Leaping Like Impalas

I recently finished an excellent little book called “Jesus, My Father, The CIA, and Me: A Memoir… of Sorts” by Ian Morgan Cron. As the title suggests, it is a memoir (of sorts) about a young boy who grew up with a largely absent father who worked for the CIA. Cron is an excellent story-teller with a flair for a certain sarcastic humor that I couldn’t get enough of. My favorite story had to be the below excerpt, in which he describes his first encounter in a more, shall we say, enthusiastic church setting.

The service had already started when we got into the sanctuary. I was there all of five minutes before I realized that Tyler’s explanation about this experience being different was grossly understated. Episcopalians pride themselves on restraint and single-digit golf handicaps. They don’t jump, sing, and wave their hands over their heads unless they’re being electrocuted or thrown from a plane. Neither do Episcopalians frolic around sanctuaries, brandishing on raised poles big banners with tongues of fire and doves embroidered on them. Their services don’t include generously proportioned middle-aged women leaping like impalas down the aisles, trailing colored streamers in their wake (“dancing in the Spirit,” as Tyler called it). I saw investment bankers speaking in tongues and women dressed in boiled wool suits who resembled Barbara Bush being “slain in the Spirit.” It looked to me like a mob of well-sugared five-year-olds dancing the hokey-pokey, only less organized.[1]

“Generously proportioned middle-aged women leaping like impalas.” I nearly fell out of my chair after reading that. Anyway, it’s a fun book and you should read it.

  1. Cron, Ian Morgan (2011–06–07). Jesus, My Father, The CIA, and Me: A Memoir… of Sorts (pp. 170–171). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.  ↩

[Americans] share nothing in common other than the presumption that death is to be avoided at all costs. That is why in America hospitals have become our cathedrals and physicians our priests. Medical schools are much more serious about the moral formation of their students than divinity schools. Americans do not believe that an inadequately trained priest may damage their salvation, but they do believe an inadequately trained doctor can hurt them.

Stanley Hauerwas in “War and the American Difference”