Diiig!
Yesterday Karen and I were watching The Church Channel. We were taking a break from working, and were doing what we sometimes do in that Very American Way: sitting in front of the TV while we ate lunch.
Anyway, we watched a crusade conducted by Pastor Paula White. Even her name sounds Poised and Perky, but on stage she was Powerful. She was standing on a stage in an auditorium in front of what must have been 20,000 people. Oddly, though, she was not exactly on the stage, but was inside this sort of a sandbox apparatus that had been constructed for her. There was dirt in this sandbox. She had a big shovel. She was digging and preaching. The members of the crowd each had a small colored plastic shovel. They were digging, too, but in an “air guitar” sort of way — they would dig the air in front of them. Apparently, this is the theme of Pastor Paula White’s crusade: Can You Dig it? You can buy the book, which comes with an audio cassette tape and a plastic shovel.
As Karen and I were watching, and as Pastor Paula White was digging, the emotions of the scene were running deep and wide. Pastor Paula would dig, then she would preach. There was an organ playing background music, and a choir humming along. Every time Pastor Paula would dig, the choir would sing “Diiig!” as the organ music swelled. This repeated: Pastor Paula would preach, then dig, while the choir sang “Diiig!” Preach, dig, Diiig! At one point, Pastor Paula exhorted the people to “Tell each other Can You Dig It? Slap somebody upside the head and tell them Can You Dig It?”
After Karen and I had absorbed this for a while, at almost the same time we turned toward each other and sort of shouted and sang “Diiig!” — we had been thinking of the same thing, and had found our token to express it: the spectacle was ridiculous, and could be summarized in that one phrase. Diiig!
So, that’s now become a new entry in our private lexicon, with the implied meaning that “this is a ridiculous spectacle propagated under a falsely Christian context.” We said it to each other for the rest of the weekend, just for fun.
Diiig!