Earthlings

1

​

“Let us turn to 1 John 2:15-17,” the preacher said. 

 

All through the pews, congregants opened the Bible App on their phones, faces lit electric-blue in the otherwise dim sanctuary. 

 

“Let us not love the world or anything in the world,”  the preacher bellowed, face contorted, animated with the theatrics of condemnation.

 

Throughout the exegeses, the preacher floated words out into the sanctuary that spread like an airborne illness, instilling sin where there was none.

 

Clouds rolled past the sanctuary window, heavy and swollen, darkened as if they too had been subjected to this ambient guilt, this malignant osmosis and its sickly radiation.

 

My mind drifted, thoughts marching past like a formation of troops pushing into the jungle to burn down any humble village that they might happen upon.

 

2

 

As this was the first Sunday of the month, the service would run late as all were expected to participate in the worn ritual of communion. 

 

As the golden plate was passed around, I wondered where the communion wafers had been manufactured.

 

I imagined the overworked, underpaid proletariat, costumed in rubber gloves and hair nets standing among industrial food processing equipment, manning the conveyor belt. I imagined how the workers fondled the bite-sized celestial body parts, packaging the wafers as they would any other food.

 

3

 

I had stopped listening long ago.

 

Again and again, I was told that everything I loved was worldly, as if that were a bad thing.

 

I am an earthling; all of us.

 

We take 20,000 breaths a day, inhaling sky.

 

If only they could feel the planet spin and know that this is home.