Holy Ghost Corner by Michele Andrea Bowen

Author:Michele Andrea Bowen [ANDREA BOWEN, MICHELE]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: FIC000000, General, Fiction
ISBN: 9780446537544
Google: PbUvFyOhBf0C
Amazon: B0019LV34Q
Publisher: Walk Worthy Press
Published: 2008-05-19T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

LAMONT HURRIED AND TOOK HIS SEAT WITH THE REST of the Green clan. For more than forty years, the Green and Hopson families sat in the exact same location on Sunday mornings. The church itself had changed a lot in the past four decades, even if the habits of the parishioners remained pretty much the same. The hard, dark wooden pews and olive green carpet of yesteryear had been replaced with the same color scheme that graced the lobby and vestibule.

The choir loft could seat over one hundred people comfortably, with a separate section for a handcrafted pipe organ, grand piano, drums, conga drum, keyboard, and other members of the instrumental ministry in the church. The pulpit area and altar were bathed in the golden light of sunshine that regularly shone through the stained glass windows of Jesus blessing the fish and loaves for the multitudes. And the ceiling had been transformed from an ornate plaster job to all-mahogany wood beams that made Lamont think of the inside of Noah’s Ark.

The actual pulpit contained several large and very comfortable chairs. Members with complaints of stiff and painful joints sang the praises of the Rhodes, Rhodes, and Rhodes design team for constructing an altar that rose a foot off the floor, allowing easy access to the soft pew cushions that were the same color as the carpet during Holy Communion and altar prayer.

Countless bake sales, church dinners, plays, fashion shows, and raffles had provided the initial seed money to remodel the 138-year-old church, which began as a summer prayer meeting in a pastoral plot of land that was now the rose garden. Once Fayetteville Street Church had raised enough money to dare to dream of a new and improved interior, the previous pastor preached a sermon on tithing that convicted every heart, young and old, igniting a fire to give back to the Lord unprecedented amounts of money. And now, over twenty years later, Fayetteville Street Gospel United Church of America had the blessed distinction of earning most of its impressive income from tithing.

As Lamont surveyed the sanctuary, it occurred to him that he wasn’t the only truant member who had decided to come to church this morning. There was nothing like a visit from one’s presiding bishop to draw everybody and their grandmamma to Sunday morning service. He saw that Charmayne Robinson and her mother, Ida Belle, were present. And, as was her custom, Ida Belle was dressed more for that Durham “grown folks only” hotspot, The Place to Be, than church. It was hard to miss her gold-sequined, cropped pantsuit with the baseball-styled jacket, black silk tank top, gold lamé boots and matching purse, and gold-sequined baseball cap on top of her blond natural.

He felt a poke in the side and then quickly read the note James had just passed to him from Rhonda.

“Table Wine and her mama, Miss Shirley, are sitting right behind the Robinsons.”

Lamont tilted his head, and sure enough, there was Chablis and that crazy Miss Shirley sitting right behind Charmayne and Miss Ida Belle.

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