A soft closing
By Keith Thomas
Way back when I was a teenager – and
I mean that's waaaay back – my older brother Pat and I were out squirrel
hunting in the woods someplace in Missouri.
Our footsteps had taken us deep into the forest. I was stuck to Pat like glue.
This was due to the fact that I have absolutely no sense of direction. You
could drop Pat down anywhere and he automatically knew the points of the
compass. If he'd had wings he could easily have migrated to Canada.
At one point we came into a little
clearing. There was a tiny old-fashioned white painted church smack in the
middle. No electric lines. (Imagine church without amplifiers.) No parking lot.
No roads leading in. Just paths in the woods. We noticed that there wasn't any
glass in the windows. No broken glass on the ground either. The panes of glass
had been completely removed.
The door wasn't locked so we went
inside. No broken glass inside either. As soon as we stepped in the door we realized
that the church was still being used. Everything inside was neat and orderly.
Hymnals were in their place in the pews. There was no trash strewn about. It
was clean. There were probably 4 or 5 pews to each side. The place just seemed
to be and felt sacred. We didn't even want to take a chance of getting dirt on
the floor from our shoes. What a beautiful place to worship.
Out in the middle of the woods like
that they should have been safe. Safe from any upgrades. No worries about
tearing the church down to build a bigger, better pew-packing church.
I still think about that church and
wonder. I know that the elements must have claimed the structure long ago. It's
what the sun, wind, rain, snow and cold do. How long did that little
congregation hold on? Was there a last person standing? Was there one last
cost/benefit analysis? Did they have to deal with a church hierarchy and
bureaucracy as their members died away or did they have a gently peaceful
demise like a life well lived that ends during a last restful sleep? I would
like to think that's the way they went; the way the door closed for the last
time. Perhaps a white-haired couple that turned, said goodbye and walked off
through the woods holding hands. A soft closing.