Water Memory, page 14
Nevertheless, complications ensued and resulted in the founding of Orbin’s church. He was driven partly by self-contempt, survivor-guilt, perpetrator-guilt, bystander-guilt, a whole Crayola box of guilt hues, but mostly by a vision that came to him in a dream.
He was on a small boat with Jesus, who was sleeping on some cushions in the back. The apostles were there too and were discussing the weather because they were in the middle of a big storm, and the boat was getting tossed around. Jesus kept sleeping comfortably though, until He sneezed and woke Himself up, and then started patting around on His robe looking for a Kleenex. The apostles were still distracted by the weather and didn’t notice. Jesus was just about to wipe His nose on His sleeve, but Orbin offered a Kleenex so Jesus could blow His nose, and when He did it sounded like all those trumpets they always talk about in the Bible. Then Jesus shook His head and spoke to Orbin, “Dang horsehair.” He wound up and blew His nose again, and then as the trumpets resounded, threw the Kleenex into the water with a little bit of a swishy flourish “Thanks, and ya know you really worked for the wrong side on the Mustard Seed thing, you need to do something to make up for that. And if you do, I tell you truly, that you will be blessed in Heaven and sit at my side on Judgement Day.”
Even though he was a regular churchgoer, Orbin had never once had a dream with Jesus in it, much less one in which His wishes and the consequences were so specific. So Orbin felt it best to not ignore such a gift and founded a small church on the corner of Golden State Avenue and “V” street in Bakersfield. And similar to Doug’s experience with the blog, podcast, binge-worthy series, and Broadway Musical, Orbin’s church seemed to tap into something in the global zeitgeist, and it succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.
It started out modestly in an old wrestling arena, the “Dome” as it was called locally. The Dome had started life as a cattle auction pen with an awning and some bleachers in the years before WWII. It went upscale when an enterprising professional wrestler, and occasional Hollywood stunt double, turned it into the central valley architectural marvel of its time during the war—serving and satisfying wrestling fans for several decades, long before WWE smackdowns and steroids and folding chairs. It went through several subsequent transformations, a concert venue, a Mexican Pentecostal Church, which closed when the minister died from a rattlesnake bite, but it sat vacant in its later years until resurrected by Orbin and his church.
Orbin’s church rapidly outgrew the Dome, so regular Sunday services were moved to the Bakersfield Civic Auditorium, a massive affair that resembled the Seattle Space Needle, only without the needle parts. Just the gigantic flying saucer part, squatting on Truxtun Avenue looking as if it had flown directly from the set of The Day the Earth Stood Still. However, this flying saucer could accommodate nearly 10,000 people and reached that number almost every Sunday to hear Orbin make sweet and softly spoken sermons on a variety of topics.
His sermons always began the same way. He would stand staring silently at his feet, and when the choir stopped, and the crowd was silent, he would look up at them and smile and say, “Let’s try to be logical about all this, for the Lord is not in the wind, and the Lord is not in the fire. The Lord is in a still small voice.” He would always end with a prayer for the gone, but not forgotten, lost civilization of Mustard Seed, “Who once walked among us, and will someday again, hand in hand, on God’s celestial shore. Amen.”
Orbin had grown up going to Sunrise Services that were held every Easter at the foot of the massive old wooden cross that once crowned a barren hilltop at the western edge of the Li’l Pal Heaven overlooking Highway 178. He was quite young at the time, and it seemed to him that there were thousands of people in attendance, in addition to his grandmother and an assortment of cousins. They would park on the side of the 178, get out of the warm car and walk to the foot of Calvary and then join the multitudes to sing “The Old Rugged Cross” as the sun broke the horizon.
At the time, and at his young age, Orbin didn’t realize that it wasn’t the actual cross that Jesus was crucified on. Eventually an older and helpful cousin corrected Orbin’s misconception, and confirmed that Jesus wasn’t killed on it, or even in Bakersfield, but actually a good distance away, out in the desert somewhere, way out past Mojave and closer to Boron.
