Quote · The Moth
Cotton Candy and Revolutionary Rides: The Moth Radio Hour
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Rally Day Disaster: Cotton Candy, 26 People, and a Prayer on Peeling Linoleum
At 13:15 · chapter starts 12:10
The Rally Day sequence is the comedic and spiritual heart of Nadia's story. She hauled a cotton candy machine, cases of soda, an industrial bag of Doritos, and enough burgers for 80 people — all to get her congregation back from a sleepy summer. Two minutes before the service, she walked upstairs into the sunlight streaming through stained glass, and counted 26 people. [1] — Nadia Bolz-Weber "Nadia Bolz-Weber hauled a cotton candy machine, cases of soda, and burgers for 80 people to Rally Day — and 26 people showed up. She snuck …" 07:20 Twenty. Fucking. Six. She immediately reversed, descended to the women's room, and knelt on the peeling linoleum: 'Dear God, I hate all those people who didn't show up so much that I'm having a hard time appreciating the people who did.' With a service starting in two minutes, she asked God to 'rip out my stony little heart and replace it with a human fleshy beating one again.' What saved her wasn't perfection — it was the raw, real prayers of her congregation: JP thanked God for a job after six months of unemployment; Clarice celebrated a year off heroin. The realness helped.
While Nadia Bolz-Weber sulked over her failed Rally Day, her congregation spontaneously handed free cotton candy to every car stopped at the nearby stop sign — a grace she nearly missed entirely.
While Nadia Bolz-Weber fumed over empty seats, her congregation was feeding hungry strangers at a park and handing cotton candy to every car at the stop sign. A 2 AM wake-up — what she calls a 'bitch slap from the Holy Spirit' — finally made her see all the grace she had been too resentful to notice.
