but the golden age of British bus travel.

This is how I ended up spending 5 ½ hours alone with a 40 year old on an internship. See, I was in Geneva for a job interview. My host (and potential boss) had offered to find someone to show me around Geneva on my free day, and not wanting to seem like the anti-social bitch that I actually am, I pretended that this was a fantastic idea—thinking it’d be a brief lunch and visit to a church or museum or whatever it is you’re supposed to see in Geneva. Instead, in an act that gets the award for Most Misguided Act of Hospitality of the Year (Runner Up: Not allowing me to withdraw cash from the cash machine), my host arranged for me to spend the entire day with a complete stranger, and a weird one at that. A man whose first stop on our tour was an English language bookstore, so that he could spend an hour looking for a French dictionary for himself.

And I didn’t even get the job.

When I first met him there was a glimmer of hope when I detected his Midwestern accent. This hope dissipated, about as quickly as a fart caught in the early stages by lowered car windows on a freeway, when I realized his accent didn’t have the same, almost Swedish, sing-songy quality of most Midwesterners, perhaps the chattiest folk in America. Instead it was the gruff, monotone mumble of a defective Midwesterner, like one with a flipper for an arm. He reminded me of the impressions of Louie Andersen saying “Chicken, donuts, cheesecake…” that my brother and I used to do.

I’d like to think I did a pretty good job of keeping the conversation going for three hours, even with the occasional awkward silence, particularly when I gave correct navigational instructions that he ignored in favor of just wandering around like a retarded puppy, followed by a sullen me who occasionally offered a weary, “Yeah, I’m pretty sure we need to turn right.” Followed by a passive aggressive, “…like I said.” But, as I said, we had three hours of the wonkiest conversation even I’ve ever experienced. The last 2 ½ hours were covered by my occasional murmurs of “Mm…this is a nice neighborhood. Is it known for anything?” And his brief, otherworldly “Yeah.”s.

But no matter. At least I got a hug out of it at the end, and you know how much I like hugs. This being a sweltering, sunny Geneva day, filled with loads of walking, it’s safe to say the hug was a bit wet. So, again, it’s not like I got nothing out of the day.

To be fair, the day wasn’t entirely horrible. I did quite like the Museum of the Reformation, and in particular its depiction of Luther burning in Hell. Also fantastic was seeing two teenagers clearly on a date, passionately making out in front of a portrait of a reformer. I’d like to think it was the boy’s idea to go to this museum on the date. “I’ll take her to the Museum of the Reformation—bitches LOVE ecclesiastical reform!”

But most spectacularly eye-opening was the exhibit where you could actually smell fragrances mentioned in the Bible. As I learned, all Biblical perfumes smell surprisingly of shit mixed with harsh chemical disinfectant. It makes me wonder how bad the ancient Middle East must have smelled if THIS was considered a luxurious improvement. I mean, I lived in the Middle East for a while, and I can tell you I’d rather be next to a sweaty Sephardi man on a bus than a bottle of nard. They tell me that nard is what that famous woman in the New Testament anointed DJ JC with, though perhaps given that nard smells of asparagus-flavored piss this woman should be considered infamous. I can clearly imagine her rubbing this vile, inexplicably expensive trash on Jesus’ feet and the world’s dear savior screaming, “For the love of God, Mary (they were all called Mary back then, weren’t they), get that off my feet!”

I also quite liked the cornball attempt to bring it all to life. I was told at the beginning by some overly enthusiastic Swiss girl that there would be a room with a dining room set up and OH MY GOODNESS if I’d only press 300 on my audio guide then I could “listen in” on John Calvin’s dinner conversations with other reformers. Needing to kill time as my tour guide, in spite of this being his fifth trip to the museum, had decided that every tiny label in the museum needed full, Talmud-length exegesis, I decided it wouldn’t hurt to let 300 be the soundtrack of my sit. I suppose they had tried to make it sound as realistic as possible by adding the sound of beverages being poured, but it had the effect of making the first minute of the recording sound as though I were eavesdropping on John Calvin having a particularly stubborn morning pee in an echoey bathroom. Ah well, points for trying, Museum of the Reformation.

Before we rounded off our day with a silent, hollow walk back to my “hotel,” we visited something called the Maison Tavel, which (as far as I can tell) is a museum. To what in particular, I’m still unsure even after spending an hour in there. Armor? Pub signs? Wallpaper? Dead stuffed pigeons? Who the fuck knows…

There was this one tiny room in Maison Tavel that was especially memorable. It was this tiny sitting room, sort of in a tower. I walked in and—I know I’ve talked about farts, belches, etc. already too many times in this post and that I’ve exceeded the quota, but just bear with me—and I caught a whiff of several hundred years’ worth of accumulated farts that have soaked into the wallpaper and gone stale. I have trouble conveying to you in words the strength of this smell, and the closest I can get is saying that it was actually like something out of a fairy tale.

Just over 48 hours in Geneva, and that’s probably what I’ll remember years from now when I look back on my weekend in Geneva. Foul smells.

Oh right. And having to start off my job interview by leading the chaplain in what was probably the most appalling bit of freestyle prayer he’s ever heard. But that’s a post for another day.

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