by Cheryl Caesar

I had already been to the Unity Spiritual Center to give a talk on “Passions of the Creative Mind” the month before. Arriving for my second talk on the evening of the Solstice, I looked around for familiar faces. I didn’t see Doug, the young man who spoke mainly in riddles, and who had been so pleased when I came up with two about his name:

– What do you call a man with a shovel in his head? Doug.

– What do you call a man with no more shovel in his head? Douglas. 

I did see Karen, a white-haired, well turned-out lady who had read a poem last time about her inability to cope with the internet. But I went first to our facilitator, Dan, who seemed in need of comfort. He was sitting at a table with local Baha’i poet CJ, looking glum. He explained that he had had a tiff with the drummer over the positioning of stones for the fire circle. “I raised my voice to him on the phone,” he said sadly. CJ and I encouraged him to send an apology text, and twenty minutes later the drummer arrived. He was still in a sulky mood, complaining that his arrangement of stones had been disrespected and ruined. Dan tried to explain that he was following the instructions of the Fire Marshall, but went outside with him to see what could be done. 

The audience trickled in, mainly older ladies. Those at Karen’s table wore linen pantsuits with embroidery, and white pixie haircuts. They looked like my book-club friends with waterfront homes. Another table was anchored by Kathy, who wore her brown hair half-up, as she might have worn it in high school in the 70s. She wore a print cotton dress and trainers, and walked stooping forward. She looked like my Aunt Mildred. 

One visit was not enough to pacify the drummer, so Dan ended up making more trips outside during my talk, and the readings and the open mic that followed. He deputized CJ to go help sell the art on the walls to passing customers, and asked me to fill in by reading for absent performers. So I found myself at the mic, reading completely unknown stories by unknown people. I read about requesting a second epidural (I have never given birth) and being a small boy with a drum (which, ever the English teacher, I explained was a great symbol for Creative Passion). Then Dan asked me to fill in as emcee: “The set list is right up here on the lectern.” 

Once he was out of the room, the Luddite lady, Karen, announced that she was next. After sharing her piece about being “www.perplexed.com,” she just kept going, reading poems about cats, about the personalities of the flowers in her garden, about grandchildren … five in all. As she sat down to applause, I got up to find the name of the next reader. The only copy of the set list was gone.

I scrabbled around the lectern and the nearby tables, asked the audience whether they had seen it. Nobody had. But Kathy declared that it was her turn. She got up, talked for several minutes about grief, then read a long poem on the subject.

Dan returned, and whispered to me that Kathy hadn’t been scheduled to read at all, and Karen should have performed only one poem. But he clapped and praised them as loudly and long as the rest. He requested the set list back, and Karen was suddenly able to find it in her sheaf of papers. I felt like the substitute teacher who can’t make the kids behave. The rest of the evening went normally, if long – some people wanted to read at the last minute, and all of them did. 

We finished up with a growling, pirate-like recitation of Robert Service’s “The Cremation of Sam McGee,” a ballad of a snowflake southerner who can’t handle the cold of the gold-rush trail. He asks to be cremated after his death, and his partner hauls him to an old ship hulk and sets it afire – only to discover his mate revived, sitting amidst the flames and feeling comfortable for the first time. It seemed a somewhat grotesque reading for a church (although no worse than the story Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego), and I began to wonder whether it had some symbolic significance for the Unity faith. Some kind of fable? Once it was over, the group went outside to their fire pit, the drummer having cooled off at last.

But I was left wondering what had happened. Was it all just a coincidence: the missing list, the unscheduled performer, the overperformer? Or had I just witnessed a soft rebellion, where the poet/parishioners waited till their leader had stepped out to seize the reins? Karens and Kathys united, fine linen and cotton print, with me as their unwitting accomplice? It may be unlikely, but it is my favorite version of the story.

I remember when I first spoke with Dan on the phone, and he asked me not to read my anti-Trump or other protest poems. “We’re a no-politics space,” he said. As if humans could ever come together in the same space with no politics. As if.