But they stopped going to the old rugged cross after Gramma Spencer died, and Orbin and his cousins thereafter slept in on Easter mornings. The Sunrise Services tapered off slowly over the years, and the old rugged cross was reduced to a mere roadside curiosity to any drivers looking east from Highway 178. It was eventually removed since it fell within the boundaries of the Mustard Seed National Cemetery where such religious totems were not allowed. There hadn’t been a formal Sunrise Service in the greater Bakersfield area since the second Clinton administration, not until Orbin revived the practice.
The CRAVE Easter Sunrise Service grew quickly from the Dome’s parking lot with worshipers spilling onto the Farmer John’s Pancake House parking lot (which dramatically increased post-service pancake sales). The Pancake House eagerly anticipated the next Easter, but the CRAVE church had outgrown the neighborhood and the next Sunrise Service was conducted in Memorial Stadium on the Bakersfield Junior College campus. It was a great location since it ran east-west, enabling the rising sun to emerge over the end zone where a crane was positioned and fully extended with an old rugged cross crowning the very top.
The local ACLU protested as did the BC Student Atheist Club; however, an anonymous donor from Silicon Valley had made a generous eight-figure donation to the Junior College, so the governing board decided to permit the event in order to promote diversity and be inclusive, and they promised that any other religious group, or even anti-religious group, could use Memorial Stadium for Easter Sunrise Services too if they wanted.
Almost 20,000 people filled the stands because a rumor had swept the interwebs that a miracle was to occur, even though nobody was sure what the miracle would be or why news of it had spread so virally, but evidently forgetting things seemed to be making people more open to such possibilities. People seemed to be looking for something, something you couldn’t buy online or get on your phone or from a bot or from the Government, and Orbin and his church seemed to be addressing this underserved and ever-expanding market. The Memorial Stadium parking lot had license plates from Arizona, Nevada, and even Utah because they were all expecting a miracle.
And Orbin delivered one. As the choir sang, and the crowd looked east, past the goalpost and the crane and the cross, toward the brightening sky, the sun broke the horizon.
Lives again our glorious King! Alleluia!
Where, O death, is now thy sting? Alleluia!
The crowd squinted, some put on sunglasses, but most held up their iPhones.
Once He died our souls to save, Alleluia!
Where thy victory, O grave? Alleluia!
The sun crawled up the goalposts and then up the crane toward the crowning wooden cross perched at its tip.
Soar we now where Christ hath led, Alleluia!
Foll’wing our exalted Head, Alleluia!
And then the sun came to a complete stop. And hung there motionless, directly behind the massive wooden cross, a radiant, blinding halo of light framing and engulfing it. And all who saw it were amazed.
Made like Him, like Him we rise, Alleluia!
Ours the cross, the grave, the skies, Alleluia!
And as the choir, and now the stands, trailed off the last “Alleluia,” there was a big fucking earthquake.
The whole stadium seemed to slosh back and forth, but the sun, the crane and the crowning cross were motionless through the entire 17 seconds of the magnitude 7.3 event as if gyro-stabilized. And it was all captured by over 8,000 shaking, jerking iPhones and streaming the world over in seconds, accompanied by voices of a stadium full of people. Only they weren’t screaming in fear as tradition, and human nature would dictate, but instead it was as if all 20,000 voices had naturally and instinctively converged on some cosmic, or more probably, miracle-inspired chord.
It was indeed a miracle, albeit a local one, and only observable by the people who happened to be in Bakersfield that day, sitting in Memorial Stadium, at sunrise, looking in the right direction, and at just the right angle. To the rest of California, it was no miracle at all, just stuff flying off shelves, freeways collapsing, and people freaking out, the usual. But to the people in Memorial Stadium that day it was definitely a miracle.
