I go to church on Easter Sunday. Sandy goes twice a week, every week. I don’t get that. I try to help her comprehend her folly, the unmeasured waste of time and money. She listens calmly. She’s patient with me, which is maddening. I’d rather she proffer concrete facts about her passion, but she cannot. Her motives are “spiritual,” she says. She’s a perfect person, a perfect wife, except for her church-fed fanaticism. She continually and actively seeks avenues that lead to other people’s troubles. She succeeds admirably, but to what end?

I no longer ask. I’m fortunate to have her, because, as I said, she has no other faults. She’s pretty, she’s smart, and she puts up with me. So I no longer object to her committees, bake sales, nursing home visits, nor her endless giving of herself to church projects. I resent it of course, because the time she’s involved with the hypocrites of the Methodist congregation is time she might give to me.

But I have stopped interfering. I love her. I give her the time she thinks she needs, even though I know the church uses her. Her church, any church, loves to acquire a member like Sandy, who, for whatever reason, will not refuse to jump headlong into any useless endeavor the pastor deems worthy of dreaming up.

Like that thing with the city’s homeless last month. Somebody came up with the notion that the vile and filthy people too sorry to work needed a permanent shelter, a place they could gather and be even more worthless. In reality, the falsely pious people wanted a place for normal working people to dump their worn out clothing and anything else that would not only give them a tax break, but also ease the guilt they hold for having when others have not.

And it makes them look good. It’s a social thing to brag about when they get together. How incredibly hypocritical. I’m embarrassed for Sandy’s gullibility. I think she’s one of the few members of First Methodist who actually believe they are doing something worthwhile, something their god would have them do.

I know the congregation’s hearts. Anyone with guts to look beyond the fake smiles and bowed heads would recognize the pride and vanity. I’ll see a lot of that today. Today is Easter, and I’m in church. Sandy’s already here, seated. She attended the sunrise service, a traditional ceremony that mocks the truth.

I find her on the third pew and take my annual seat beside her, at the aisle. The seated congregation is a mass of yellow dresses, new hairdos, colorful neckties and children who’d rather be somewhere else. The women babble like chickens, and the kids chirp like hatchlings. I tell myself it’s only one day per year. I can handle one day, for Sandy. But that’s it. If someone spots a warm body in church two Sundays in a row, they’ll ask for something.

I can hear it even before it’s said. “So nice to see you here again, Mr. Craig. It’s Frank, isn’t it? Yes, Frank Craig. Your wife is such a blessing to First Methodist. Would you mind serving as usher on second and third Sundays?”

Meddlesome hypocrite showoffs.

The minister steps from some hidden place to the pulpit. He’s wearing a blue robe over his regular clothes. His polished shoes stick out below the robe’s hem. Why does he have to wear the robe? Does he think the silly garment makes him something more than his stupid flock? Maybe he needs the robe to make him stand out as someone special. The truth is, he’s more of a fake than the people who have now hushed because of his presence.

I despise a haughty person, and I despise the Easter season for all its hype—hype that is not only inconsistent with truth, but is actually based on heathen beliefs. I am not an uneducated person. I did not arrive by chance or ignorance at my bitter and hostile stance against modern Christianity.

Eggs, rabbits, and the sunrise have no correlation with the resurrection of their Jesus. Sandy left our home before dawn today, ignorantly, like a sheep. She doesn’t know and cannot comprehend the depth of her deception. Even the blue-robed pastor is ignorant in his own way.

I fight the urge to stand and scream at him, “You stand on ceremony. You play on emotions and ignore the reality of your own belief in the Resurrection. Don’t you know that your sunrise service is an abomination to your god’s name? Are you, Pastor Joseph Hart, a teacher of the sacred word, so blind that you ignore what you surely learned in seminary? Jesus left his tomb during the dark hours, according to your scriptures, not at sunrise! The pagans worshiped the sun, not the Son. You know this, yet you continue to represent Christianity by remembering your savior’s rising after the sun rises.”

I am angry now. Fools! Hypocrites! I may not be a believer of the Word, but at least I know what it says.

The pastor reads from John.

