Hosanna to a God too Big to Fit on a Shelf

I went to church my entire childhood, but coming of age during the Woodstock Generation, I drifted farther and farther away from God. Looking back, no matter how far away I got, God was drawing me closer to his plan for my life. If I hadn’t resisted, I wouldn’t understand his faithfulness.

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I was a junior in college in the fall of 1973 and had the privilege of a semester abroad in London. One night my roommate, Lydia, and I took the Tube to Picadilly and wandered the West End looking for a club that was hopping. We entered a small establishment with a dance floor crammed with bodies flailing under a disco ball. I ordered a hard cider from the bar and swallowed its tang.  

A guy in a gray suit asked me to dance. Shards of light glinted off his wire-rimmed glasses as the base throbbed. He shouted, “I’m Swiss.” 

I shouted back, “American.”

We gyrated with the others until the music slowed. He took me in his arms and said, “My family is wealthy. Would you like to visit Switzerland? Go skiing?” He checked his glittering watch. “We could go to my apartment and get to know each other better.”

I looked over his shoulder for Lydia. She was at a table on the perimeter sipping a foamy stout.

“Not tonight.” I slipped his arm from my waist. “I need to check in with my friend.”  Before I even settled on the bench, there was a voice behind me. “Mind if we join you?”

A tall guy with shaggy chestnut hair sat down beside Lydia, and with an Irish brogue, said, “Names Ian. What’s yours?”

Another guy, with straight black hair and smiling brown eyes took my hand. “I’m Selva. Want to dance?”

I followed him back to the dance floor. “Selva means jungle in Spanish, right?” I suppose I was trying to impress him.  

 “I don’t speak Spanish,” he said with a British accent. “I’m from Malaysia where Selva means lucky person or jewel.” He pulled me closer for a slow dance and grinned.  

“What if I don’t believe in luck?” I pulled back slightly from his embrace.  

“Well, something has brought us together.” His white teeth flashed another smile, and I danced with him the rest of the evening until we were both sweaty and exhausted.

 Finally, Ian hailed a hack and we all climbed in the backseat.  

The driver asked, “Where to?” with a Jamaican accent.  

Ian leaned forward. “Croydon.”

I turned to Selva. “No one in England seems to be English. My landlord and his sister are from Poland. I buy naan from a Pakistani tandoori. The kebab shop on Bayswater is run by Turks.”

Selva smiled and put his arm around me. “No escaping The Empire.” 

After a twenty-minute ride, the car parked in front of what looked like a haunted mansion. Selva helped me out of the vehicle.  

While Ian paid the cabby in November moonlight, I surveyed the vast lawns and dormant flower beds. Skeletal bushes and swaying tree limbs scratched the sky.  

Lydia took my arm. “Is this where you guys live?”

Ian opened a rusty iron gate and said, “Yes.”

Selva walked through the opening. “But we also work here.”

Lydia hesitated. “What do you do? What is this place?”

Selva laughed. “It’s an asylum.”

 “As in insane?” I remained beside Lydia.  

“As in psychiatric hospital. Ian and I are attendants, and we have rooms on the grounds.”  

Ian beckoned. “Come on, we’ll show you.”

Under the circumstances, I couldn’t believe I said no to Swiss aristocracy.  

I took Selva’s hand. Lydia took Ian’s, and we entered the side door of what looked like a long dormitory.  

Selva opened one of the doors and turned on the light. “These are my quarters.”

I saw Lydia and Ian disappear into the room next door. There was nowhere to sit in Selva’s room but on an iron bed pushed against the wall. A sink opposite completed the accommodations. Above the sink was a mirror and a glass shelf featuring a toothbrush, toothpaste, and a figurine with multiple arms and the head of an elephant.  

I pointed to the small statue. “What’s that?”

Selva sat beside me. “That’s Ganesh, the Hindu god who removes obstacles whenever you begin something new.”  He grinned and laid back on the bed.  

“Oh.” I remained upright with my feet on the floor.  

He caressed my long hair. “You remind me of my mother.”

I twisted to face him. “Your mother?”

He smoothed the bed for me to lie down beside him. “She’s beautiful and kind.”

I squinted at his line. “You’ve only known me a few hours. How can you know I’m kind?”

“Well, you danced with me, and I’m not a very good dancer,” he burst out laughing.

I laughed too and laid back. “This whole situation is bizarre.”

“Yet, you are here with me.” He smiled.  

When Lydia interrupted by opening the door, I agreed to see Selva again.  

Next weekend Ian and Selva invited us to go dancing at another club. When we took a break at a tiny table, Selva leaned in. “I’m going to visit my parents in Kuala Lumpur for three weeks. Would you like to come?” 

I was tempted to ask if his family was wealthy and would there be skiing. “You’re kidding right? About me going with you—halfway around the world?”

 “No, I am not kidding.” He suddenly sounded so formal. “I want you to meet my mother.”  

“My semester is over in about three weeks, and Lydia and I have already booked a flight to Paris before we head home to the States.”

“Bummer.”  

I hated the word bummer, but his accent made everything sound cool.  

