“This is, in fact, the third time I have heard of big box churches placing the sanctuary in the produce section.”–Julia Christensen, Big Box Reuse
This week I’m reading Marilynne Robinson’s Home, all hesitation and goodlooking garden. My new computer tries to keep me from stuttering and so every “good” I write, which turn out to be plenty, appears onscreen as “god,” which I then have to backspace over, reminding me of my conservative friend who always writes “G-d” for fear of making a mistake on such holy turf. I undo her care hourly it seems, even as I envy those who live by superstitions, who see such weight in the smallest gestures.
Lynn Emanuel talks about how writing itself is like God, creating and propelling and destroying as we do those innocent characters on the page. Once somebody mentions God, you can’t really take it anywhere else. Or so I thought. That’s why it always made me sad to see churches that have been converted into community centers, or houses, or stores: they always marked to me a folded faith.
But the idea that maybe they just moved, maybe the church expanded and took over an old Kroger’s? Pews where there were spices? Baptism at the pyramid of oranges? How silly we were to step so lightly, to think the land was as finite in its use as paper.