Charaz (noun) \shuh-rahz\ — Grape juice used in place of wine in some protestant communions.
Example: After sitting through the sermon with the rambunctious triplets while visiting her in-laws, Peggy had looked forward to a shot of wine during the Lord’s Supper, only to discover the Church of Christ served charaz.
Can you use charaz in a sentence?
Growing up, I never expected to live over 800 miles away from my family, yet here I am in Atlanta and they remain in Texas. We talk on the telephone and I see them at Christmas, but there are so many other holidays that are usually spent with family, it’s easy to feel alone.
It didn’t take long for 2Fs family to adopt me after I moved to Atlanta in 1996. I really didn’t think there people still existed who would invite strangers over to family gatherings, but that’s exactly what they do. And they keep inviting me back, even though they know how weird I am, to share their holiday meals with them.
Tonight, it was a smaller gathering, just 2Fs, his parents, his older sister, his brother-in-law, and Rose, a fellow transplant, like myself, who has unofficially been made part of the clan. The grandkids have married and started their own families and are in California and North Carolina. Being the youngest at the table, a mere 45, I was concerned I would be forced to hunt Easter eggs, but they let me off the hook. Instead, we just chatted about what to do when a monk wanders into your office after cutting his finger off with a circular saw, how to respond when the vet informs you your Cocker Spaniel has torn her ACL and her football career is over, and how one should react when entering the train station and an elderly lady in Sunday best suddenly points at you and screams, “Fornicator!”
In addition, we tried to remember who was friends with whom on Facebook and how to find one another on the Facebook app on our iPhones to send friend requests. Evidently, I’ll friend anybody! They also got a kick out of my virtual bubble wrap app.
The evening ended with 2Fs’ mom handing out our Easter baskets. That’s what makes it real, isn’t it? When a woman who didn’t give birth to you hands you a basket filled with plastic grass, jellybeans and milk chocolate eggs.
After going to church with 2Fs this morning and hearing everyone talk about how Christ has risen, it’s inspiring to be reminded that there are still people who act like Jesus is watching without trying to impress Him.
Have you been adopted by another family?
Once a month, 2Fs’ small group at his church meets at our house to discuss manly things. He always invites me to sit in, but I always feel like a poser. I don’t have any great spiritual insights. In my mind, God created dark chocolate and it was good. What more do I need to contemplate?
Anyway, one evening, the member to my left was sharing a particularly emotional story, so I tried not to stare at him and looked straight ahead. Meanwhile, 2Fs, who was sitting opposite of me, suddenly got this strange expression on his face. It was somewhere between being abducted by aliens and realizing you’re not going to get dinner before the anal probe and Armageddon before it’s time to remove your teeth-whitening strip.
Curiosity, getting the best of me, I cut my eyes to my left, but I didn’t see anything. I was about to bring my eyes back to the front when I saw it: a large clump of half-digested dry cat food that Kona artfully threw up on the back of the couch, almost exactly in the middle between my head and the man to my left. The color, remarkably, matched the color and the pattern of te sofa. My eyes met Jeff’s and now I understood.
Obviously, when you’re entertaining, the last thing you want to do is draw attention to an unsightly situation. Secondly, you don’t want to interrupt someone who’s spilling his guts to say, “That’s a fascinating sidelight, but could I ask you to turn your head to the right so I can clean up that spot of cat sick near your ear?”
What were we going to do?
As soon as the man to my left finished his story, I said, “Let us pray.” Everyone stared at me, but then bowed their heads and closed their eyes. I asked 2Fs to lead us in prayer while I snagged a napkin off the coffee table and carefully grabbed the glob of vomit, wadded it up, and hid it between the palms of my hands just as 2Fs said, “Amen.”
My friend Trixie and I once took a class at church where we met a middle-aged man who was a nice guy yet obviously did one drug too many back in the seventies.
One Sunday when I had stayed home, sick, Trixie called to check on me that afternoon. “Guess who I saw at church this morning.”
“Um … God?” I said.
“Well, I suppose He was there, but I meant a person–not the Supreme Ruler of the Universe.”
“I give. Tell me.”
“You remember Seventies Guy? Well, he came to church today wearing a Superman costume.”
