Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Rainbow


Tonight on my way home from work I was on the phone with one of my daughters when I saw a beautiful rainbow in my side mirror. I pulled off the road to enjoy it for a minute. An hour or so later, after going home, I was driving to church for a meeting, again talking on the phone to the same daughter, and saw two more rainbows.

These were brilliantly colorful, and the second appeared to be two halves of the same enormous arc. I felt buoyed by having seen them.

My meeting was about the music at church and several minutes after I arrived, the minister stated that they were getting ready to make me very unhappy.

"I've seen three rainbows today. Nothing can make me feel bad."

Then he told me that I was going to have to cancel one of my favorite Sunday performers so that the children could sing that Sunday. I tried negotiating to have him sing at the early service, but they had already discussed it and decided not to.

Now this favorite Sunday performer happens to be the choir director that we tried to hire last year. You remember? The one we worked with for almost nine months and in the end he decided not to come? I'm sick about having to cancel him.

I've done some reading about rainbows tonight and they symbolize differences being blended together harmoniously. This is not at all what happened to me after seeing them. I felt angry the whole meeting, and found myself being combative with the person whose decision this was to have the children sing. There was more manipulation and power struggling over the course of the meeting, and now I'm really feeling pissy about continuing to participate in organizing the music.

Actually, I often wonder why I even go to church. Inevitably people exert pressure and influence and power in negative ways, money becomes God, people hurt other people in the name of righteousness, messages become stale, mere words become truth.

Tonight, I feel like my Sunday mornings (and Wednesday nights too) would be better spent enjoying a gospel CD and a good book and leaving it at that.

3 comments:

kenju said...

I am sorry that you had that experience at church, but maybe the rainbows were a symbol for you; something you were supposed to take to heart. Seeing any rainbow is a gift (I believe) and seeing 3 is magnificent.

Maybe the children singing will be a wonderful gift, too.

Mamie said...

Kenju, thank you for those words. I don't do too well with looking beyond the present to the future, and appreciate your encouragement to try to see how this might turn out well.

kenju said...

Thanks for the visit, Mamie. In our daughter's family, the 4th child (the baby daughter) was a very small child when her father left the family, so there weren't many photos of her from that time. That's probably the main reason why her sister only included one of her - but perhaps she wanted to be the only female represented there...LOL