Life Goes On by Philip Gulley Page B

asked if we could switch classes yet again. By then, I had tired of flannelgraphs and trying to explain to the children that God hadn’t really ordered the deaths of entire nations of people. So back I went to the young adults and the remnants of the Live Free or Die class.
    Dale couldn’t bring himself to sit under my instruction and began attending the women’s class, which meets in the basement around the noodle table. On the first Sunday of the class, he read aloud from Paul’s First Letter to Timothy, that women should learn in silence with all submissiveness, then tried to take over. But Fern Hampton, a retired schoolteacher, was fortunate enough to have taught back in the days when teachers knew how to apply pain to various parts of the body to achieve a desired result. She gripped the back of Dale’s neck, causing him to go limp as a noodle. She raised him from his seat, marched him up the basement steps, and deposited him with a thud at the door of my classroom.
    I use the word classroom loosely. When I had proposed we begin a new Sunday school class for the young adults, I was met with stiff resistance. Why, the argument went, we already had perfectly good Sunday school classes, one for the men and one for the women. Why couldn’t the young adults attend those classes? What made them so special that they needed their own class? That was the problem with this generation, they wanted everything to revolve around them. Besides, there was no place for them to meet.
    But I persevered, and they finally relented when I agreed to clean the coatroom just inside the front door and hold the class there. Frank and I spent several hours that summer painting the room, making it presentable. This caused considerable ire among the remnants of the Live Free and Die class, who complained that they had never had a classroom of their own, and maybe if they had, their class would still be meeting.
    The first day of Sunday school they shuffled into the coatroom, eyeing the young adults rather suspiciously. Stanley Farlow handed me a stack of dog-eared papers—the original typed pages of the Live Free or Die Sunday school curriculum, written by Robert J. Miles, Sr., himself in 1960.
    â€œWe teach from this,” he said. “We’re on lesson twelve, ‘Better Dead Than Red.’”
    â€œThat’s fine, Stanley, but we don’t use a curriculum in this class,” I said, handing it back. “This is a discussion group. Why don’t you put this someplace where it’ll be safe.”
    I welcomed everyone to the class, then shared the process I had in mind. Everybody in the class would be given small slips of paper on which they could anonymously write any theological question they wished us to consider. We’d put the slips in a hat and pull one out each Sunday to discuss, and perhaps together we could arrive at some insight or truth.
    Stanley Farlow frowned. Truth by consensus was apparently not his preferred method of enlightenment. “Why don’t you just tell us what the Bible says? Ain’t that good enough anymore?”
    â€œWe’ll certainly consult the Bible,” I assured him. “But we alsoneed to remember that Quakers believe truth can come from a variety of sources.”
    I expected Dale to object, but he was slumped in the corner, still dazed from his encounter with Fern.
    The upside of the class was the presence of Deena Morrison and Dr. Pierce, who’ve been coming to church together for the past two weeks. It is an unparalleled joy to look up from my chair behind the pulpit and see the lovely Deena Morrison in the company of a handsome, young man. And a doctor, no less.
    Deena introduced Dr. Pierce to the class, we exchanged greetings, and I began distributing slips of paper and pencils for people to write their questions.
    â€œThis is a splendid idea,” Dr. Pierce said. “I’ve always wanted to participate in something like