The miracle was of course immediately and reflexively denounced by a number of organizations as an obvious and laughable YouTube hoax, easily faked with Premiere or Final Cut Pro or almost any opensource video editing software. Though they did have to concede that it was identically faked from multiple angles in over 8,000 separate videos that were sweeping the globe.
In keeping with the tenets of the Christ Resurrected Ascendant Victory Everlasting Church, it was later determined that there was a rational explanation for the miracle since the crane actually was gyro-stabilized and that there was an inversion layer that morning that may have created the illusion that the sun had come to a stop behind the cross. However, it didn’t really matter to the people in the stands that day, or the people viewing the video streams in the days and weeks after.
It was like one of those movies where the hero is captured by a tribe of primitives in some jungle, only he knows there’s going to be an eclipse, and tells them that he commands the sun and they should do what he says, and then when the eclipse happens, they all think he’s a god. It was kind of like that, only nobody in Memorial Stadium or on the web thought that Orbin was a god, since there was a rational explanation for the miracle. They just figured he was on to something, and they should come along for the ride.
And Orbin continued to deliver logical miracles every year that followed. Nothing as big as temporarily stopping the sun just when an earthquake happened, but still a string of noticeable rational miracles. He never planned them, they just happened, and compounded his following month on month and year on year, from the Dome, to the flying saucer on Truxtun, to Memorial Stadium, to the sprawling CRAVE campus and theme park.
Where Orbin now sat on the edge of his bed in the CRAVE Prayer Tower, wondering what miracle was mischievously lurking in the wings that morning, waiting patiently for the sun to rise.
Chapter thirty-two
Performance Art
CRAVE wasn’t a mere megachurch with a university side car. It was more of an apocalyptic theme park with over 5000 acres of attractions nestled among the folds and slopes of the lumpy hills north of the Kern River. It included reproductions of Golgotha, Gethsemane, Via Dolorosa, various seven headed beasts, flaming chariots and the like, and the Rapture with souls streaming up to Heaven. The augmented reality glasses they gave to visitors made it almost like a really good video game, only with Jesus and the Anti-Christ, who vaguely resembled Jeff Bezos. It was all great fun and evidently quite compelling since Hertell would later learn that Orbin’s ministry had gathered hundreds of millions of people in its worldwide net since its inception, many of them because of a “Mustard Seed” Duck-n-Cover app that had a dedicated and passionate worldwide following—bigger even than World of Warcraft.
The Performing Arts Center had been built into a low bluff to eco-blend with the local landscape. Kind of like one of those sod houses on the prairie scratched into the leeward side of a hill to shield the hard-scrabble homesteaders from the scourging winds. Only this one was much bigger and designed by a Frank Gehry acolyte so it looked more like a gargantuan glass and copper fish struggling out of the hillside. Some people felt it looked more like a boat. Others thought it was more like a boat-fish hybrid, while many thought it resembled a large misshapen loaf of artisanal bread or perhaps a swollen baguette. All of which were acceptable since boats and fish and bread figured prominently in the New Testament, and everyone appreciated the architectural nod to the glory of God and the suffering and sacrifice of His only begotten Son. And it looked really cool too.
The Performing Arts Center was regularly used for Sunday services, in addition to assorted popular specialty acts from Las Vegas and Branson on other days of the week. However, since it was Easter Sunday and the Sunrise Service was traditionally held in Rapture Stadium to accommodate the massive crowds, the center was empty. Empty except for the mud and debris which filled the orchestra pit and the first dozen rows of VIP seating near the front. There was a gaping hole in the north wall and a wide boulevard of muddy tracks that led toward the lobby. The motion alarms summoned security who arrived to find an assortment of people, in casual attire of the early ‘60s, gathered in the lobby, crouching near the windows, looking up, and somewhat apprehensively, into the moonlit sky.
