“You can do this,” she told herself, “The question is why
are you doing this?”
Sara made her way in the darkness walking swiftly with her
head down and her hands shoved into her pockets. She wore all black for the occasion not that
it would have made much difference in the middle of the night.
The burnt out chapel had been on her mind lately. It was in the background of all of her dreams,
and whenever her mind wandered in class, it wandered over to the chapel. It had been over a year since the chapel had
burned, and while the ruins still stood in the same place on the seminary
grounds, people had moved on. There was
a new chapel to build, a better chapel, a chapel that promises to usher in a promising
new age of worship and formation.
Sara could not even remember the last time she even looked
over at the chapel ruins. It was
different right after the fire, she looked at it every day then, but like
everyone else she lost interest and had better things to do. It was just a building after all and
eventually it would be torn down, and something safe and beautiful would be put
in its place. Probably some kind of
memorial garden.
But for some reason there she stood, in the middle of the
night, staring through the chain link fence at the old husk of a building. Sara walked slowly, around the chain link
fence till she came across a spot where the fence butted right up against a
wooden bench. Taking a quick breath she stepped onto the bench and hoisted
herself up and over the fence.
Looking up at the ruined chapel, a sense of great sadness came
over her. The chapel seemed alive somehow,
and the fire had stolen away something precious that the old building
desperately longed to have back again.
For over a century the faithful had worshipped in its walls. Joy and sorrow, faith and doubt filled the
building every day. It had never been
alone; trusted and loved, the chapel had shared in the greatest moments of so
many lives. But for a year not a single
person had walked inside, and Sara could feel the loneliness pouring off of the
chapel.
Sara knew she was probably projecting these feelings onto
the church. It was something she used to
do all the time as a child; she would anthropomorphize everything from
buildings to furniture. She would
apologize to boxes of cereal that didn’t get bought in the grocery store and
feel sorry for dented cars. At some
point as she grew older this stopped, but every now and then when she came across
something old and loved Sara couldn’t help but feel as if the object was
looking back at her, trying to tell her something. And now it was as if the building was calling
out to her for mercy and she could not help but feel sorry for this poor
abandoned house of God.
“They all move on, and you are left behind with nowhere to
go,” Sara said looking up, “We’re not so different, you and I.”
She wasn’t sure if she would even be able to get into the
chapel at this point. All the windows
and doorways were boarded up. The only
door that looked promising was on the South side of the building where the
original doors were still on the hinges.
“Surely they have nailed this shut” Sara thought, but she went up to the
door and gave it a tug anyway. The door
scraped loudly against the brick landing as it opened a few inches. Sara stopped and listened, she couldn’t
believe her luck. She pulled again, and
the door opened just enough so she could squeeze inside.
Sara stepped into darkness.
The choir loft was still intact and it hung over the narthex like it
always had, but the effect was disorienting and it took Sara a second to adjust. Slowly she moved through the rubble. The floor creaked as she made her way to the
center aisle between the pews. She
stepped out into the nave and looked up.
The roof was gone except for some rafters which looked like the ribcage
of some giant mythical creature.
Carefully she made her way down the aisle. Fourth row from the front on the right side,
that is where she always sat. It was
remarkable how intact everything looked; she wondered if she could sit in her
old spot again, she leaned her wait onto the seat of the pew testing its
compression strength. It seemed okay, so
she cautiously sat down. Charred around
the edges and water logged, All the hymnals and prayer books were still sitting
in the back of the pews. Gingerly Sara
lifted out one of the hymnals, “shall I sing for you?” she whispered. Opening the hymnal she started to sing, “Deck
thyself my soul with gladness, leave the gloomy haunts of sadness.”
As she continued to sing a soft breeze started to whistle
through the rafters as if the chapel were singing too. The weight of loneliness began to lift, but if
it was the chapel’s loneliness or her own, Sara could not tell…
