Childhood trauma
Jesus Wants Me For Something
A sunbeam? Does it have to be a sunbeam?
A sunbeam, a sunbeam Jesus wants me for a su-u-u-unbeam! A sunbeam, a sunbeam I’ll be a sunbeam for him.
Hands up if you sang, forced or not, that stupid, frightening song as a child.
My mother, of blessed memory, sent us to Sunday School every Sunday. A devout Episcopalian, she wanted us out of her hair so she could partake of the Eucharist upstairs where the nice stained glass windows were.
I get it.
However
Little did she know the trauma I underwent below her feet as she attended her favorite cannibalistic ritual. I sat in a circle on the floor with about ten other five-year-olds and sang the aforementioned children’s Sunday school classic. I can still see the hands of Mrs. Who-remembers-their-kindergarden-Sunday-school-teacher’s-name-anyway as they moved across the keyboard of a mind-fuckingly out-of-tune piano. Even at age five, I knew something was desperately wrong.
It wasn’t the weirdly interfering and reinforcing patterns of the sound waves produced by those neglected piano strings that most troubled me. It was those lyrics.
I’ll be a sunbeam for him.
I sat there and thought, “What if Jesus calls me out to make good on my word?”
It was my first existential crisis. I’d been in Sunday school long enough to know you can’t say no to Jesus. What if he shows up and says, “Hi there, little boy. I heard you singing that song. I’m running low on sunbeams, so up in the sky, kid!” In that case, I guess I’d have to become a sunbeam!
A sunbeam. Let’s see. A sunbeam can’t play with blocks, pretend to be a snake, or eat ice cream. I guess it would be cool to be up in the sky, looking down on all the hills and rivers and everything, but that would get boring fast, with nothing else to do but look down. Could I even look down? Sunbeams have no eyes, and besides, they don’t last very long, do they?
Even by age five, I had observed sunbeams as they came and went. I’ll be left with maybe five minutes of life and then what? Whisked off to heaven surely, but I’ll miss my mommy!
I asked my mother about this. She must not have realized how literal-minded I was, but she must have thought it incredibly cute. As I remember it, she laughed a little then explained that Jesus didn’t want me to go up in the sky and be an actual sunbeam. Rather, he wanted me to be like a sunbeam, that is, to help people feel happy the way a sunbeam does.
I was so relieved! Crisis averted! I could be a sunbeam for Him and live to see the light of another day!
Parents, specifically you Christian parents, be sure your children have some notion of metaphor and simile before you send them to Sunday school. There is a lot of that sort of thing in religion. They will need the intellectual armor provided by an understanding of those concepts if they are to withstand the rigors of Sunday school theology.
Special thanks to Carol Lennox for the inspiration, and to Stephanie Wilson for her editing prowess.
Want more BOFunny? Subscribe to my email blast!
Not ready for such depth of commitment? Check out this sampler:
The above are friend links, so if you want to check out many more of the hilarious scribblings of some of my favorite people using the picture link at the bottom of this, you may need to sign up for Medium. You might as well do me a solid use this link:
Wasn’t that easy? Now you’re all set to click this link:
