Anti American faux patriots at church.

This was his sermon on "Holy Thursday"

I wanted some kind of social interaction last holiday, Easter, so, even though I'm practically an atheist and don’t take anything in the Bible literally, I remembered that churches draw big crowds on holidays, often with refreshments, why not go to one that Sunday.  I'm So Frigging Lonely and Isolated living here I decided to once more try one of the only recreational venues there are in Tahoe, if you don’t ski or gamble, one more time.

See, I'm waiting for my name to come up on one of the waiting lists I'm on that will allow me to move home to Hollywood… I should get the call saying my number came up in 1.5 to 2 more years...  meanwhile.

During this year's “Holy Week” I researched a church in Tahoe, again, and found one with a relatively new pastor who is from L.A. making me think, maybe there’d be some common ground there and I can have a conversation with someone where we have at least one or two things almost in common. 

….

So I went to the church website and watched the pastor give a sermon.

Holy Thursday he opened his pastoral discourse telling us he’d soon be meeting with “conservative” pastors from around the region, then he got onto the topic of patriotism, and then the clincher: “Marjorie Taylor Greene is the only real Christian in Congress.”

!!! “Marjorie Taylor Greene is the only real Christian in Congress.” !!!

That was his message to the flock on Holy Thursday. 

Well, I didn't go to that church, I spent Easter at home streaming my free sample of HBO instead.

And daydreaming about finally going back home.  One of the places I'm on waiting list is Hollywood Knickerbocker, now a senior low income building, once the desirable hotel where Elvis and Liz Taylor and dozens of famous denizens from Hollywood history have lived in the past.

I really hope I end up at the Knickerbocker.  

I don't want to even be in the same room as someone who thinks “Marjorie Taylor Greene is the only real Christian in Congress.”

…

It's not that I don't like the people I meet in Tahoe. I moved here March 2015 and, HONESTLY, I’d go out almost every day the first five years I was here.  I’d start up conversations on the bus, in coffee shops, in parks, and soon I was repeating this phrase to myself over and over: “no frame of reference” which is another way of saying “nothing in common” - except "no frame of reference" is worse. It means I would never end up on the same platform as the person to whom I was talking as our trains passed in the night. 

Often the conversations I try with locals screech to a silent halt and I'm getting that look. People often stop talking with me and just stare, mouth hanging open, shocked, as some weird detail from my weird life gurgles out of my mouth and I shock them. 

Most people here are lovely, friendly, smiling, happy but no matter what we were trying to talk about, the foundation of connection is never there.  I don't want to sound like a braggart but it's really hard to be educated and worldly around people who’ve lived mostly one place and rarely read, and think if a completely unbelievable message is coming through their phone or cable TV set, it must be true…

So I wait.

Fantasizing about putting on my faux fur and going through the lobby to meet my Uber in front of The Knickerbocker in Hollywood soon.  

-Kay Ebeling