Laundry and Jell-O

It’s the children’s sermon at church and I’m sitting at the front
with my shy four-year-old because he won’t go up without me,
and today’s teacher, Ruth, tells the kids about prayer, how it’s
simply hanging out with God. That’s how she puts it: Prayer is 
hanging out with Jesus. I appreciate the clear-eyed pragmatism —
no need to complicate it, no need to dress it up with fancy words
that, once the fluff is peeled back, mostly mean
only people with theological degrees need participate.

The disciples, that ragtag band of ruffians, prayed all the time
because they hung out with Jesus all the time,
and truth be told I’m a little jealous, because having a snack
with the Messiah on the beach sounds like a lot more fun than
sitting quietly, hands folded, trying and failing to bridle my wandering
mind, to focus on serious, intangible, holy things that seem so far
away, so difficult to grasp, but I’m jolted from these thoughts when
Ruth prompts us to close our eyes and imagine a joyful, peaceful
place, and I’ve done enough trauma therapy through the years to know
my spot right off the bat, so in an instant I’m lying on the dark wood
pew in Lingle Chapel, silky moonlight pouring through the windows,
branch shadows dancing on cream walls, whiffs of
potpourri and maple syrup hanging in the air —

What is Jesus doing? she asks, and immediately a heaping
laundry basket appears, and there he is — Jesus, sitting
crisscross applesauce on the pew beside me, sorting and
folding the clothes into neat little piles. I tell him about my
week and make him laugh, which pleases me deeply, and
we chitchat, shoot the shit. He asks good questions, cracks
a few jokes. I get advice on some sticky situations, bemoan
my shortcomings across the various roles I’m playing these days,
and he assures me that I’m doing a good job as he neatly
arranges a stack of Conor’s undershirts and moves on
to the boxer briefs, and I guess I believe him because, well,
he’s the boss, right? But mostly he listens, and we sort
socks and somehow each one has a mate, which is worth
noting because that literally never happens and then

Ruth is speaking again and I’m back on the red carpet steps
on our church stage this chilly January morning, my squirmy
preschooler perched on my lap, and Ruth invites the kids to
share what they saw and my seven-year-old daughter thrusts
her hand in the air with such fervor, such authority that
Ruth has no choice but to hand her the mic, and Cora
speaks loudly, all breathy and bright-eyed, mismatched socks
peeking from her pink sneakers (I wasn’t joking earlier),
telling us with electric enthusiasm that she hung out with Jesus
at Candy Land: We were bouncing on Jell-O, she says, and
the congregation bursts

into applause and someone shouts Amen! and another Hallelujah! 
because that’s the only fitting response to that sort of revelation —
a vision so holy, I feel my soul swell like a water balloon dangling
from a running faucet and think, Well, that is sermon enough for me,
but just then the six-year-old next to me leans back and the music stand
and corded mic clatter to the floor in a tumult, and the moment is so
perfectly, sacredly, gloriously startling that I realize a minute later

I’ve stopped breathing.