Bible School Chronicles – Cleaning Up (Chapter 3)
My first job at the school was in its Physical Plant department. My first job overall was as a paperboy. I’ve nearly always held some sort of job—at most fast food restaurants you can name, with a disreputable operation to collect money for veterans, at a bucket factory, and in securing appointments for cemetery plot sales. I felt like something of a sucker as I observed some of the more well-off students who had never held a job. The student population was largely divided between children of the wealthy and those less well provided for. It was tuition-free but as such relied heavily on donations. Anyway, my deeply-established work ethic came to appear as more of a sham. I was told that you work hard to prepare yourself for adulthood and foster independence. For others, though, they focused on their academic lives until they graduated, perhaps took a brief detour, then entered the workforce in the capacity for which their education had prepared them. Through our way, we lost a lot of folks—it could be very difficult to balance both school and work, and if you didn’t have the patience for it, school would go.
I walked down into the tunnels beneath the school to meet with my supervisor, a woman about six feet tall with red hair. She talked in familiar tones about the staff there—“River will show you around.”
“Does he look something like River Phoenix?”
“What? No, his last name is Niles.”
Had to watch your references here. Aside from socioeconomic differences, many here were proudly brought up in either private religious schools, or they were home schooled, born of a fear of being “of the world.” River showed me the checklists taped to the backs of doors; we were to mop floors, buff floors, vacuum carpets, sanitize sinks, clean windows. I became familiar with the coffee shop, bookstore, conference rooms, and offices. I worked a limited number of hours, some of which on the midnight shift. Chris (teller of the O’Doul’s story) told me the staff typically handled breaks more liberally during this shift. I would go back to my floor and shower, perhaps take a nap. We would also listen to music during this shift.
Christian music, at least to this point, was a peculiar thing. Artists worked hard to closely mimic current bands. There was the Christian Jane’s Addiction, the Christian Fishbone, the Christian The Cult (seems funny to even repeat). Music was similar, vocals were similar, lyrics sought to bring listeners to Christ; as such, production pushed the vocals way up front, and vocalists enunciated. The bookstore sold all of these. It would pull the catalogs of artists such as Amy Grant who had filed filed for divorce or had other personal but publicly-reported issues. I attempted to get into some Christian music, but being familiar with all the artists they were aping limited my appreciation significantly.
Christian labels, in an act of marketing solidarity, offered a “Buy Three Get One” promotion through stickers on the products’ packaging. Cleaning around the counters in the bookstore, I noticed a container with all of the redeemed stickers inside. This story is as much about my own ethical failings as it is about the school’s stifling culture. I grabbed a handful of these stickers one midnight shift, and then took them back down to the bookstore during its operating hours the next day to claim a free CD. I did this several times.
Some jobs around the school were better, relatively, and some were worse. There were cafeteria workers, public safety officers, and tour guides. All of which required more social interaction than working in the physical plant. We were all a bit pale and odd, comparatively. Chris was a pastor’s child, with red hair and white, white skin. The Assistant Supervisor shared my name. He was bald and wore a custodian’s uniform. Chris informed me at one point that the Assistant Supervisor intended to make me something of a project. He wanted to foster confidence in me. Thereafter, I sought to avoid him as much as possible.
Fred was a different breed of strange all together. Small, serious, and judgmental. I imagine he viewed himself as one of the Old Testament prophets—he would only laugh at impossible sinfulness. He was difficult, but I kind of liked him. I found myself in intense conversations with him regarding theological and moral topics. Once as we were cleaning a banquet room, he said, “The Bible doesn’t speak well for those who are received here. They’re treated preferentially, and it’s against scripture.” I smiled and didn’t say much. Later as I cleaned the executive offices, which looked more like something from a downtown building than this humble missionary launching point, I had to concur.
On another occasion, Fred launched into a didactic sermon on Hebrews 6:1-8, a contentious passage challenging the permanence of salvation, while we were cleaning the coffee shop. “It says, ‘it is impossible to renew them again to repentance.’ That doesn’t sound to me like it’s merely talking about some special circumstance.”
“How do you reconcile that with, ‘no one shall snatch them out of my hand’?”
“Well, in the Greek…” You always lost to “in the Greek.” The Greek is special—those privy to it are elite audiences to the fine distinctions that any translation cannot render (like Gnostics). Never mind that teams of scholars worked to provide us with the most accurate … There are arguments made on finer points, and I guess these should be the folks to argue them, but I usually didn’t hold any one position too firmly. Maybe it could be so. Fire-and-brimstone Fred, I saw less and less of him as time passed. He would merely say, “Hey,” and put his head down.
