Aaron Graham, a Southern Baptist Missionary, set aside an easy life to endeavor to Boston with $300 and relinquished himself of all amenities. He found Ma Siss, the lovable lady whose burgeoning, modest Quincy Street Missional Church in Dorchester needed a preacher. Today we are told his story. This is the second part of a four part special report in the Boston Globe called “Ma Siss’s Place.”

“He imagined himself, like one of Jesus' disciples relying on the good will of others to get by,” Paulson writes. “He coveted a hard test of faith.”

This is really a priveledge in feature/narrative writing. You have the authority to say the subject thought, felt or imagined.

Throughout the article, we are given “Aaron,” not Graham. In most newspaper reports, and even features, we are only given the last name, unless we are focusing on a family or married couple. This is just another aspect of narrative/feature writing in newspapers.

“Tall and angular,” writes Paulson, “with an outlander's soft accent and manner, he was a virtual unknown, a spiritual tourist in an old town. She was a bedrock figure in her troubled Dorchester neighborhood, a large, laconic presence known by her nickname (her given name is Idene Wilkerson) and by her dream of a new church born in a chop shop.”

This is the visual contrast that puts meaning into this story. Graham is some white kid who comes to Dorchester, a community consisting of mostly African-Americans. What beautiful pluralism this church displays.

During one scene, Graham brings his newly acquired Cherokee girlfriend to the first prayer service he is asked to lead: “Amy pulled out her guitar and began to play Christmas songs. Ma Siss made soup. Aaron left to run an errand, and Amy spent the morning stringing green beans with Arlene. Aaron and Amy came back the next Saturday, then each weekend after that. Ma Siss or her daughter, Dora, would make a grits and sausage breakfast, and Aaron and Amy would discuss a Bible passage or answer questions about Christianity.”

(Shout out: Northeastern University is one of the first key scenes in this story, where Graham becomes more acquainted with Ma Siss and realizes she’s earnest about her ambitions with the church.)

I’m really impressed by this character, Aaron. One of my favorite parts: “Aaron preaches in a conversational style, weaving his sermons into the service without a clear beginning or end, open to interruption by himself or others. He walks back and forth, as if pacing in some imaginary cage, and uses his long arms to punch the air to accentuate a point. Often, when saying something particularly prayerful, he closes his eyes.”

“[A]s if” is the finest two words in this paragraph. They enable the writer to imagine and the reader to understand. A cage is appropriate, in this instance, because Graham is preaching about powerlessness. It’s interesting that the neighborhood conferred the title of pastor on him, but Graham believes everyone needs to take responsibility as a minister of God.

Love this scene setting: “By the spring of 2003, people had begun to think seriously that this earnest little group in this broken down building, with floors sloped so the auto oil would run down to a drain, with a green carpet covering the cement and paper curtains to cover the walls, might invite the presence of God….A broken piano had a makeshift crèche of religious statuary arranged atop it. Slightly deflated balloons - the remnants of some recent celebration - hung from metal pipes along the ceiling. White paper fans had been attached to the green walls as a form of decoration. On shelves above the chairs were dozens of cans of tomatoes and boxes of canned stuffing. A cat named Church wandered across the floor, the congregation's attempt to deal with a mice problem.”

Let’s keep going: “Dora decided it was time for prayer. She hit a pot with a spoon.

“Ma Fann, her head wrapped in a colorful scarf, leapt out of her seat, the first to testify.

“‘I could just fly in here this morning,’ she blurted out. She had good news: Her granddaughter's deployment to Iraq had been postponed.

“‘God is a mighty God,’ she said, working her voice up to a shout. ‘I know the Lord is good. Glory. Hallelujah. Yes, Lord. I thank Him.’

“Then Ma Siss jumped in. She doesn't have the strength to stand during worship and was sunk into a deep soft chair. Her voice rose slowly as she talked about the birth of the church.

“ ‘What we have been praying and asking for is coming to show in our lifetime,’ she said, ‘and it just such an uplift. Make us so high that we don't know what to think. Just look what God is doing.’

“She slammed her hand down on a nearby table.

“‘He ain't let us down yet. He ain't failed us. He done brought us this far - he ain't gonna let us go now.’

Graham has much experience facing disparity.

The Virginian later mused about American megachurches: "As I got older, I was like, OK, half the world is living on less than $2 a day, and we don't talk about this?" he said. "We were raising $400,000 for a new church organ, so I calculated how many chapels we could build. . . . Some people were like, yeah, that's so true, but the music minister did not like me for it."

This consciousness was developed when Graham, as a child, accompanied his father on missions to Liberia and Kuwait. In Liberia, the youngling fed a starving baby a hard boiled egg and tried to attend his funeral when he died of starvation. There, at age 6, he wanted to be baptized in snake-infested water, which seems like a powerful non-fiction metaphor.

This blog post is already epic – tantamount to reading the actual article – but I must highlight this anecdote:

“[A]t just about 5 a.m. on Aug. 2, 1990, Aaron heard the noise.

“He was 10 years old, and sound asleep, and there was a rumble outside that sounded like the garbage man.

“Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait City.

“That morning, the Graham house was entered four times by Iraqi troops, and on one occasion, a soldier began assaulting his mother. To this day, Aaron believes his mother was spared the worst because he burst into tears, and the soldier backed off.

“‘That was a spiritual mark on my life, because I thought, either I could be killed, or my parents could be killed,’ Aaron said. ‘It was the first time in my life that I was confronted with the fact that I might lose my life, and where would I spend eternity? And then I saw a soldier a couple hours later, dead on the side of the road…

“Ultimately, under intense international pressure, the women and children were allowed to leave; to this day, Aaron believes his father and the other adult men were later freed because the prayers of Baptist ministers back home caused Saddam to have a troubled dream.”

Graham takes his experience to Ma Siss’s place where he preaches about addiction, utilizing references to 12 step programs (admitting powerlessness) and the Boston Red Sox season (“All things are possible.”)

Make sure to watch the video and check out the slide show.

Let’s look forward to tomorrow, a special Christmas article, in which we will learn more about Nora, Ma Siss’s drug addicted daughter.