A Memoir in Verse
I. Childhood, 1970s
Once, in the 1970s,
I was small beneath the tall songs.
The congregation sang with their whole bodies -
shoulders back, heads lifted,
every syllable pressing upward
like birds startled from a field.
The pews were hard,
but they taught me endurance.
The hymnal was heavy in my lap,
and I traced its notes with my finger
as if I could learn the secret
of heaven by touch alone.
After service,
we ate together:
fried chicken on paper plates,
Jell-O bright as stained glass,
children weaving between chairs
while the adults laughed and prayed.
It was more than food,
it was the table of Christ
spread wide enough to hold us all.
II. Prayer
I prayed - oh, how I prayed.
Morning before school,
the house still wrapped in silence.
Evening after homework,
the lamplight falling
on the open Bible at my desk.
I prayed on gravel roads,
under sycamores,
in my bed with the window cracked,
the summer crickets keeping time.
Prayer became the marrow of me -
not only words but breath,
not only asking but listening,
like holding a seashell
to my ear and hearing the ocean
speak my name.
III. The Word
The Bible was my field guide.
I underlined the rivers of its language,
drew arrows toward promises,
folded pages like maps.
The prophets thundered;
the psalms wept;
the Gospels sang like water
spilling from a rock.
I drank and drank.
When I wanted more,
I turned to Spurgeon,
Finney, Torrey -
their sentences like hammers,
their exhortations
a bell ringing in my ribs.
They taught me the fire of holiness,
the weight of eternity,
the nearness of God.
IV. The Voices on Tape
Sermons filled my room.
Oliver B. Greene. Jack Hyles.
Others whose names were inked
in the back of my Bible.
Cassette tapes spun and clicked,
voices breaking through the static
as if the Holy Spirit Himself
rode the magnetic ribbon.
"Win the lost. Live clean.
Stand firm. Be ready."
I listened while doing chores,
while sprawled on the floor,
while drifting toward sleep.
The urgency in their tones
made me tremble and glow:
every moment mattered,
every soul was on the edge of forever.
V. Teenage Faith
Theology was not abstract.
It followed me into the school hallways,
sat across from me at lunch,
hovered over my shoulder
when I thought about girls,
when I dreamed of escape.
It reminded me:
You are set apart.
Be holy. Be bold.
Do not love the world.
At times it was heavy,
a stone in my pocket.
At times it was shelter,
a light in my chest.
Always it was near.
While others went out laughing
on Saturday nights,
I sat at home
with the Bible open,
the cassettes hissing forward,
my notebook filling with verses.
I was not lonely -
I was surrounded.
I was a young soldier,
my armor still shining,
my heart alight with purpose.
VI. Revival Services
Then the revivals came.
A week, sometimes two -
the preacher fiery-eyed,
the choir swelling like a river in flood.
We filed into the sanctuary each night
as though eternity
had scheduled an appointment.
The altar was a place of weeping,
but also of joy,
the kind that cracks the ribs open
so the heart can see God clearly.
I went forward again and again,
my knees pressed deep into the carpet,
the pastor’s hand heavy on my shoulder.
It seemed that heaven
was only a breath away -
that if we prayed hard enough,
sang loud enough,
repented deep enough,
the sky itself might open
and Christ would step through.
VII. Bible Camp
Summer carried us to Bible camp -
buses full of children and teenagers,
luggage rattling in the aisles,
the air alive with anticipation.
There were games and pranks,
late-night whispers in bunks,
but always the sermons.
Always the altar call.
Even under the stars
by the lake’s dark mirror,
the air pressed with eternity.
I remember the songs by the campfire,
voices cracking with youth,
hands raised against the night sky.
The flames swayed,
and for a moment
I thought heaven was leaning down
to kiss us on the forehead.
VIII. Youth Group
In youth group we carried our Bibles
like shields and swords.
We memorized verses,
played games that pointed always
back to Christ.
