Ann Lineberger's Blog
January 25, 2019
Up, Up With People…
My mother joined an alternative Catholic Church called Emmaus in the ‘70s. It was a newly formed, experimental community with a groovy “Up With People” vibe. Organized by a group of educated and well-intentioned people who were looking for a less fear-based, more liberal approach to religion, it was the ideal community for her.
Mass was held in the cafeteria of a local Catholic school, and we sat on folded metal chairs in front of an altar that was rolled in each Sunday. A priest, who had to be given permission by the Archdiocese to work with the untraditional community, led the masses but the adult Emmaus members were in charge. They planned all of the ceremonies.
We were allowed to wear jeans and t-shirts to mass for the first time; our Sunday Best tucked away and reserved for special events. The Emmaus sermons discussed current events such as civil and women’s rights with an overall message of equality and fairness. They were more interesting to me than the ones given at our previous Catholic Church, St. Leo’s, and at the ultra-conservative church our grandparents attended.
There was more spirited singing at Emmaus than at St. Leo’s. Depending on the song, hand holding, vigorous clapping, and raising arms accompanied it. The music group, which was positioned to the right or the left of the alter depending on the day, was a ragtag ensemble that reminded me of the gang from Scooby-Doo. Dressed informally in polyester or denim bell-bottoms with polyester button downs or cotton peasant dresses with bell sleeves, they strummed, banged, blew and belted out songs. There were a few standout talents in the group, including an opera singer. Our mother played the tambourine and sang backup on occasion.
Bible stories were reinterpreted and incorporated as mini performances into some of the masses. Largely acted out by the parents, the plays were meant to be entertaining and instructional but the kids in the community were convinced that they were designed to satisfy the theatric aspirations of the adult members. To this day, I can’t think of Good Friday without a smile. Every year, one of the fathers would dress up as Jesus in a scrap of white cloth and during a reenactment that involved other members walking along beside him, he dragged a massive wooden cross made out of fencing posts through the aisles. A different dad performed the routine each year giving the lugging and three “falls” his own spin. During these ceremonies, small eruptions of laughter broke out in the cafeteria; the kids of the community simply couldn’t hold it in.
There was a “Personal Share” portion of the mass that I have since likened to the reveals of support groups such as Alcoholic Anonymous. The shares weren’t exactly confessional, more of an opportunity to brag, complain or rant, but they possessed the same eye-opening observations that spying on my mother and grandparents’ dinner parties allowed. What was shared was by turns funny or frightening.
The Emmaus “Kiss of Peace” wasn’t the quick turn to your neighbor and extend a hand or a wave across an aisle with the occasional peck on the cheek that I had experienced at St. Leo’s. It lasted at least fifteen minutes, longer on holidays when all the members were in attendance, and involved kissing and hugging every single person in the cafeteria. You know how teenagers enthusiastically greet each other? It often went something like that with the adults revving up, spreading their arms and smiles wide as they moved quickly towards their mark. What followed felt suffocating, although it was always well intended, and I wrestled my way out of at least one long embrace every mass. Announcements signaled the end of, what by that point, had become a tortuously long time for a kid to sit on a metal folding chair.
Despite the entertaining and often-hilarious theatrics during the mass, all the kids wanted out by the end. The ceremonies regularly ran over ninety minutes. The adults loved the hour of Coffee, Cake & Conversation that followed but the kids dashed from it like rats abandoning a sinking ship after grabbing donuts and Kool-Aid. We would meet up at designated spots and do one of three things: Scale the high school’s metal security gates and explore the rest of the school; play outside on its sports fields; or pile into one of the parents’ cars and listen en mass to Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 while laughing about what we had just witnessed during mass.
My mother loved Emmaus and still does. She’s now in her eighties and remains a very active member. My siblings and I stopped going regularly in high school and completely stopped when we went to college. All of the children of the original members did the same. It’s a wonderful, supportive community but it was our parents’ concept of an ideal alternative church, not ours. What I liked the most about my time with Emmaus was the kindness of the members. I spent countless hours playing in their homes with their kids, which in retrospect, I believe was offered to give my single mother some time to herself. They brought meals to our house when she was sick and the entire community showed up on one moving day to help when my mother felt overwhelmed. It’s a community in the truest sense of the word.
