*
"Playing the role". But what would it mean *not* to play the role?
Tattoos are of the skin and forever but you can still take them off. It costs money but what is money after all? Just something people pass around. Tattoos are of the skin. But Christianity is more, it is more inward. It is thus more bodily still. It is imprinted so deep that you can't peel it off.
Nor do you just pass it around to other humans as though it were fungible, moveable, a mere thing like money. It is worth too much to bandy around.
"True knights of faith can never teach but only witness." (Grafitti found in the head at Soren's cafe.)
*
Christianity is so deep that even if you sin (which may God prevent -- but then you are only a human, and sin is what humans do, by coercion, by choice, at work at play) okay, even if you sin somehow your sin is done as a Christian, which means among other things that it isn't all that much fun. That's another story, "the ex-con part 75". But meanwhile the need to sin goes very deep. But after all, Christianity goes even deeper than that. If it survives in you, it survives in your most molten core, a substance not an attribute. It cannot be peeled away, it is not a skin or of skin. You must remember this during sleepless nights when you thrash like a fish.
So what does it mean to "play the rol"e? It means anything else besides actually being a Christian. For instance, when your faith touches your core but you yourself do not. It consists of the slightest lie. Even maybe the white lie, where you say you're fine when you're not. Dave, the truth is that you are practically never "fine".
*
As the weeks passed, Dave watched Mary Louise lead "the prayers of the people", which were become the most spiritless part of their service. By this time he was virtually certain that she was a criminal, at least at church. She was robbing the till, embezzling without shame. And praying at the same time, in front of people, and he didn't see how.
Nor did he know how to respond to the sound of her voice at prayer. Of course, there was a large selection of Pharasaical responses available but as a broken person, an ex-con, a closeted queer, an aging friendless loser, he didn't feel righteousness was quite the thing, quite available, at least not for him. Not available, not appropriate. That would have been "playing the role" even more than he already was. When all he wanted was to be this thing -- "Christian" -- and not to play it like some actor on TV.
About the embezzlement, he had no right to speak and no right to be silent. So he had the choice between two different sins, which only meant that the way he'd lived up to now mus have been wrong, to have led him to this impasse. Sin had been a long term strategy, not just a single act. To become, not even a "good person" but simply passable and adequate, one saved through fire, well that was going to take more patience than he seemed to have. The first step was to stop playin the role.
*
So he said, Oh Elena, someone really ought to be double checking the church's books, don't you think, and she only answered: Oh don't worry, Mary Louise already does that. So we are safe, we don't have to worry. And he said, Oh Elena, and then she looked over at him with a certain discomfort, as they walked home together from some meeting. I bet she doesn't even want to be standing next to me, he thought.
It's not right, it's not a just thing, to put her or anybody in that role, Dave said. Think of the pressure. Then there is temptation. Even church money just reeks of wrongdoing, don't you think? Why, Elena, I never go near money unless I have a bodyguard with me to protect me, it's not even a friend, better yet to have someone who isn't even a friend. Someone upright and stiff like you.
You don't understand, Elena. Money stares at you and says, Go ahead and take me, I'm just money. I think a lot of thefts are initiated by the money itself, just sitting there being money, while some poor stupid robber stands over it and feels the influence.
*
Elise was a hard person to be with. She scrutinized him for some seconds. Looking into her eyes felt like looking into a mirror. Dave, babe, she finally said. Money has no power over a Christian. It buys things we're not even really supposed to want. Still, if you want to go over the account books yourself? And Dave said no no no. No no. Not that. As for that: no no no. I never said I wanted to do that
That was the night they ran into Don's cat, spine to navel, running around forlorn along the avenue.
*
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