Page 2 of The Secret Shape of Worship
Slipping discreetly away, Mina squatted down and folded the thin rail of his body into a small, merciful square of shade on one side of the boulders, just out of view of the group. From his tucked-away spot, he watched them, standing in cliquey little clumps, laughing easily, and completely disregarding everything Professor Cornelius was saying.
“The Temple of Abydos. A necropolis constructed by Seti the First in honor of Osiris, the Egyptian god of death and destruction. Over here, you can see the pillars forming the enormous edifice of the entire structure.” The round, red-faced professor bellowed over the restless din of students, and Mina thought he looked like raw meat being cooked medium well under the blazing sun.
Turning away, he leaned his back against the cool stone, pulling his legs up to his chest. This was one of those rare moments when he was glad for his diminutive size. Though 22 years old, he was still occasionally mistaken for a high school student, and more than once on trips between home and school, flight attendants had asked him if he was flying alone or with his parents. Mina’s response was always to scrunch up his eyebrows and throw back his shoulders to try and make himself taller. But based on the smiles that inevitably followed, he figured it probably just made him look like a pouty child. But today, in the shade of the ancient boulders, he was grateful.
Mina sighed and closed his eyes. What was he even doing here? He didn’t belong. He didn’t care about Biblical studies like the rest of his classmates. He was pretty sure he didn’t even believe in God anymore.
Settling deeper into the coolness of the stone at his back, he let the lazy melody of an old hymn gather at the back of his throat, the vibration in his chest like a weighted blanket, calming and grounding:
As I went down in the river to pray; Studying about that good old way; And who shall wear the robe and crown; Good Lord, show me the way…
Mina had been singing as long as he could remember, mostly in secret. His mother was the only one he ever let hear him. Head of the choir, she’d been the one to teach Mina to control his voice. To reach down deep, pull it forward, and push it to the other side of the room.
As a general rule, Mina preferred to keep to himself. To blend. Not to call attention. But singing, whether alone or with his mother, was the one and only exception. In those moments, he felt twenty feet tall and reveled in that feeling of stretching beyond his limits. Of filling a room with a version of himself that made sense.
“If you let your father hear that voice, he’d have you leading Sunday worship,” his mother said once.
“Yeah, ok.”
“I mean it!”
“You’re so not making the case you think you are,” he answered, wagging his head and lowering his gaze in that playful way that came so naturally but that he tried to keep tamped down around other people. He knew his mannerisms made the folks in their conservative social circles look at him sideways and wonder. But with his mother, for better or worse, Mina was much less guarded.
“I don’t know where you get that sass,” she’d said, clicking her tongue against her teeth and pushing an errant blond curl out of his eyes.
“I learned it all on my own. I can teach you sometime if you want,” he’d said with that cheeky grin.
O brothers let's go down; Let's go down, come on down; Come on brothers let's go down; Down in the river to pray…
Just as Mina had finally felt the sweat stop rolling down his back, a rock landed near his feet with a loud crack.
“Mina! Come get back with the group.” He pried one eye open. Devon, the teacher’s aide and apparently self-appointed chaperone, was waving at him and gesturing to the students who were finally organizing themselves in the general semblance of a line at the base of the huge steps leading up toward the necropolis.
Mina squeezed his eyes against the sight of his insufferable classmate bouncing up and down on his toes like a golden retriever in khakis and dug his fingers painfully into the rock beneath him. He hated being ordered around. As a small act of defiance, Mina didn’t move right away and instead took a slow, deep breath, reaching up and running his long fingers through the tangle of his loose golden curls. And then, so excessively slowly that he knew it would make Devon want to jump out of his skin, he pressed himself up from the ground and stepped back out into the oppressive sunlight.
“Geez, you’re slow, dude.” Devon waved one last time before rushing back off like a border collie rounding up a flock of sheep.
Mina snorted under his breath. The great thing about being so quiet was that he got away with being kind of a snarky asshole without people actually realizing it. Even so, he knew he should work on it. His aversion to authority was partly how he ended up here in the first place—both as a seminary student and burning to death in the middle of the desert. Church was the family business. His father was a pastor, and his mother headed the women’s ministry.
“Maybe you should find a job in the secular world,” his father had told him one night while Mina was in his room waffling over his seminary application, a feather-light grip on his shoulder like his son was some delicate thing. “The Lord may call you to ministry one day, but I’m not sure you’re ready. No shame intaking some time, living at home, and working at Starbucks or something while you figure it all out.”
Mina had ground his teeth and glared a hole into his father’s back as he’d walked out, the discussion clearly over in his mind.They’ll know you don’t belong,his father might as well have said.They’ll know why.
Mina had submitted his application the next day.
Though never discussed, Mina knew why his father didn’t think he was ready. It wasn’t a place for someone with his particular affliction.
Since he was in elementary school, Mina had tried to keep his mannerisms under control. To match the way the other boys moved and talked. But sometimes he slipped up. A rushed hand to his mouth when he found something particularly funny, his voice slipping too high, a too-loose wrist, female friends that never managed to become anything more.
Mina knew his father was just waiting and watching in his periphery for the day when a real son would finally crack out of the effeminate shell that he didn’t understand. A son whofit.
But his mother could sense that his struggle ran deeper than some surface thing that he would one day grow out of, and so she prayed for him constantly. He was convinced that the V-shaped lines between her green eyes were put there by him. Deep, desperate canyons of hope. It was part of the reason, despite his father’s sideways glances and noncommittal grunts whenever the subject came up, she had encouraged Mina to enroll.
“It’ll be good for you. That place. Those students,” she’d said, in her soft, non-domineering way, eyes cast down. The way she knew his father expected. The way Mina wished she wouldn’t. “I just want you to be happy. I just want you to be whole.” Her words cut short like she’d caught a bone with her back teeth right before it lodged itself in her windpipe.
He didn’t have the heart to tell her he didn’t think he’d ever be both.
But he’d made a silent promise to be someone who at least made her proud. He’d pressed a kiss to her forehead, hoping to loosen the fist she clutched to her chest where he knew worry curled itself like a snake, pressing on her breastbone.