The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre. But Mary stood without at the sepulchre weeping: and as she wept, she stooped down, and looked into the sepulchre, and seeth two angels in white sitting, the one at the head, and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain. And they said unto her, woman, why weepest thou? She said unto them, because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him. And when she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus. Jesus saith unto her, woman, why weepest thou? Whom seekest thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away. Jesus saith unto her, ‘Mary.’ She turned herself, and saith unto him, ‘Rabboni’ which is to say, Master. Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father, but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.

My anger fades somewhat. At least he got that part right. I turn to look at Sandy. She’s weeping. The passage has touched her. I look beyond her to other faces less stricken. One woman is digging through her purse. Another is yawning. A man sneezes. Those, and most, have come to be seen, and to pretend piety. I despise them. I shouldn’t be here. I am one of them if I stay.

My eyes stray to the marble floor, where the midmorning sunlight filters through the stained glass windows and creates gloriously dappled, but false, colors. How like these churchgoers are those bright patterns.

Stained glass windows, marble floors, a balcony that will seat as many hypocrites as the lower level of the sanctuary, walnut pulpit and alter, pews of red-cushioned mahogany, vaulted ceiling, and two Hammond organs. The parking lot will accommodate six hundred vehicles. First Methodist owns fourteen acres on which various lesser buildings serve the members and awe-struck visitors. The dining hall and kitchen are equipped for the largest of weddings. The youth has a football field complete with bleachers; they have a gymnasium and a baseball diamond. An onsite daycare facility caters to working moms, and local physicians volunteer to work at the church’s free clinic.

It’s sickening, really. The church takes in more money every year than the county collects in taxes. I don’t even want to know Pastor Joseph’s salary.

He likes to be addressed as Pastor Joseph, or Doctor Hart. Not Joe, nor Mr. Hart, not Reverend, and definitely not Preacher. I’ve no doubt he loves himself dearly.

His voice is powerful, like a radio announcer’s. “Today we celebrate a beginning. When Christ rose from the grave, having been slain for your sins and sins worldwide, He marked a moment in time equal to no other. Yes, we honor His birth, and his teachings, but it was His death and resurrection that provides salvation.”

Yeah, right. Pastor Joseph knows what to say, and how to say it. The offering today will exceed $20,000. Who wouldn’t pay to save his eternal soul? When I drop two fifties into the plate, it won’t be for the church, it wont’ be for Pastor Joseph, and it won’t be for Jesus.

It’ll be for Sandy. She expects a generous offering today, so she shall have it. If the world has it and Sandy wants it, I’ll get it for her. I’m here for her, not to contribute to the maintenance of the church’s business. It is a business—organized, staffed, and tax exempt.

I’d like to see it fail. Secretly, I hold a death wish for this place of lies and trickery and money. I’d like to see some disaster of huge proportions level the Methodist buildings to a smoking heap of useless rubble. Do such things not befall communities around the world? Why not here?

Not that I want Sandy to be distraught, but the hundreds of wealthy socialites that mingle here need to be taught that their money and their BMW’s and their successful careers and their college-bound children are as fragile as the stick-and-mud huts of the impoverished people of Ethiopia and a myriad of other less proud localities.

What if a catastrophe struck here? What if the earthquakes and typhoons that mercilessly take the dreams and lives of other peoples, fell upon the brick and stone mansions here? What if First Methodist was reduced to chips of marble, splinters of mahogany and broken bits of stained glass?

Where would the yellow dresses gather then?

They wouldn’t gather at all. Even now, the slightest inconvenience (a defective air conditioning unit, a child with attention deficit, a tardy housekeeper, a flat tire), is too much for society’s elite to handle without false pity from neighbors who are totally without morals except on Sunday.

I hate them. I suppose I had to actually be here among them to fully realize I actually hate them. I truly crave a disaster of some sort to befall them all. I’d suffer through it myself, just to watch as they openly descend to their basic selves. God and church would be forgotten immediately. They’d steal and beg and fight like rats to get back some of the dignity that material possessions and social status allowed them before.

The congregation is standing. The closing hymn. So soon. I look at my watch, and realize my mental escape into the wonderland of a catastrophe has granted me a seemingly brief Methodist service. It will be nice to have a quiet afternoon at home with Sandy.