“Can I at least call you when I get back? I really like you.” The light in his eye told me it was true, for now, but I didn’t really expect to hear from him.  

The week Selva left for Malaysia, Princess Anne and Mark Phillips were married in Westminster Abbey. Lydia and I were among the throng gathered near Buckingham Palace, the destination of the royal couple’s fairy tale coach. We watched stoic guards in red coats and bearskin hats open the iconic gate and waited with the crowd for the newlyweds to enter the palace and wave from the balcony in all their finery.  

This launched a last-minute blitz of all things British whenever I wasn’t studying for finals. I checked out Covent Garden where Eliza Doolittle sold her flowers and the British Museum full of foreign gods and ideal marble men plundered while Britannia ruled the waves. I took the Tube to The Tate Museum full of moody Turner landscapes, and massive Henry Moore figures. I wandered through Kensington Gardens and discovered the Peter Pan statue. Lydia and I made a point to return to Johnny’s Fish and Chips served in newspaper, at the foot of Tower Bridge, a stone’s throw from Big Ben, Parliament, and the Tower of London where Henry the VIII lopped the heads off wives he’d grown tired of.  

It was so hard to leave that legendary city, I neglected packing until the night before our flight to France. How to fit my few mementos into a small blue American Tourister? I rolled a package of British biscuits in my pajamas and folded a mohair shawl from Scotland for my mom on top of my sweaters.   

As I was trying to figure out what to do with the black derby I bought on Portobello Road for my dad, and the antique safari helmet for my brother, the phone rang.  

“It’s Selva. I’m back. How about a party at a friend’s house tonight? I have gifts from Malaysia.”

“I’m leaving in the morning.” I looked at Lydia, also packing, and mouthed, “Croydon?”

Lydia shook her head, “Are you crazy?”

“Yes,” I spoke into the phone, and wrote down the party’s address.  

It was almost midnight by the time I navigated to a townhouse jammed with people. I was introduced as Selva’s American girlfriend. We drank in the kitchen, danced in the living room, and around three in the morning, as the crowd thinned, he pulled out a cheap necklace dangling a crucifix. “This is your gift.” 

I took the crucifix, “What am I supposed to do with this? Put it on a shelf beside my toothbrush?”

“Very funny. You wear it over your heart. You’re a Christian, aren’t you? You’re American.”

He hung the broken man on a cross around my neck and hooked the clasp before I had time or words to explain the distinction between culture and faith or the fact that I and my young country were drifting farther and farther away from Sunday School and closer to New Age spirituality that felt more mysterious than singing “Praise God from whom all blessings flow,” like a dirge.

“Thanks,” I whispered, “but I really have to go,” thinking I would ditch the superstitious hunk of junk ASAP.

“Wait,” he put another slim package in front of me. “These are for your mother.” 

I opened the box to find four placemats made from tightly woven palm fronds like the ones I received as a child on Palm Sunday. “These are beautiful!” This time I really meant it.

Selva beamed. “I bought them from an indigenous tribe and paid for them with salt.”

“Salt?” I tilted my head.

“It’s more valuable than money in the jungle. It’s used to cure fish and meat, to flavor bland cassava, and as an antiseptic.”

“Interesting. My mom will love these, but I really have to go.”

“There are no more trains at this hour.”  He plumped a pillow from the couch and laid down on the living room floor. Why don’t you spend the night? Gatwick is only twenty minutes away.” I looked at others already crashed on the carpet and curled up in his arms.  

In the morning light, heavy headed and rumpled, I checked a map of London and realized the airport was twenty minutes south of Croydon. My flat, where I still had to retrieve my stuff, was twenty minutes north. Panicked, I stepped over snoring bodies, and Selva helped me call a hack. We kissed good-bye, and I pressed my face against the window as the cab pulled away.  

When we got to my flat, I told to the driver, “Please, wait!” and ran up three flights of stairs, strapped on my brother’s safari helmet, grabbed my suitcase in one hand and my dad’s derby in the other, dashed back down, and lunged into the vehicle.

When we got to Gatwick, Lydia was wringing her hands at the gate. I sighed. We boarded and took off for the City of Lights.  

High above the earth, where country and kingdom vanish to the human eye, I peered out the tiny airplane portal and thought I was indeed lucky to meet a young man with a light in his eye that made me feel beautiful. A young man who offered me far more than our short courtship deserved, an extravagant invitation to his home far away along with so many symbols of a God I didn’t know back in 1973 when I was a swine before pearls.

But I’m no longer that vulnerable, young woman without a clue. Now I understand the crazy love of the cross that offers me a fresh identity as the beloved child of a living God.

I have a place set at the wedding feast of the lamb.

And until that day, I’ll shout Hosanna to the King of all nations—along with my brothers and sisters called to be the salt of the earth, bringing hope and healing to people hungry for a God too big to sit on a shelf.

I have been crucified with the Anointed One—I am no longer alive—but the Anointed is living in me; and whatever life I have left in this failing body I live by the faithfulness of God’s Son, the One who loves me and gave His body on the cross for me.

Galatians 2:20 (VOICE)

Cover photo by Jacob Bentzinger on Unsplash