I tapped the receiver of the phone. “Did you say a Superman costume?”
““Yeah, blue tights, red underwear, boots, and cape.”
““Why would he wear a Superman costume to church?”
““Well, after the service, I asked him that, and he said he was looking through his closet that morning and just felt like he wanted to wear something different today. That’s when he saw the Superman costume at the far end.”
I let the details settle in. “You know, I have to respect that. That’s cool.”
““I know,” Trixie said. “I wish I had the guts to just wear a Wonder Woman costume to church on a random day in April.”
Ever since then, whenever I feel stale in some area of my life, I ask myself, How could I bring a little Superman into this? I haven’t donned a cape yet, but it’s helped me to bring a freshness into the choices I’ve made.
How could you bring a little Superman into a stale corner of your own life?
God announced yesterday that He plans to retire at the end of the year from His position as Supreme Ruler of the Universe. “I’ve been at this gig for long time and I just can’t do it, anymore,” Gold told reporters at a press conference. “I knew it was time to quit when I realized that I really don’t like people. I mean, I give them ten measly commandments and they still lie, kill, and covet their neighbor’s ass–interpret that as you will–and that whole whole Chick-Fil-A business! Holy moly! I’ve said for years, ‘Eat more fish.’”
Questioned as to why He didn’t unleash His wrath upon humankind, God replied, “You just can’t turn anyone into a pillar of salt these days without some people getting upset and staging a lick-in. The next thing you know, someone’s taken a picture with her iPhone and tweeted, Guess what the Big Kahuna’s done now? #OMFG.”
When asked about his future plans, God said, “I plan to travel: the Grand Canyon, the Great Barrier Reef, Euro Disney. I know I created them all, but I’d like to experience them as just a tourist. I also plan to take up water colors, watch reruns of the Mary Tyler Moore Show, and maybe take some trombone lessons. I’m also intrigued by Zumba.”
Affirmations are statements said out loud of something that someone wants to manifest in his or her life. Here are the top ten funniest affirmations that I overheard at a new age retreat:
01. Oh … my … goddess … look at the size of his second chakra …
02. I am now willing to forgive that @#%*.
03. I am prosperous and one step ahead of the repo man.
04. I am open to glorious vibrant health–or winning a free tummy tuck.
05. I accept that I need to learn to like myself before I can attract a loving partner, but I’m also receptive to a regular booty call until I get there.
06. I affirm that my husband now puts the toilet seat down when he uses the bathroom at night, so I can sit on the toilet in the dark in confidence.
07. I surround myself with a spiritual teflon coating and dysfunctional people just slide out of my life.
08. I visualize macaroni & cheese for everyone.
09. I and my big boobs now attract an attractive, sensitive, blind man who likes to listen.
10. I love my anus.
Celebrity Buddhist Judi Carlisle wants the Buddha to get up and move his butt. “I’m as objective as the next Buddhist,” Carlisle said, “but I believe that with the obesity problem in the United States it’s difficult to motivate tubby Americans to walk away from the all-you-can-eat steakhouse, pick up a lotus, and gold leaf the Buddha when he has a sizable booty himself.”
Carlisle is best known for her role in the B-Movie Piece of My Heart, which is about star-crossed lovers trapped by a hurricane in a leper colony infiltrated by the undead and was advertised with the tag line: “Zombies are everywhere–literally.” She went on to achieve further fame with a poorly lit sex tape, a $500-per-day cocaine habit, and a wardrobe malfunction at the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards. She soon found herself blacklisted in Hollywood, but then discovered salvation in Buddhism and strawberry-seaweed smoothies.
Having recently lost 20 lbs., Carlisle opened her eyes in meditation one day and noticed the love handles on the Buddha. “I thought to myself, ‘He can’t be happy carrying that extra weight around.’”
Fellow Buddhists and Carlisle’s critics claim that she’s missing the point of enlightenment and she shoud wake up and smell the incense.
Carlisle remains steadfast in her belief. “Oh, right! Don’t look at my fat ass because I’m spiritual and perfect. I know on the inside he’s thinking, ‘One day I’d really like to wear hot pants.’ That’s how I felt, too.”
