Coffee with Jesus
I was driving to the dentist this morning when I passed a sign on the lawn of the Philadelphia Baptist Church that said “Coffee with Jesus.”
This sparked several questions, for example, “Does Jesus drink coffee? Has Jesus returned? Is he on TikTok? Can I take a left turn before this oncoming truck?”
It is important to note that I live in Massachusetts. In fact, I learned to drive in Massachusetts. So the answer to the last question is yes.
Having parked behind the dentist’s office, I venture into the building, down a narrow hallway and into a blindingly white room where the sound of whirring drills prepares me mentally and emotionally for my “cleaning,” which is code for a 4D horror film in my mouth.
The spray from a tiny hose splashes my closed eyes, while a toothpaste-expelling scourer shoots lasers into my teeth. The hygienist, wielding a hooked metal implement that looks like a hunched hypodermic needle, reminds me to take proper care of my teeth and never to scrape them with sharp metal objects. I can barely hear her over the shrill sound of her scraping my teeth with a sharp metal object.
The best way to tolerate a dental experience is to dissociate, which the staff kindly help you do at JNL Dental by displaying a slide show of bird heads on an enormous screen directly in front of your face. The shots zoom slowly in on the bird heads as if you are a birdwatcher cautiously skulking toward these petrified birds. This is apparently intended to be soothing to the dental patient. The only problem with the concept is that birds don’t have eyelids. Therefore, they almost constantly appear totally freaked out. Especially when pixellated and enlarged. If you have any empathic connection with the birds in the photographs at all, you will identify with the petrified look in the enormous eyes of owls and choke on your own spit which bubbles at the back of your throat because the deafening vacuum which is supposed to suck your saliva is attached like a leech to the squamous cells inside your cheek.
At this point, with virtually no other resort — and this is primarily the manner in which believers come to Jesus — I start to question, What does Coffee with Jesus really mean? When this ordeal is over, I will hop across the street to the Philadelphia Baptist Church and see what it is really about.
As I mentioned, and maybe you didn’t make the connection the first time (that’s okay, that is what repetition is for, besides increasing word count) I live in Massachusetts. The Philadelphia Baptist Church is nowhere near Philadelphia. But disregarding that blatant inconsistency, coming to Jesus is a question of faith, not logic. Faith that there is a better life available to us. Faith that I won’t be sitting in the dentist’s chair forever locked in the one-eyed glare of a warbler.
“If you have time, we could check your gums,” said the hygienist.
“How long does that take?”
“Five, six, seven minutes.”
What we both knew she was asking was not, Do you have the time, but Do you have the stamina? Can you take any more varieties of our torture? Are you UP FOR IT?
With Jesus as my role model, I say yes.
“This is my prober. I’m going to be probing around,” she says, as she pierces my gums repeatedly with the contorted needle, shouting 2, 2, 3, 4, 2, 4, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2 to her assistant like they’re playing a game of Pit, which is a card game you should try if you haven’t played, except that now you know it sounds exactly like a dental hygienist stabbing your gums at needlepoint.
The hygienist scrapes my gums with the metal question mark to see how many millimeters the gums move. I can’t think of anything that would cause my gums to move more than a hooked needle pulling at them, but I am not the one getting paid to decide which implements to jab into my mouth.
When I am released from the chair, the hygienist offers me a tiny tube of toothpaste and invites me to come back in six months. Then I pull out of the parking lot and drive right past the Philadelphia Baptist Church, even though it says Coffee with Jesus is Totally Free, which I would only believe more if they added “Like” before the word “Totally.” Now that I am out of the chair, the crisis is over. I don’t feel like I need Coffee with Jesus anymore. It’s not that I don’t think it’s for real. It’s not that I don’t love Jesus. I just don’t drink coffee. It stains the teeth.
