A friend introduced me to pool church (her joke) last summer on a hot weekend. She texted early one Sunday morning and asked if I wanted to join her for a swim before things got too hot or crowded. We rolled up around 11am and were fully submerged by 11:02. I don’t know what from what about spiritual enlightenment, but we floated through at least two adult swims, gossiped, and talked about BBC shows. By the time I got home I felt mega-mellow and convinced that this was quite literally the only Sunday morning tradition (outside of bagels with lox and a fresh NYT crossword) that I could ever imagine making a weekly priority.
Pools have been a big part of my life since childhood. I spent more time swimming at Asheville’s various pools than I did at Sunday schools, worship services, and two (abortive) days at a friend’s bible camp. My religious education was kind of all over the place, which suited my I don’t get how this thing can be true but not also this other thing personality type. One of my parents was Episcopalian with a New Age, vaguely Eastern bent. The other was raised fundamentalist Christian, but skeptical of its communities and increasingly disillusioned by its close-mindedness. I attended nominally Methodist pre-school, but a fair amount of my neighborhood friends were Catholic, and Greek Orthodox. The first wedding I went to was my aunt’s (I was the flower girl). It was a Jewish ceremony and aftewards I was under the impression that all weddings were Jewish weddings until my other aunt got married and there were no rabbis.
I went to other people’s churches post-friend sleepover. It felt like going to different plays. My pre-adolescent take was that Catholics had the best sets and fanciest costumes but were weird about giving you a cracker at snack time. The Greek Orthodox Church was a little confusing but had a killer potluck. I couldn’t really make heads or tails of the various Protestant denominations. The Methodists were more likely to take you to Six Flags and you could usually count on (predestination!) the Presbyterian lock-in to be pretty wild. Lutherans had lots of candles and whimsical German Christmas fairs. The Baptists had churches with built-in roller rinks and would take you to Disney World. The Southern Baptists had Christian Rock and actual food courts inside their church. They would also take you to Disney World, but only if you signed a contract about never making out before marriage (which made the Presbyterian lock-ins more complicated). The Church of Christ was really into overhead projectors and would give you coupons for a free happy meal if you could recite, in order, the names of the books of the Bible. The Jehovah’s Witnesses never got birthday cake. I only ever knew one Mormon, a faith I incorrectly associated with Ethel Merman for years, and was thus surprised when said Mormon was unfamiliar with the soundtrack to “Gypsy.”
All churches had a thing about Jesus, a Middle Eastern dude from Roman times who talked like Mr. Rogers, looked like Kenny Loggins, and absolutely would have been hit with a dress code violation at any of the churches that claimed to be his favorite. The services were monumentally boring unless there was a choral performance or a Christmas pagaent. If it was a fancy church, you could always psych yourself out by pretending the pipe organist was a vampire, and advance plotting how you’d escape if he started trying to bite people. Christianity was frustratingly devoid of fairies, sassy Goddesses with superpowers (in particular), and speaking parts for girls (in general).
Despite my inability to focus on church teachings, I was fascinated by church stuff. The architecture. The outfits. The history. The hymnals, and specifically that you could take a piece of music, throw some Jesus words on it and call it a hymn, no matter how it was originally intended. There were lots of water features. Holy water fonts. Wine glasses. Doll-sized grape juice cups. And the full-on swimming pools up on stage behind the curtain at Evangelical Churches. To me, these were up there with the sunken, in-floor jacuzzis that achieved peak popularity in my early childhood. I spent a lot of time trying to contrive my way into those hot tubs at the homes of my luckier friends (with limited success). They were often described to me as “things for grown-ups,” and at least implicitly, sort of sexy and dangerous, like they were in the Poconos, shaped like a heart or novelty wine glass, and advertised in the back of the Brides’ Magazines my grandmother would buy me at the Kroger because I wanted to see the fancy dresses.
I had no idea what was going on with the Evangelical jacuzzis. I dilly-dallied around the downtown Baptist Church where I took piano lessons, getting lost in the vastness of its infinite, inexplicable corridors, and trying to figure out how to get into the pool. I got busted once by the preacher for creeping around the sanctuary. He told me the baptismal pool was not a plaything and informed my babysitter that if he caught me again, I would be cut off from provisional roller rink access while I waited for my post-lesson ride. I was mortified, but surer than ever that the Baptist hot tubs were some kind of secret magical chamber. Maybe they weren’t even for sexy adults. Maybe they were for something else. Like robot sharks or mermaids.