Sunday Best, my second novel (following my first The Adjustments), was inspired by my time with Emmaus. One of Sunday Best’s plotlines has its roots in a church experience. Sunday Best is a comic mystery and involves an alternative Catholic Church called Unify founded in the ‘70s. Unlike Emmaus, a guru and a clairvoyant run Unify, and the storyline is potentially linked to two gruesome crimes committed in 1988 and 2017. Like Emmaus, Sunday Best’s liturgies regularly include mini-performances, personal shares, and a kiss of peace, but the Unify members and their antics are fictional.
My friend, the playwright, Jacque Lamarre recently discussed how to include friends, family and foes in fiction without upsetting them or getting sued during the Mark Twain House Writers Weekend. Jacques has written over twenty plays and I’ve written two novels based, in part, on personal experiences. The Q&A is titled: “How to Avoid Lawsuits and Other Awkward Encounters.” Attorney David Polgar joined us to give his legal perspective.
Another attorney friend recently asked me about Sunday Best. When I told him its plotlines, his response was, “My God, where do you come up with these ideas?”
Mass was held in the cafeteria of a local Catholic school, and we sat on folded metal chairs in front of an altar that was rolled in each Sunday. A priest, who had to be given permission by the Archdiocese to work with the untraditional community, led the masses but the adult Emmaus members were in charge. They planned all of the ceremonies.
We were allowed to wear jeans and t-shirts to mass for the first time; our Sunday Best tucked away and reserved for special events. The Emmaus sermons discussed current events such as civil and women’s rights with an overall message of equality and fairness. They were more interesting to me than the ones given at our previous Catholic Church, St. Leo’s, and at the ultra-conservative church our grandparents attended.
There was more spirited singing at Emmaus than at St. Leo’s. Depending on the song, hand holding, vigorous clapping, and raising arms accompanied it. The music group, which was positioned to the right or the left of the alter depending on the day, was a ragtag ensemble that reminded me of the gang from Scooby-Doo. Dressed informally in polyester or denim bell-bottoms with polyester button downs or cotton peasant dresses with bell sleeves, they strummed, banged, blew and belted out songs. There were a few standout talents in the group, including an opera singer. Our mother played the tambourine and sang backup on occasion.
Bible stories were reinterpreted and incorporated as mini performances into some of the masses. Largely acted out by the parents, the plays were meant to be entertaining and instructional but the kids in the community were convinced that they were designed to satisfy the theatric aspirations of the adult members. To this day, I can’t think of Good Friday without a smile. Every year, one of the fathers would dress up as Jesus in a scrap of white cloth and during a reenactment that involved other members walking along beside him, he dragged a massive wooden cross made out of fencing posts through the aisles. A different dad performed the routine each year giving the lugging and three “falls” his own spin. During these ceremonies, small eruptions of laughter broke out in the cafeteria; the kids of the community simply couldn’t hold it in.
There was a “Personal Share” portion of the mass that I have since likened to the reveals of support groups such as Alcoholic Anonymous. The shares weren’t exactly confessional, more of an opportunity to brag, complain or rant, but they possessed the same eye-opening observations that spying on my mother and grandparents’ dinner parties allowed. What was shared was by turns funny or frightening.
The Emmaus “Kiss of Peace” wasn’t the quick turn to your neighbor and extend a hand or a wave across an aisle with the occasional peck on the cheek that I had experienced at St. Leo’s. It lasted at least fifteen minutes, longer on holidays when all the members were in attendance, and involved kissing and hugging every single person in the cafeteria. You know how teenagers enthusiastically greet each other? It often went something like that with the adults revving up, spreading their arms and smiles wide as they moved quickly towards their mark. What followed felt suffocating, although it was always well intended, and I wrestled my way out of at least one long embrace every mass. Announcements signaled the end of, what by that point, had become a tortuously long time for a kid to sit on a metal folding chair.
