What we think of as graffiti first appeared in Ephesus, near a long mosaic. The image consists of a handprint inside a heart-like shape, with a footprint and a number near that foot. Scholars today believe that this number indicates how many steps it would take from the artwork to find a willing prostitute for a lover, with the hand denoting the payment incurred.
If prostitution can be romantic, and who is one to fault Hollywood for trying, it’s not a leap to imagine someone with eyes closed counting each step toward the culmination of their desires.
Which brings us to this photograph. Really, isn’t walking with one’s eyes shut hoping to receive ecstasy and completion not the best moral for faith?
Anytime I think of ecstatic celebrations of religious fervor, I’m reminded of Aimee Semple McPherson. Born to a widower and the nurse who took care of his terminally ill wife, Aimee was raised in a strict Methodist household. Still, by her teens, she was a devout atheist. If there is such a thing as being devoutly antidevout, that is. Let’s just assume that she was.
She met her first husband at a revival meeting and after her conversion back to the faith; she began missionary work, lost her husband, and had a daughter, all in short order. Two years later, she remarried, had a son, and was onset with postpartum depression, serious health issues, and on top of all of that, a serious case of a near-death experience. A literal ron-on sentence Road to Damascus moment.
Aimee took her Gospel Car on the road, preaching sermons through a megaphone as she perched, sometimes proactively, on the backseat. Ironic, that such a universal symbol for promiscuity would be subverted. She wasn’t afraid to appear in a diaphanous white gown, painted with makeup, wearing jewelry. In fact, she used her out there, yet on the down low sex appeal to win over converts to her “Salvation Navy.” She wasn’t a wallflower; she was the first woman to be granted an FCC broadcast license. She edited a newspaper. She even presented gigantic operas and morality plays with the most modern Los Angeles showbiz and razzle dazzle at her Angelus Temple.
Alright, so my love for Aimee Semple McPherson may be overwhelming and how does she tie into a metal pole with Jesus Saves and a cross scrawled into it all supposed to make sense?
Because faith doesn’t make sense and at once, it does.
For all the amazing good that I can show you in Aimee’s life, her life also takes a really strange bend in 1926. She disappeared. For 32 days. So did her main engineer at her radio station, KFSG. A group called “The Avengers” sent a note to her mother, noting that she had been sold into white slavery, and her mother threw away the letter before police could see it. And 32 days later, Aimee walked out of the desert of Agua Prieta, Mexico. And no one, to this day, knows why. Was she having an affair with her engineer, who reemerged at the same time? Was she having an abortion?
What makes us follow the steps with our eyes closed to a Madonna or a whore, based on a few sigils and signs?
The rest of her life is one of falling out of favor, battling for the control of her church with her mother and daughter, a nervous breakdown in 1930, a remarriage that angered the church and a quick divorce. But yet, she remained someone who rallied to help others, soup kitchens, war bonds, all she could do. And in 1944, she overdosed on barbiturates and died. Her casket has a phone in it, so when her body is resurrected, she can simply call and be saved from being buried alive when the Rapture comes.
What makes someone take enough pills to succumb to death? And really, more to the point, what makes someone take the time to scrawl Jesus Saves into a metal pole? Will it be enough to turn one soul toward The Lord? What makes some people compassionate and others stand on street corners screaming that everyone is going to hell as they raise signs of baby soup?
I have a theory, and that’s all it is, that drugs and God go hand in crutch. But then again, I’m someone that from time to time, closes my eyes and runs as hard as I can into traffic just to see if I can survive. So I know a little something about faith after all.
Picture – N
Words – S
No comments:
Post a Comment