The former B-movie starlet believes that Buddha needs a new image. “Come on, they’ve rebranded everyone from Mr. Clean to Betty Crocker. Why can’t Buddha get an update? I picture him as sporty, yet casual–definitely more active, perhaps with a goatee and a cowboy hat.”
This morning, MiMi Tate, 22, an office temp and devout Buddhist, attempted to self-immolate herself in protest in front of Carlisle’s home while dressed as a birthday cake. “I was on a my lunch break from a job standing outside a bakery and waving to passersby,” Tate said. However, whenever she lit herself, pedestrians kept blowing her candles out.
Other critics have attributed Carlisle’s attempt to slim down the Buddha as a publicity stunt to get viewers to tune in to her new reality TV show, Judi in the Lotus Position, where Carlisle meditates on camera with her eyes closed for 22 minutes. Early reviews have described the show in one word: boring.
My parents really deserve a Purple Heart for raising me. I wasn’t a holy terror, but I was, at times, a force to be reckoned with. To be fair to myself, I never set the house on fire–just myself–but that’s another story. My mom and dad lived in a state of anxious anticipation because they never knew what was going to come out of my life in front of other people.
I can recall accompanying my mother to H.E.B. when we lived in Waco, Texas. Every week my mother and I went down the same aisles of the grocery store and picked up the same things. When my mother changed her pattern, I would question why. I was probably about five and we were on the bath & beauty aisle. Trying to be helpful, I picked up large box of Kotex tampons and yelled, while running toward my mother, “Hey, Mom, do you need any Kotex?” My mother said an elderly lady further down the aisle clutched her shopping cart and almost fell into it. Mama quickly explained in her We-Don’t-Do-That-at-Church that she was well-stocked at home. I didn’t know what Kotex were; I just knew that my mother often bought them.
When I was a teenager, we went to a family reunion. I found myself sitting next to my dad’s cousin, whom I’d never met, and trying to think of something to say to her. My folks never gave me lessons on making small talk, so I quickly searched my mind for something of relevance to share. I recalled that earlier that week I had caught Charles Fox on The Tonight Show, so I announced, “Did you know the guy who sings the theme song for Love Boat once went to a nude beach?” My dad’s cousin laughed nervously, excused herself, and avoided me the rest of the day. I wasn’t trying to be provocative, I was just trying to make conversation.
And there was the time I asked my grandmother if she had sex with my step-grandfather in front of my uncle (her son). I will give props to Memaw, though, she answered the question, but later told me she was mortified to answer such a question in front of her son. I thought, Well, why did you answer the question, then? Again, I don’t have a fetish for geriatric lovemaking, I was simply trying to understand. I had only recently learned about sex, which struck me as having a lot in common with the movie Alien. I couldn’t fathom why anyone would let someone else stick anything inside their body. One minute you’re having lunch and the next, a baby is exploding out of your chest. Why would anyone want to do that?
It’s almost been forty years since I almost caused that old lady to faint on the feminine hygiene aisle of H.E.B., and it still seems like the only time I open my mouth is to change feet.
Recently, a friend’s daughter was catching a ride back to college with a man who was a friend of a friend. “Melissa said he’s a really nice man,” my friend said, more for her benefit, it seemed, than to justify her decision to me.
Before I knew it, I heard myself say, “You know, Ted Bundy was supposedly a really nice guy too, except for being a serial killer and bludgeoning all those sorority girls to death.” The expression on my friend’s face told me that my mouth had struck again.
I’ve never been fond of the marketing of New Year’s Eve as the Greatest Show on Earth every December 31, because it usually fails to live up to its promise. Case in point, one year I agreed to spend New Year’s Eve at the Crescent Hotel in Dallas. It seemed like 20 of us from the Tarrant County Junior College South Campus Theater Department pulled our money together to rent one room. My best friend Kent came with me, and we were disappointed to discover that the evening had turned out to be sitting around and watching Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve on TV and drinking cheap beer.