Despite the entertaining and often-hilarious theatrics during the mass, all the kids wanted out by the end. The ceremonies regularly ran over ninety minutes. The adults loved the hour of Coffee, Cake & Conversation that followed but the kids dashed from it like rats abandoning a sinking ship after grabbing donuts and Kool-Aid. We would meet up at designated spots and do one of three things: Scale the high school’s metal security gates and explore the rest of the school; play outside on its sports fields; or pile into one of the parents’ cars and listen en mass to Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 while laughing about what we had just witnessed during mass.
My mother loved Emmaus and still does. She’s now in her eighties and remains a very active member. My siblings and I stopped going regularly in high school and completely stopped when we went to college. All of the children of the original members did the same. It’s a wonderful, supportive community but it was our parents’ concept of an ideal alternative church, not ours. What I liked the most about my time with Emmaus was the kindness of the members. I spent countless hours playing in their homes with their kids, which in retrospect, I believe was offered to give my single mother some time to herself. They brought meals to our house when she was sick and the entire community showed up on one moving day to help when my mother felt overwhelmed. It’s a community in the truest sense of the word.
Sunday Best, my second novel (following my first The Adjustments), was inspired by my time with Emmaus. One of Sunday Best’s plotlines has its roots in a church experience. Sunday Best is a comic mystery and involves an alternative Catholic Church called Unify founded in the ‘70s. Unlike Emmaus, a guru and a clairvoyant run Unify, and the storyline is potentially linked to two gruesome crimes committed in 1988 and 2017. Like Emmaus, Sunday Best’s liturgies regularly include mini-performances, personal shares, and a kiss of peace, but the Unify members and their antics are fictional.
My friend, the playwright, Jacque Lamarre recently discussed how to include friends, family and foes in fiction without upsetting them or getting sued during the Mark Twain House Writers Weekend. Jacques has written over twenty plays and I’ve written two novels based, in part, on personal experiences. The Q&A is titled: “How to Avoid Lawsuits and Other Awkward Encounters.” Attorney David Polgar joined us to give his legal perspective.
Another attorney friend recently asked me about Sunday Best. When I told him its plotlines, his response was, “My God, where do you come up with these ideas?”
Flying Porta-Potties & Other Curiosities
After reading the morning headlines, I like to scroll Facebook for funny videos. Recently, I’ve found two memorable ones.
The first one is of several Porta-Potties that took flight in a park in Colorado. It was a windy day in Denver, and it blew them into a series of parked minivans and then sky born. Incredibly, no one was hurt as flocks of parkgoers ran for cover while waste spewed from the sky. The second video is of a white minivan towing a U-haul. The camper wasn’t correctly hitched, and after it slammed into the minivan causing considerable damage, it flipped on its side. The driver didn’t stop to right it, and it’s seen being dragged down the highway with sparks flying. As the camera zooms closer, I expected to see Clark Griswold behind the wheel.
Curiosities fuel my writing. Of the two videos, I can relate to the second one the most. One summer when I was a sophomore in high school, my mom and I towed a fourteen-foot Laser to a sailing regatta in Long Island. To get to the competition, we had to cross five highways and the Throgs Neck Bridge. The turn signal of the trailer hadn’t been adequately connected, but we didn’t know it. Every lane shift or attempt at a lane shift was met with furious beeping followed by lunging middle fingers as cars roared past us. My boat rattled and bounced along, miraculously, still attached.
Then my mother got lost, and we ended up at a gas station in Harlem. I remember in vivid detail her attempt at a fast turn around that temporarily jammed the trailer hitch causing our car and the trailer to be positioned in a perfectly immobile V. When we finally arrived in Long Island, my sailing instructor questioned why we were late. The explosive interaction that followed led to my boat being towed home by him and to and from every race for the rest of the season.