I asked Mom for clarification on this, as she had grown up evangelical and had entered one of those pools. She told me a little about her own experience and that I could, if I chose, in a few years, wear a white dress, profess my love for Jesus, and crawl into the pool behind the curtain with a fully dressed middle aged reverend who would hold me backwards under the water until I was saved. From what? I couldn’t exactly figure, but it seemed like it had something to do with snakes.
I’d watched enough television and movies to know things rarely went well for young girls in white dresses led into secret ceremonies by old men. They got burned to death by dragons. Or eaten by the Kraken. Or, god forbid, married to Prince Charles. The whole thing was pretty hinky.
Wouldn’t water get up your nose? (You can hold your nose). But if you need to swim around? (You don’t. You just dunk and get out). That doesn’t seem fair. Is it a hot tub? (No. It’s more like a regular pool temperature). And when you get out won’t you be wet? (Yes). And cold? (They give you a robe). Will people be able to see you wet? (Yes) What if they can see your underwear? (I doubt they’d notice). I mean, why don’t you just wear a swimsuit? (Because you wear a church dress). And tights? (Not necessarily). Because you know I don’t like socks. (You don’t have to wear socks). I don’t think I’ll like wet tights. (Most people don’t, but it’s not about that). Level with me: does everyone come out of the pool? (Yes). So, nobody drowns? (No). Are you sure? (Yes). Are you telling me the truth? (Of course).
I didn’t believe her. When I was little, Mom and Dad had told me I had a guardian angel named Lily who looked a little like Cheryl Tiegs and would fly down from heaven to bring me little powdered donuts from the 7-11 if I’d just stay in bed and not repeatedly come downstairs after my bedtime. I loved Lily and bragged about her in front of an entire church congregation and that was pretty much the end of Lily and my parents as trustworthy sources on the topic of religion.
Also, it was not credible that Mom would know the ins and outs of all the evangelical pools. We lived in the South. There were billions of evangelical churches just between our house and the mall. At least 36 flavors of Baptists alone! Some of those pools could surely be manned by homicidal psychopaths. Some could have sea monsters. Or frogmen. Or giant squids.
A friend of mine told me she was getting baptized, and I had a nightmare that the pool would be full of piranhas.. But she didn’t get eaten alive. She just showed up for school on Monday like no big deal with a gold cross necklace and a training bra. Did the pool give her boobs??! Impossible to say.
I’m not sure how the Baptist pool was ultimately demystified for me. Like many childhood mysteries, it faded from near-obsession to amusing anecdote sometime before I hit 7th grade. By then, all my religious friends were going through their various rites of passage—confirmations, first communions, bar and bat mitzvahs, earth goddess wilderness camps, and yes, in fact, a dip or two in the old evangelical whirlpool.
I participated in my own culture’s coming of age rituals—cotillion, therapy, overcomplicated custody arrangements. I toyed with the idea that religion my have something really meaningful for me. I read a biography of St. Francis of Assisi and got really into The Joshua Tree for a couple of weeks. I couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to believe anything with that kind of certainty. I spent a lot of time reading about medieval saints at the library and tried to convince the priest at the Basilica that I might be Catholic because I knew a little about St Augustine and flying buttresses. He gently suggested that my inability to accept the divinity of Jesus Christ might be a teense impediment. So I got into theater and The Cure.
Hence full-time, full heathen. Unaffiliated. Unencumbered. I tell people I believe everything and nothing, which is easier than saying that I like some evidence and I don’t like it when people believe there’s only one story that matters. But maybe I do see nymphs and fauns in my peripheral vision, and I’ll never stop checking the closet, the freezer section, the next trail, that alleyway, etc. for a portal to another world.
In high school, my best friend and I spent some time in a fancy, sunken hot tub in an elaborate Gilded Age mansion owned by a local new age minister/jazz musician. I realize that sounds sketchy. It wasn’t. I believe there was a babysitting element involved that night. No one was sacrificed to frogmen or skeevy middle-aged krakens; my friend and I just sat in the pool, gossiped, and listened to the Beastie Boys. The new age minister wasn’t evangelical, and the mansion wasn’t a church (though it had a bit of a steeple). On a scale of one to salvation, though, that jacuzzi was pretty damn sweet.
This summer I joined the pool, and spent last Sunday, in the middle of a record heat wave, sitting on a noodle in the deep end with a bunch of my closest friends with a 12pm beer and a brunch pizza delivery. Four hours later, I shuffled home, sun-struck, relaxed, and sat around sketching pictures of the pool deck, which I guess counts religious art if we’re calling this pool church.
Whatever the case.
See you next Sunday.
Sunscreen be with you.
Tiny Commotions 