The service began with the minister introducing guests from outside the congregation who were attending the service. Amid the list of Haitian names, I heard my name.
“Stand up,” Joseph whispered to me.
I stood for a moment, then began to sit back down.
“No, stay standing!” the pastor said to me in Creole.
I stood back up and smiled apologetically.
“Ah! He smiled!” the pastor continued in Creole and laughed. “You see this Jewish man visiting us speaks Creole, French, English.” Then in Creole-inflected English he said, “We are glad you are here, and you must return, each Sabbath! Every Sabbath!! We save that seat for you!”
I blushed in the heat of many eyes looking at me and sat down.
The melodies, harmonies, and rhythms of the liturgy sounded similar to what I’d heard walking past churches in Haiti, a combination of chorale and Caribbean. So did the impassioned “Amens” that careened frequently through the congregation.
The pastor delivering the sermon was tall and heavyset, his shaved head making his plump face look like a perfect circle floating above his flowing black tunic. The sermon he delivered was in a style I’d become familiar with in Haiti through the blaring loudspeakers of the church across from the staff house in Mirebalais. With each paragraph, the preacher’s phrases increased progressively in volume and intensity, culminating in a throat-tearing, speaker-crackling raspiness, only to give way suddenly to a quiet statement, a question, or a pause and a laugh before starting a similar crescendo to another peak of frenzied screaming. Microphone after microphone gave out, and someone ran over to the pulpit to provide a freshly charged one. The batteries must be dying because it is such hard work keeping up with the intensity of preaching, I thought.
The pastor preached in very fast Creole, and I would have been completely lost if there hadn’t been a large screen displaying a PowerPoint presentation of key phrases and images, like those out of a Sunday school children’s book. The sermon discussed “Deliverance du Feu” (“Deliverance from the Fire”)—Daniel, chapter 3. From what I could understand of the PowerPoint and bits of Creole I caught, three men were thrown into a fire for refusing to pray to idols, but Jesus saved them. At the preacher’s speaker-distorting climax, he nearly screamed, each phrase incanted faster than the previous. “They should have burned, but they didn’t! They should have burned, but Jesus was there! They should have burned, but they were saved!! Saved for doing what was right!! Saved because Jesus was there!!! Jesus saved them!!! Saved them from the fire!!!! Saved!!!! From the fire!!!! Saved by Jesus!!!!!!”
He paused.
Silence.
And then in a soft, conversational, deep voice, “God made the fire feel like air-conditioning for them.” He chuckled.
I looked over at Pasteur. His eyes were closed. Was he sleeping? Meditating? Praying? He usually spoke so softly and slowly, and I found it hard to imagine that he would preach in this style of accelerating screams. I wanted to remember to ask him later.
The man who appeared to be the head priest called Pasteur to the altar and asked Dorotie, Joseph, and me to join the group of clergy and senior members of the church who had assembled on the stage. Pasteur stumbled and nearly fell climbing the stairs to the raised platform behind the pulpit and was caught by some of the nearby clergy. “Be careful,” the priest said solemnly to him. Suddenly I felt nervous. What if he had fallen? What if he had fallen and had a seizure? I thought.
The priest explained to the congregation that Pasteur was visiting from Haiti for a large surgery nan tèt li (inside his head). There were gasps and whispers. The priest explained that I was one of Pasteur’s doctors. He asked the congregation for their prayers for Pasteur, for his surgery, and for his surgeon. They guided Pasteur, Dorotie, Joseph, and me to the center of the sanctuary, just behind the lectern, and asked Pasteur and Dorotie to kneel. I thought someone signaled me to do so as well. But as I started to lower myself down, someone else said in a harsh whisper in Creole, “No, not you. Stand up!” I already felt out of place in a church, let alone being the only non-Haitian person in a Haitian church, and now I felt even more awkward to be up there with them.
The group made a circle around Pasteur and Dorotie and held hands. A smaller group, including Joseph, stood inside the circle next to Pasteur, each putting a hand on his shoulder or Dorotie’s. I wasn’t sure whether to hold hands with the outer circle or put my hand on Pasteur’s shoulder with the inner circle. I wanted to participate if they wanted me to but not intrude or offend anyone after my confusion about whether I was supposed to kneel or stand. The people on either side of me took my hands, and so I became part of the outer circle.
One priest knelt facing the congregation, his back to us, leading songs and prayers. Members of the congregation swayed as they sang, some with their hands reaching up toward the ceiling above, waving slowly. One of the priests directly across from me in the circle rocked gently, eyes closed, smiling serenely, softly murmuring occasional phrases like “Amen” and “Jezi la” (“Jesus is here”). I looked at Pasteur and Dorotie. With many hands on their shoulders, their eyes gently closed, they looked at peace.
I was grateful to see them welcomed into this community. I hoped the benediction would be meaningful for them, a feeling of home despite being so far away from Haiti. But Pasteur’s near fall up the stairs troubled me. As I looked at him, despite the soothing, slow melodies intoned by the priest and congregation, my mind raced with anxious thoughts. What if he has a seizure right here, right now? It wasn’t rational. He had never had a seizure, though he was certainly at risk for one. Why would he have one now? Was I remembering that Janel had had one of his seizures in church?
My thoughts wandered to a piano recital I had attended nearly twenty years earlier. A cameraman filming the concert from a raised platform fainted and slowly slumped over in plain view of the audience. Proceeding like a silent film, there was a quiet, hushed sense of alarm as paramedics carried the limp, ailing man out of the concert hall to the soundtrack of the pianist’s melancholic Chopin, which continued in spite of the calm commotion. The pianist must have been bewildered if he noticed that the audience members kept turning their heads toward the back corner of the concert hall. Or maybe he could make out the action out of the corner of his eye. Did he ask himself whether he should stop playing or just continue with his concert? Somehow he had kept playing. I hadn’t thought about that surreal moment in years.
I imagined a similar situation here if Pasteur suddenly had a seizure. Quiet panic behind the pulpit as the music went on for the congregation. Nothing to see here. Please don’t let him have a seizure, please don’t let him have a seizure, please don’t let him have a seizure, I thought over and over. This must be my way of trying to pray as a neurologist, I tried to joke to myself. This is a huge case, I heard Ian’s deep voice intone in response.
Despite my internal agitation, the scene in front of me was deeply moving. Hands in hands and hands on shoulders and hands slowly swaying in the air, catching rays of colored light from the sun streaming through the stained-glass windows. A single verse of the last hymn, sung more softly and slowly with each repetition. And Pasteur and Dorotie at the center, eyes closed, soft smiles, welcomed, embraced, blessed.