A Religious Experience

Seeing a large gathering of people in town square, I changed my direction, to curious to pass them by. I walked down the stairs of the amphitheater, past children coloring with crayons, pictures of the sun and the moon, of forests filled with birds. They looked content if not a little bored. In front of me, at the bottom of the bleachers under a pavilion erected on the theater stage, a man spoke into a microphone. I spied a seat at the foot of a comfortable boulder and leaned my back into it. I tripped on the people around me. They were organic people. No hairspray, make up, deodorant...no style of any sort. They looked like bark and they sat solemnly listening to the speaker talk about alternative fuels and energy efficient light bulbs. They seemed very familiar with the message, and as I listened, I didn't find it to be news to me either but they waved their flags and proclaimed their "hallelujahs" just the same. Their flags were blue with a circle in the middle. The circle was a picture of the earth. The man on stage told them what they had to do: buy local, buy organic, buy green energy, buy buy buy...

When the man was done speaking he exited the stage and a band came up and played a song with banjos and eight stringed guitars. The song, they said was written by a street person in Seattle, a prophet, I gathered. "When the sun comes out, it comes out for everyone. When the rain starts to fall, it falls on everyone." The audience was encouraged to participate and they did, some sang, some clapped, some looked skyward.

I got up to walk around. I passed signs that proclaimed things about war and oil, about carbon emissions and global warming. I looked for the signs that said, the end is near, but I didn't find one. College kids passed out literature concerning politics and the environment. They wore bandannas and hemp necklaces but no shoes. The uniform of sorts for a young devout mission ministry.

I know what this is, I thought. This is church. And it was. They all seemed caught up in the excitement of it all, but all a little desperate too...working, working, working to usher in the Kingdom.