* * *

New England is not known for earthquakes. Floods occasionally, and high winds, but not earthquakes. It strikes on Wednesday night. The first rumblings and tinkling of glasses are almost unnoticed. My eyes meet those of the bartender. Before his expression turns from mild concern to panic, Pete’s Bar and Grill collapses. I see a ceiling timber crush Pete’s skull before I’m knocked unconscious by who-knows-what. I awake seconds later while the ground is still alive with tremors. I’m thankful I didn’t hear the death screams of those in the bar.

My next thought is of Sandy. She’s in church. I push against the debris that pins me to the floor, but cannot move it. I taste the blood that has leaked from a wound on my forehead. The weight of the rubble permits only the slightest of movements.

No! I must get out. I must get to Sandy. I can see nothing within the terror of a nighttime disaster, but with strength born of desperation, I claw at the plaster, splintered lumber and broken glass. I can breath and I can hear the screams of terror outside the bar, or rather the broken memories of what was the bar. I make no progress until I force myself to be still and think.

The earth groans and trembles. Debris scrapes and rattles as it settles, sealing my tomb even tighter.

Panic is my enemy, and surrender my doom. I test each limb, one at a time. My right arm will move only inches. My left has a little leverage. My legs are immobile. So, I must begin with my left hand and arm.

I grasp at splintered wood, and it moves. Reaching upward within that dark wreckage, I touch what must be plasterboard. It responds to my effort. I grip an edge and push. Bending at my waist, I discover a tunnel of sorts, which grants me freedom to reach further. I find what feels like a two-by-four, and I take hold of that. With my left hand anchored there, I pull. The debris falls away, and suddenly my head and upper torso are free.

The darkness is overwhelming, the silence unbearable. The screams I heard earlier are absent. The crashing of brick and glass has ended. I sit upright, stricken by the reality of what I have survived. Within minutes, I’m standing upon the heap of rubble that might have been my grave. My own breathing is all I hear in the foreboding darkness, until I’m suddenly aware of muffled screams filtering through the dust-laden air. I see fires now. They erupt from the debris like demonic creatures grasping for whatever they might consume.

I see nothing recognizable. I have no sense of direction, no landmark from which to take a bearing. The ground shakes violently twice as I stumble across the heaps of broken bricks and stone. No other homes or structures fall, because none are standing.

Ignoring my lacerations and bruises, I finally step upon what might be the upheaval of asphalt that was Second Street, the road Sandy took to First Methodist. If the church still stands, it is more than a mile away. Shamelessly, I run and climb past people crying out to me for help. A woman I recognize as a co-worker, a broken arm hanging limp at her side, digs frantically through bricks and splintered timbers, all the while screaming the name of her daughter.

Sirens blare through the night before I reach the church. Helicopters thunder close overhead, searchlights sweeping the ruined town, and four-wheel drive rescue vehicles claw through the debris in those few places where passage is possible.

If not for First Methodist’s steeple, I would have not found it. It lay on a high mound of rubble, the broken cross a reminder that Sandy’s god—the unseen, nonexistent entity she sang and prayed to before she died.

* * *

I know I didn’t cause the quake by tempting the church’s imaginary god to do his worst. Still, I had actually wished for this, but in the dark and untouched regions of my unstable mind, I knew it wouldn’t happen; I had never even considered that Sandy might suffer the deserved end of the other parishioners.

Months of grief have reduced me to what I am now—a drunken scrap of human debris worth nothing more than the life insurance Sandy left. I’ve always known money and title and respect are commodities of vanity; that a life worthwhile is a life with someone you love more than yourself, and until Sandy died, my priorities and values were intact. I despised the despicable and adored the adorable, but Sandy’s departure trampled my values to death as it stomped its way across stability boundaries never before violated within my small existence.

Our home has long been cleared of rubble by federal money. My new house is smaller. I need little room to drink and to hate. If the hypocrites had not seduced Sandy into false hopes, she might have survived.

But that’s not completely fair. She might have survived anyway. Not everyone attending First Methodist’s last service died there. Harvey Ballinger got out with a broken leg. Margie Gallimore’s injuries were superficial, but her husband died. Margie’s red hair turned gray. All of the survivors like to talk about lost friends and family. They talk about it at the grocery, in the streets, anywhere two or more of them can get together. I’m sick of hearing about it.

* * *

On a dreary afternoon as I drive toward the liquor store, a year and a day after Sandy’s death, I see a poster tacked to a telephone poll. Something about First Methodist. I pull my car to the curb to get a better look through my blood-shot eyes.