Leaving my first job here roughly coincided with getting away from my first roommate. I started my time by playing it straight at the school, approaching it according to its own rules and manner of presentation. Soon, I needed to reconnect with the sort of subculture to which I was accustomed. That was part of the reason I chose this school in this city, after all. I befriended a skateboarder who was similarly exhausted with his roommate. I picked up an application from a local coffee chain. From here, I was to go about experiencing the school on my own terms.
I walked down into the tunnels beneath the school to meet with my supervisor, a woman about six feet tall with red hair. She talked in familiar tones about the staff there—“River will show you around.”
“Does he look something like River Phoenix?”
“What? No, his last name is Niles.”
Had to watch your references here. Aside from socioeconomic differences, many here were proudly brought up in either private religious schools, or they were home schooled, born of a fear of being “of the world.” River showed me the checklists taped to the backs of doors; we were to mop floors, buff floors, vacuum carpets, sanitize sinks, clean windows. I became familiar with the coffee shop, bookstore, conference rooms, and offices. I worked a limited number of hours, some of which on the midnight shift. Chris (teller of the O’Doul’s story) told me the staff typically handled breaks more liberally during this shift. I would go back to my floor and shower, perhaps take a nap. We would also listen to music during this shift.
Christian music, at least to this point, was a peculiar thing. Artists worked hard to closely mimic current bands. There was the Christian Jane’s Addiction, the Christian Fishbone, the Christian The Cult (seems funny to even repeat). Music was similar, vocals were similar, lyrics sought to bring listeners to Christ; as such, production pushed the vocals way up front, and vocalists enunciated. The bookstore sold all of these. It would pull the catalogs of artists such as Amy Grant who had filed filed for divorce or had other personal but publicly-reported issues. I attempted to get into some Christian music, but being familiar with all the artists they were aping limited my appreciation significantly.
Christian labels, in an act of marketing solidarity, offered a “Buy Three Get One” promotion through stickers on the products’ packaging. Cleaning around the counters in the bookstore, I noticed a container with all of the redeemed stickers inside. This story is as much about my own ethical failings as it is about the school’s stifling culture. I grabbed a handful of these stickers one midnight shift, and then took them back down to the bookstore during its operating hours the next day to claim a free CD. I did this several times.
Some jobs around the school were better, relatively, and some were worse. There were cafeteria workers, public safety officers, and tour guides. All of which required more social interaction than working in the physical plant. We were all a bit pale and odd, comparatively. Chris was a pastor’s child, with red hair and white, white skin. The Assistant Supervisor shared my name. He was bald and wore a custodian’s uniform. Chris informed me at one point that the Assistant Supervisor intended to make me something of a project. He wanted to foster confidence in me. Thereafter, I sought to avoid him as much as possible.
Fred was a different breed of strange all together. Small, serious, and judgmental. I imagine he viewed himself as one of the Old Testament prophets—he would only laugh at impossible sinfulness. He was difficult, but I kind of liked him. I found myself in intense conversations with him regarding theological and moral topics. Once as we were cleaning a banquet room, he said, “The Bible doesn’t speak well for those who are received here. They’re treated preferentially, and it’s against scripture.” I smiled and didn’t say much. Later as I cleaned the executive offices, which looked more like something from a downtown building than this humble missionary launching point, I had to concur.
On another occasion, Fred launched into a didactic sermon on Hebrews 6:1-8, a contentious passage challenging the permanence of salvation, while we were cleaning the coffee shop. “It says, ‘it is impossible to renew them again to repentance.’ That doesn’t sound to me like it’s merely talking about some special circumstance.”
“How do you reconcile that with, ‘no one shall snatch them out of my hand’?”
“Well, in the Greek…” You always lost to “in the Greek.” The Greek is special—those privy to it are elite audiences to the fine distinctions that any translation cannot render (like Gnostics). Never mind that teams of scholars worked to provide us with the most accurate … There are arguments made on finer points, and I guess these should be the folks to argue them, but I usually didn’t hold any one position too firmly. Maybe it could be so. Fire-and-brimstone Fred, I saw less and less of him as time passed. He would merely say, “Hey,” and put his head down.
Leaving my first job here roughly coincided with getting away from my first roommate. I started my time by playing it straight at the school, approaching it according to its own rules and manner of presentation. Soon, I needed to reconnect with the sort of subculture to which I was accustomed. That was part of the reason I chose this school in this city, after all. I befriended a skateboarder who was similarly exhausted with his roommate. I picked up an application from a local coffee chain. From here, I was to go about experiencing the school on my own terms.
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