We had been under the impression that the gang was going out to a Fish Dance, a club in Dallas that–according to the radio commercial–promised you could “dance your bass off.” In addition, I had turned 21 during the previous September, and I was eager to go to a 21+ club where I could belly up to the bar and order watered down refreshing adult beverage in a plastic cup. As the boys began to play quarters, and the girls began to critique Gloria Estefan’s ensemble, Kent and I told the gang that we were stepping out for some fish sticks and we would be back later. It was already eleven o’clock, so we had an hour to get to Fish Dance. How hard could that be?
At the time, I didn’t know Dallas very well, so Kent slipped behind the wheel of my yellow 1971 Volkswagon Super Beetle with the factory sunroof. I should have recalled that Kent was not known for his sense of direction, either. Even now I can remember the thorns of the brambles biting into my skin and the snarling of the pack of dogs that chased us on our bicycles after taking Kent’s short cut off the county road to our neighborhood.
Under normal circumstances, radio advertisements for Fish Dance were heard during every commercial break. However, as we monitored the radio waves when we needed to hear one for the exact street address, none were to be found. Meanwhile, Kent drove us from the Quadrangle to Highland Park to Oak Lawn and back again, desperately hoping that we would come upon the club. The clock kept ticking. As we passed the fountain at Turtle Creek again, which, by this time, was filled with suds overflowing onto the asphalt from New Year’s Eve pranksters, I convinced Kent to pull over so we could ask for directions.
“Maybe we should just go back to the hotel,” Kent suggested.
“NO!” I said. “I read that whatever you’re doing at midnight on New Year’s Eve is an indication as to what the new year holds for you, and my new year will not be about cheap beer, quarters, and Miami Sound Machine!”
“Okay, okay, I’ll ask for directions.”
As Kent pulled into a strip mall on what was probably Lemon Avenue, I recalled my last overnight experience with my theater friends. Our production of Biloxi Blues had advanced to the semi-finals of a college play competition. I woke up in the middle of the night with Chase squeezing my pecs and calling me his girlfriend’s name in his sleep. Going back to the hotel was not an option.
I waited beside the car as Kent went inside an unmarked club. Even though there were less than 10 minutes until midnight, I still had hope that we would be in the middle of the dance floor, shaking our basses to Bananarama, Erasure, and the Pet Shop Boys before the clock struck twelve. In the midst of my daydreaming, two Hispanic girls with kinky mullets approached me.
“Happy New Year, chico!” They offered me a bottle in brown paper bag, which I politely declined. “What’s wrong, chico? Is our Mad Dog not good enough for you?”
“It’s not that,” I said. “I’m saving myself for Fish Dance.”
The two girls exchanged a bewildered look, then checked their watches. “I don’t think you’re going to make it.”
The last bit of denial deserted me as my stomach did a flip.
Kent returned and the Hispanic girls wandered off.
“It’s Plan B Time,” Kent announced. “We’re nowhere near Fish Dance.”
I opened the passenger door of my VW and collapsed into the seat. “This totally sucks. I hate my life!”
“I’m really sorry.” Kent leaned against the side of my car. “We only have a few minutes until midnight. What about this place?”
I glanced up at the plain building with darkened windows and no sign. “What is it?”
“Funny you should ask,” Kent said. “It’s an underage Hispanic gay bar.” He watched me for a moment, perhaps for signs that I might take my own life there in the parking lot. “Well …”
“I’m still processing all the adjectives in your description,” I said. “So … I can’t have my watered down refreshing adult beverage in a little plastic cup; we’re going to be the only white people in the whole club; and …”
“And what?”
I blew out a long sigh. “I just wanted to dance my bass off. Is that too much to ask for?”
“You know, the music’s pretty good inside,” Kent said. “They were playing Information Society.”
I weighed my options. I could either spend my New Year’s Eve feeling sorry for myself in the parking lot of an underage Hispanic gay bar in God only knew where in Dallas, or I could go inside and try to have a good time with my best friend. After giving it some thought, I decided that if where I was and what I was doing at midnight determined the rest of my year, I knew where I’d rather be. “How much time do we have left?”
Kent checked his Swatch. “About three minutes.”
I locked the car and slammed the door. “Come one, then, let’s go show the underage Hispanic gay kids how to ring in the new year.”
As we passed the two Hispanic girls with the kinky mullets, I took a swig from their bottle in the brown paper bag. Sometimes, you just have to pretend the Mad Dog is champagne and move on.
