Amazing Grace and the Grand Tetons

I remember looking at the picture of the Grand Tetons on the church fan and trying to go there in my mind as my father’s sermon went on and on and on. The snow-capped peaks looked cool and inviting inside the stultifying sanctuary of one of the many white clapboard Methodist churches far from town down a red dirt Georgia road. After exploring the mountain, I would flip the fan over and read the funeral home ad on the back, again. I had heard all my father’s sermons many times. I spent more time in church growing up than was good for me.

Around age fourteen, some of the proselytizing had sunk in and my fevered adolescent brain became obsessed with the idea of eternity and driven mad by Amazing Grace. I remember lying in bed, trying to go to sleep, not able to stop thinking about eternity, not able to stop thinking about the last verse of Amazing Grace. 

When we’ve been there ten thousand years
Bright shining as the sun
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we’ve first begun

To me, this meant heaven would be church. All day. Every day. Singing. Bored out of my mind. For ten thousand years. Then another ten thousand years. And on and on. It made me crazy. I decided hell might be preferable because at least it would be more interesting.

They say recovering Catholics have nothing on recovering preacher’s kids.