Creative license

Sam held her hand out the window and twirled her hand in the blowing wind. It was tough to think of a response that wasn't cliche. She stirred a pile of adjectives over and over through her head, searching for different things she could say that no one else had said. It would be difficult to be honest and original at this point-- especially when she'd never had this conversation with anyone before. The irony was unbearable, and it was against her. For fear of allowing the silence to pan into awkwardness, she gave up and let it fly.

"It all sounds the same. Seriously, I can't tell one song from another. I don't know if they all eat lunch together or grew up together or were in the same band... or whatever. I can't tell them apart."

Ugh. Here it comes.

"Well, if you listened to it more often, there are nuances. I guess I just listen to it more, and I can pick out different things about them that make them good or bad," Taylor replied, while changing lanes.

This was not a satisfactory answer. No way was it only good when you listened more often, but Taylor seemed convinced. That works for weird food you've never had before, the kind that is vile on the first bite but everyone else still seems to live on it-- but it doesn't work for worship music. At least it shouldn't. Connecting with God can't be an acquired taste, can it? There was one other problem. Sam decided to give the second barrel a go.

"At least they could use different words. I feel like our songs have had the same words for two thousand years. Except for some hymns by people who were-- I dunno, creative-- every single lyric is post-consumer content." The addition of a sideways method of saying recycled on the end of her argument gave her a smile. She felt a warm hum in her chest that told her she was on a roll. "Frankly, it's annoying. I know they call God 'holy, holy, holy' in the Bible, but really, don't you think there's another word for 'holy'?"

Taylor's face shifted into a surrendering half-smile. "There's really no other word for what holy means. That's just the language of worship. We work with what we're given. It was good enough for David."

"David didn't speak English, Taylor."

"My point's still valid."

"He spoke Hebrew."

"Yeah. I get it. I misspoke. But my point really is valid. The best worship artists used this word, and we should, too."

"True."

Wait, did he just defeat me? Nuh uh!

"What does 'holy' actually mean, anyway?"

"Well, it means literally 'set apart.' When something has a special purpose for God's will, it has to be held sacred. It can't be polluted by other stuff. It's just different from ordinary. And when something is 'holy, holy, holy'-- in the ancient culture, that meant that it was at the highest state of holiness. Nothing was holier than that. Does that make sense?"

"Yeah."

Sam examined some typical white, rural graffiti on the face of the overpass. Something about Metallica, as well as prom three years ago. She grinned.

"I knew there was another way to say it."

Taylor smiled and chuckled to himself.

Ignorance

“… now at this time, I’d like to have all the children up front for the children’s message.”

The herd of children rumbled down from their elevated seats in the pews and slowly assembled on the altar steps. On some faces was the look of perfect satisfaction, the look of knowing the answers to a test before the test is given. A bright look in the eye toward Mama and Papa was flashed, and a feigned smile waxed and waned. But most of the children looked convincingly bored, and probably put up quite a fight to coming to church in the first place.

“Let me start by asking you all a question. Is the sun out today? Did you see the sun outside this morning when you came in?”

Suddenly, they were a united chorus. “Yeeeeeaaaaah.”

“The sun does a lot of things, doesn’t it?”

Again, their hive mind agreed with the pastor’s sound logic. “Yeeeeeaaaaah.”

“What does the sun do? Someone tell me something the sun doeeees.”

It was, indeed, a puzzling question. A blonde-haired boy stared at the ceiling, looking as if the pastor had asked him to calculate a derivative. Two little girls, wearing matching print sun dresses, whispered prospective responses to each other, carefully concealing their tentative words from the pastor. These kids had heard these deceptively simple inquiries before. If the pastor simply said what he meant, they wouldn’t be deceptive; and it was this deceit that made it so difficult to answer. It takes a keen mind and fortunate train of thought to be the hero, the one who accurately determines the proper function of the sun, or the moon, or the reason for rain, or the prettiest flower, or the best reason to do what Mama and Papa say—and therefore push the “children’s message” on. The bravest and most confident children usually tried their luck first.

“It shines?” It sounded like a question, but the freckled second-grader with bright orange pigtails was sure that the sun did, in fact, shine.

“Yes, the sun does give us light,” the pastor corrected. “What else does the sun do?”

Strike one. The ultimate insult was to waste so many guesses that the pastor became infuriated with their ignorance and revealed the answer himself. The clock was ticking.

“It’s yellow?” Again, not a question—but his response was corrected by a rough elbow from the young boy’s neighbor. This was obviously not the correct answer, nor was it even something the sun did. Foolish.

“Yes, it can be yellow sometimes. Or red, too. Does the sun ever turn red?”

“Yeeeeeaaaaah.” The pastor’s question was his way of consoling the boy for his terrible postulation that being yellow was a task the sun performed. The easier question was to build their confidence, but it was already too late.

“Does the sun make a circle around the earth? An orbit? Does the sun orbit the earth?”

“Yeeeeeaaaaah.”