As a child, I was always suspicious of Jesus. I mean, I know he’s the Son of God and loves all the little children of the world, but it’s not like he created the world in seven days or parted the Red Sea. In my mind, God was the Big Kahuna, and that’s Whom I was taught to pray to bless Mama and Daddy and, I suppose, my big sister who was sometimes mean to me, too.
I suppose it started with the rolling papers I found in the back of a Volkswagen Bug that my dad bought to fix up for my mom. “Put those yellow papers down and go wash your hands,” my dad told me. Naturally, I had to ask why. “Because they’re yellow papers and they’re bad, that’s why.” Again, I had to ask why. “Because hippies use them, that’s why.” So then I had to ask what a hippie was. “Hippies are men with long hair and beards who wear sandals. They don’t work and talk about love and peace.” My father leaned down and looked me in the eye. “You should stay away from them.” Obviously, being a hippie was a bad thing.
Some time later I remember being in Sunday school. It must have been shortly before Easter, because we were cutting palm fronds from green construction paper for when Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. Our teacher had just finished passing out those little butter ring cookies in the shape of a flower. It was fashionable, at the time, to slip the cookie onto one’s pinkie and nibble it until it was all gone.
So, I was cutting palm fronds with safety scissors with one hand, and nibbling a cookie on the pinkie of my other hand, when our teacher held up an illustration of Jesus entering Jerusalem on a donkey. In a flash, I noticed that Jesus had long hair and a beard and he wore sandals. Furthermore, he didn’t work because he was too busy traveling around with his disciples to preach about love and peace. My blood ran cold. I felt my head start to spin, and I reached out to brace myself from falling over. My butter cookie ring shattered as my tiny hand hit the table. Suddenly, I realized the truth: Jesus was a hippie!
Even though I was only five or six, I can remember feeling quite paranoid when my mother picked me up and escorted me to the auditorium for the main church service. My father and older sister were there. Daddy smiled at me and I quickly smiled back. I couldn’t let on that I knew the truth. Didn’t my father realize that Jesus was bad? That he was a hippie? And then near the end of the service, the Lord’s Supper was served, and the ushers passed around collection plates with saltine crackers in them, which the preacher said was the body of Christ. If it wasn’t bad enough that Jesus was a hippie, now I was expected to grow up and eat him. It blew my little pre-kindergarten mind.
There was a period where we changed churches several times, and then we didn’t attend regularly for a number of years. During that time, hippies sort of disappeared from the media. I remember that I was wrestling with some sort of adolescent trauma, when a proselytizing schoolmate suggested that I turn my problem over to Jesus. I remember laughing and saying, “Why in the world would I want to do a thing like that?”
“Because Jesus is the Son of God,” she said.
I shook my head and explained to that silly girl that God was the CEO of the Universe and Jesus was just the Manger on Duty. “If I have a problem, I certainly have no intention of messing around with middle management,” I said. “I’m going straight to the top!”
“You’re going straight to hell,” she said. “Unless you accept Jesus Christ into your heart as your personal savior.”
I was confused. I thought, Gee whiz, you don’t go to church for a couple of years, and suddenly, it becomes the Jesus Fan Club!
When I got home, I asked my dad about it. He tried to explain the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost to me.
“I thought you said that there is no such thing as ghosts,” I said.
“They’re not,” my dad replied.
“So how can there be a Holy Ghost?
“Well, he’s not a ghost, really, he’s more of a Holy Spirit.”
“Isn’t that just another word for ghost?” I asked.
“Okay, so there is such a thing as a ghost, but the Holy Spirit is a good ghost.”
“Like Caspar?”
“Yeah, like Caspar.”
“Why did you lie to lie to me, then, Daddy?”
“I didn’t like to you,” he said.
“You told me there was no such thing as ghosts!”
“I meant like in haunted houses,” he said.
“You also told me there was a Santa Claus, and that turned out to be a lie, too,” I said, crossing my arms in front of me. “For all I know, you’re lying about this Holy Ghost business, too!”
And the next thing I knew, I was grounded because my father had lied to me about ghosts–and Santa Claus. Maybe I still blame Jesus for that. I should have never trusted that hippie …