Security had been quickly overwhelmed in the predawn hours with clamoring alarms from across the campus and adjoining theme park and worship complex as geysers, gushers, and flash floods riddled the length and breadth of the enterprise. And all of it was captured by motion tracking surveillance cameras and drones that would soon be streaming the video across the interwebs for all the world to see. The night staff at the operations center dozed through most of it, but were finally roused to a groggy state to witness the event unfolding on a hundred monitors as over 700 people emerged from the earth with the rising sun.
Orbin missed all of this excitement since his Prayer Tower was a windowless spire and completely off the grid. There was water and electricity of course, and a small bathroom, and a minibar in case he got hungry while praying, but he never did. It wasn’t a monastic statement or anything since he had spacious living quarters on campus and generally ate with the students in one of the many dining commons. And as its name would suggest, he only prayed in the Prayer Tower, and the only time he slept in it was the night before Easter.
There was no internet, or WiFi, not even a TV or a radio, just the bed he once shared with his wife of 46 years, the bed she had died in only hours shy of that first Easter Miracle of the Halted Sun & Earthquake in Memorial Stadium five Easters past. It was as good a passing as one could hope to have, and she died peacefully in her sleep a few minutes after midnight as Orbin held her hand and told her how to recognize various relatives of his once she got to Heaven.
“Gramma Spencer was a chain smoker. Don’t know if they allow smoking up there, but if you see a woman looks like Lucille Ball smoking a cigarette, that’s probly her. She’ll probly know who you are, but just in case, just tell her that you’re Butchie’s wife. Uncle Beau looked like that guy in Forbidden Planet, only he had a laugh sounded just like a machine gun, actually more like how Popeye laughs, and he wasn’t trying to be funny or anything, it’s just how he laughed…” Her hand was cold, and he knew she was gone, but he couldn’t stop talking. “He’ll be pretty easy to spot if they’re laughing about anything up there, I figure they gotta laugh sometimes, you can’t sit around all day praying, you’d never get anything done, and heck, you gotta get stuff done, even in Heaven.”
He went on like that for the rest of that night, then leaned over and kissed her hand one last time, “And Denise, when you get up there, tell’m we could use a miracle down here, nothing fancy, just noticeable, something to show people we’re not just a buncha dumbass toothless snake-shakers. Something to show that we’re… onto something.” He got up, crossed her hands over her chest, and then got dressed, called the funeral home, and went to Memorial Stadium where his wife had evidently managed to arrange the miracle-of-the-halted-sun-and-earthquake, all the way from Heaven, fresh upon her arrival there.
While some might find it creepy, even ghoulish to sleep in your beloved’s death bed, Orbin felt that taking it to the dump or trying to sell it on Craigslist would dishonor both her memory and the resultant miracle. He didn’t consider it a shrine or anything, but felt that somehow it played a hand in the miracle, and he wasn’t going to mess with that. And besides that, it was a really good bed and they’d spent many happy nights on it. So, when Prayer Tower construction was completed, he moved it in and slept in it every Easter since. And every Easter it delivered, as it would this day. He made their bed, showered and shaved, put on his golden robe, and took the elevator down to the pre-dawn campus.
He’d intended to walk to the Nicodemus Dining Commons for a cup of coffee since it had a 24/7 Starbucks for the students, and then proceed to Rapture Stadium well before sunrise to be ready for the choir and the opening prayer. In route he noticed a cluster of people standing in the headlights of an SUV interacting with several of the security staff in front the Performing Arts Center. He presumed they were some out-of-towners that missed all of the flashlight-wielding parking attendants directing traffic to event parking, and wandered onto campus and got lost. He approached the security team, who seemed to be engaged in an animated discussion with the group’s leader.
“Hey troops, I can take it from here, I’m heading up to Rapture anyway, and we can get’m a cup of coffee too if they want…”
The security chief was greatly relieved to see Orbin in his golden robe, “Pastor Orbin, it looks like these ‘Up With People’ singers got locked in the PAC somehow, and they made a bigger mess than ‘Blue Man Group’ and got the lobby all muddy and tracked up, and you can see for yourself all the mud in there…”