We were awkward, half-grown,
but earnest -
debating doctrine,
mock-preaching sermons,
laying out futures
where we would win the world for Jesus.
We laughed, we sang,
we prayed with our whole bodies.
And yes, sometimes
we secretly longed for freedom,
for the music on the radio,
for the reckless world
we were warned against.
But in those rooms,
with folding chairs and hymnals,
we believed we were chosen.
And in some way -
we were.
IX. Doubt
But doubt is patient.
It waits in the corners of prayer,
in the silence after sermons,
in the unanswered questions
that grow louder at night.
What about the children
who never heard?
What about the verses
that contradicted?
What about the ache in me
that no altar call
could fully soothe?
I carried these like secret stones,
hidden in my pockets,
even as I sang,
even as I preached to myself
the old words of certainty.
X. The Fall
It happened not all at once
but like a slow crack spreading in glass.
I met a girl.
I loved her more than holiness,
more than Sunday nights,
more than the trembling edge of eternity.
I left.
Left my family, my church,
the Bible on the desk,
the tapes hissing in their boxes.
I walked out carrying only my hunger.
There were weeks, months -
I can’t count them now -
of drifting.
Of being homeless in the world
I had been taught to stand apart from.
Sleeping where I could,
living on scraps.
Sometimes, when no one was watching,
I’d slip into the church bus at night,
curl up on the vinyl seat
with my jacket for a pillow,
the smell of hymnals and diesel
mixing like a ghost of my former life.
I was too ashamed
to ask for help or forgiveness.
Too ashamed even to speak God’s name.
I imagined the cross like a door
I had locked from the inside.
And outside -
my family, my church,
Christ Himself waiting.
I thought:
if I went back
I’d be crushed with judgment.
I thought:
I’m unworthy,
I’ve ruined it.
So I stayed away,
and the shame grew thick,
a second skin.
XI. What Could Have Been
Sometimes now,
I think of what might have been
if I had simply gone to the cross -
not in a church,
but right there on the sidewalk,
in the dark of that bus,
with diesel smell and hymn-ghosts around me.
If I had whispered even a single prayer -
Help me.
Forgive me.
Hold me.
Would the whole sky have cracked open?
Would my family have run to meet me
like the father of the prodigal?
Would Christ have knelt beside me,
touching my shoulder,
saying, I never left?
I’ll never know
the shape of the life
that branched off
the moment I turned away.
But I carry it like a shadow
beside the life I live now.
XII. Adulthood, Memory
How I miss it -
that abundance,
that sense that every breath
was woven into eternity.
The urgency, the fire,
the trembling certainty
that Christ was near
and calling, always calling.
Now the map is folded away,
creased, worn, perhaps unreadable.
But I carry the sound of it -
like the echo of a hymn
long after the pianist
has lifted her hands.
I do not know how to return.
Perhaps I cannot.
Perhaps faith changes its shape
as the years unspool.
But I know this:
Christ is still here,
woven through memory,
woven through loss,
woven through my very breath.
XIII. Benediction
And yet…
even Mary Oliver says
the world goes on.
Geese still wing their way south,
stars still wheel across the night,
grace still moves
like an unseen river
beneath the ground of everything.
Even now,
decades later,
I feel the pulse of Christ
in the memory,
in the loss,
in the hope I can’t quite kill.
The cross is still there.
The map may be folded,
but the road remains.
Every prayer I ever prayed
still trembles in the air somewhere,
like a bird not yet landed.
So I pray -
not with certainty,
not with fire,
but with a trembling hope:
Lord, let me kneel again.
Lift the shame
like a heavy coat from my shoulders.
Make me a child again,
singing under the tall songs,
held in the fellowship of Your love.
And if I have wandered,
still -
let me find You in the fields,
in the laughter of children,
in the sound of hymns
rising like startled birds.
Amen.
GB Shaw Jr.
Date Lost
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