After watching the U-Haul video, I wondered if my mother would have kept driving if my boat had flipped on its side while we were on the highway? The answer is a confident yes. And I also wondered what I would have done in her position. She was a single mother of three children, and until she was in that arrangement, she had hauled little in her life. I imagined that I would keep driving, too, if I thought no one would get hurt.
My latest novel, Sunday Best, was released in September. It’s catagorized as Upmarket Fiction, a darkly comic mystery that revolves around a clairvoyant named Eleanor Powers who starts an alternative church in the 70s. Her daughters, Lauren Mark and Brooke Edwards, have long suspected she’s a con artist. Her “gift” arrived too neatly, appearing within days of their father’s sudden death when Eleanor was most worried about finances. The sisters are largely estranged from their mother and her church, Unify, as adults but when their employer, real estate and publishing mogul Walter Bloom, is the victim of a sex crime, which is linked to the unsolved, decades-old, murder of one of Unify’s original members, they’re thrown into an investigation revolving around Eleanor, Unify, and the secreted sex clubs he frequented. Sunday Best offers a satirical look into these unique worlds as a study of the selling of hope in contemporary America.
This is my first blog post, and the ones that follow are meant to amuse, but some will cover serious subjects. Prominent journalist and novelists will be featured. I hope you will read along.
The first one is of several Porta-Potties that took flight in a park in Colorado. It was a windy day in Denver, and it blew them into a series of parked minivans and then sky born. Incredibly, no one was hurt as flocks of parkgoers ran for cover while waste spewed from the sky. The second video is of a white minivan towing a U-haul. The camper wasn’t correctly hitched, and after it slammed into the minivan causing considerable damage, it flipped on its side. The driver didn’t stop to right it, and it’s seen being dragged down the highway with sparks flying. As the camera zooms closer, I expected to see Clark Griswold behind the wheel.
Curiosities fuel my writing. Of the two videos, I can relate to the second one the most. One summer when I was a sophomore in high school, my mom and I towed a fourteen-foot Laser to a sailing regatta in Long Island. To get to the competition, we had to cross five highways and the Throgs Neck Bridge. The turn signal of the trailer hadn’t been adequately connected, but we didn’t know it. Every lane shift or attempt at a lane shift was met with furious beeping followed by lunging middle fingers as cars roared past us. My boat rattled and bounced along, miraculously, still attached.
Then my mother got lost, and we ended up at a gas station in Harlem. I remember in vivid detail her attempt at a fast turn around that temporarily jammed the trailer hitch causing our car and the trailer to be positioned in a perfectly immobile V. When we finally arrived in Long Island, my sailing instructor questioned why we were late. The explosive interaction that followed led to my boat being towed home by him and to and from every race for the rest of the season.
After watching the U-Haul video, I wondered if my mother would have kept driving if my boat had flipped on its side while we were on the highway? The answer is a confident yes. And I also wondered what I would have done in her position. She was a single mother of three children, and until she was in that arrangement, she had hauled little in her life. I imagined that I would keep driving, too, if I thought no one would get hurt.
My latest novel, Sunday Best, was released in September. It’s catagorized as Upmarket Fiction, a darkly comic mystery that revolves around a clairvoyant named Eleanor Powers who starts an alternative church in the 70s. Her daughters, Lauren Mark and Brooke Edwards, have long suspected she’s a con artist. Her “gift” arrived too neatly, appearing within days of their father’s sudden death when Eleanor was most worried about finances. The sisters are largely estranged from their mother and her church, Unify, as adults but when their employer, real estate and publishing mogul Walter Bloom, is the victim of a sex crime, which is linked to the unsolved, decades-old, murder of one of Unify’s original members, they’re thrown into an investigation revolving around Eleanor, Unify, and the secreted sex clubs he frequented. Sunday Best offers a satirical look into these unique worlds as a study of the selling of hope in contemporary America.
This is my first blog post, and the ones that follow are meant to amuse, but some will cover serious subjects. Prominent journalist and novelists will be featured. I hope you will read along.
