I’m driving up along North Graham Street on the Sabbath; I pull into a parking lot in front of a non-descript building. Buildings here in Charlotte, and perhaps in America generally, are coy to reveal what human behavior transpires within; the architecture rarely offers up much of a clue. But there is a sign out front, a truly hideous and slightly pixilated sign. It looks as if some boomer back in the 90s discovered the marvels of paint on his Windows PC and allowed their Gee-Whiz-Can-Do attitude to do the rest. And why change it now? After all it has done a perfectly fine job these past twenty-odd years. The sign reads something like, LovingJoy Ministries, or HeartFreedom Center. Something God-awful like that.

The next bit is where things get a little stranger. Inside I, along with my wife, are quickly ushered onto a ride of sorts, it was kind of like a Haunted Mansion Ride. There was a whole bunch of us sitting on a platform, the platform then began a slow journey through various spaces - a drama of sorts unfolded, or perhaps a ‘mystery play’ would be a better description. It was certainly tacky in parts, the band that rotated into view here and there were a bunch of grizzly old flower-power men, Ginsberg sorts, all twanging away on their various instruments and singing badly. In the first darkened space, the Hindu goddess Kali sprung from the shadows, and my wife near leapt out of her skin. Of course, it wasn’t actually Kali – the goddess of feminine fury – it was an African American woman who was playing Kali. It was visually surprisingly good, but I’m not entirely sure what the point was. Perhaps the image was designed to invite us to reflect on our own mortality, on death. An image to sharpen our sense of things and bring us into our own present.

One of the things that did strike me was just how bad everyone looked; socioeconomically these folks were a few rungs down the ladder, and here that translated into, on one hand greater racial diversity, but on the other, an unhealthier looking people, grizzled, overweight, but kind eyes. There was a strong sense of sincerity amongst them, and a strong sense of love radiating from them all. I’m not too sure if they thought of themselves as being Christians - they seemed to be drawing upon a lot of different religious imagery - but Christ’s love was certainly discernible to me. It was apparent that they all gave themselves fully to their various tasks. I assumed all the people participating in the play were the regulars, and I imagined some sign-up-sheet out back where they’d put their name down to be that week’s Kali or one of the backing dancers.

Eventually the ride came to a stop in a brighter room. There a white-haired American man who began delivering a sermon. There was wood molding and faux stained glass on every wall; I tried desperately hard to focus, not on the question ‘who in their right mind ever thought this interior design was good’, and rather on what was being said. The talk was certainly quite New-Agey, he spoke about tapping into other planes of reality. I found myself oscillating back and forth, struggling to decide if what was being said was a meaningless word salad, or something truer than that. A bit of both I supposed. “Let us awaken to these powers which slumber within.” He continued, he then made reference to the masters, to Christ, and to others I did not recognize before his concluding words…

“For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth.” Everyone that asketh, and everyone that seeketh - the word is ‘everyone!’ The spiritual teacher invites us to imagine what traits may hinder us in our ability to be open to the higher worlds: anger, selfishness, fear, and also our tendency to elevate the significance of external signifiers, external characteristics, which blind us to deeper realities. I think there is a very subtle distinction here which is very often misunderstood. There is both a sense in which such external characteristics are important, and a sense in which they are not important at all. This distinction can easily be lost by stating that we are all one in Christ, or by saying such external characteristics blind us to deeper realities. We may well surmise that such external characteristics are in fact unimportant, or entirely illusory. Are we different but one, or are we one because we are not really different at all. The distinction lies in the nuances of that sentence. Both are true in a certain sense.

I am you. I am unique. I am Kali. I am chaos. I, to steal a turn of phrase, am many, I contain multitudes.

As the preacher concluded his remarks, the word ‘Amen’ rung out. I stirred, I rolled over, I found myself in the car heading back south.