Sunday, December 04, 2005

Different

“What’s that, Mommy?”
Little Charlie pointed out the car window to the imposing gray stone edifice looming ahead as they drove down Ridgeline Avenue.
“Hm? … Oh, it’s a church,” his mother replied.
“Like our church?”
“No, honey … it’s a Catholic church.”
By now they had passed and the building was behind them. Charlie thought for a moment. “What’s it like?”
“What do you mean?”
“The church. On the inside. What’s it like?”

Charlie and his parents attended the Hosanna Evangelical Lutheran Church on 16th Street. It was the only church 4-year-old Charlie had ever been in. He was familiar with its clean white walls and comfortable seats. He liked to go there on Sundays and listen to the singing of the grown-up choir and he was even learning many of the hymns by heart. He liked to hear Pastor Willis talk about Jesus, but sometimes Charlie fell asleep when he no longer understood what he was saying.

After a moment’s pause, his mother said, “Mm … I’m not sure. I’ve never been in a Catholic church. But I’ve heard it’s dark and spooky.”
Charlie was surprised at this answer. How could a church be dark and spooky? Don’t they have any lights? A church—at least his church—is bright and cheerful. Then he remembered his mother’s words, that it wasn’t like his church.
“Like a dungeon?”
“Mm … I suppose … (Now let’s see … post office … grocery store … roast for dinner …)”
And that was all they said.

Years went by.
Whenever Charlie rode in the family car or by himself on the bus past that big gray church he heard those words in the back of his mind: “…dark & spooky … like a dungeon …” Sometimes when he walked along Ridgeline with his friends and had to pass in front of it, he found himself unconsciously quickening his footsteps to match the faster beating of his heart. When he walked there by himself, he would often cross to the other side of the street so he didn’t get too close.

One Summer afternoon when he was 15, Charlie was walking home with his pal Rick after playing baseball at the playfield. As they turned onto Ridgeline and the big gray church came into view, Charlie felt a sudden curiosity.

“What religion are you, Rick?”
“Huh? … Oh, I’m Catholic. Why?”
“Oh, I don’t know … Where do you go to church?”
“Saint Agatha’s … that big gray-stone church over there.”
“How … could you go in there?” Charlie asked in spite of himself. “It looks so … gloomy.”
“No it isn’t. Hey, ya wanna go in?” Rick’s face suddenly beamed with an excitement that took his companion by surprise.

Charlie stopped in his tracks. “What!? Are you kidding? I’m not going in there!”
“Why not? It’s OK,” Rick reassured him.
“No! I … I mean … I’m a Lutheran!”
“So what? It’ll be all right …”
“I … I can’t … I just remembered. I gotta get home. My mom said we have to go somewhere so we’re eating dinner early.”
“… Okay …” Rick sensed Charlie’s apprehension and decided to let it drop. They walked on together in silence punctuated by brief and unrelated comments on various subjects until they got to Charlie’s house, where he said, “See ya,” and ran inside.

By the following Saturday Charlie found he was unable to control his curiosity any longer. About three in the afternoon, he told his mom he was going to walk to the playfield. As he approached St. Agatha’s his pulse quickened and his breathing became oddly irregular. Would he be able to see inside the church? He had to try, somehow.

He gazed intently at the structure for a long time as he got nearer, as if trying to discover some strange secret. He found paved pathways that he’d never noticed before along the sides and all around the building. He looked high up on the stone walls at where he thought there should have been windows, but the long, narrow window “holes” seemed to be filled—blocked—not by glass, but by strange black and gray things that at first glance didn’t look much different than the rest of the wall. There were similar structures lower down at about eye level, and now that he was walking along the side wall, he noticed odd flashes of color—red, green, blue and yellow—coming from those black-and-gray “windows.” What kind of place was this? He carefully stepped between the flowers that were planted beside the wall and reached out to touch the window, and realized then that it wasn’t made of smaller stones as he thought, but of dark chunks of broken glass cemented in place!

He wanted to peek inside, and he saw the doors, of course, but knew they’d be all locked since nobody was around. As he reached the door on the side along which he was creeping, he gave it an experimental tug and—it opened. His hand jerked away from the handle as if he’d been shocked. He stared at it for several seconds and swallowed hard before deciding to go ahead and open it again. Slowly he pulled the door open and peered inside, noticing that although it was quite dim, he could still easily see the structure and furnishings around the huge interior. There were no lights on inside, but as his eyes became acclimated to the reduced light streaming in through the high windows … the windows!! My God! Look at them …

Pictures! Suddenly he saw faces and people depicted in them, and … There was Jesus! And there He was again in a different window! There’s the Christmas scene—angels and the manger and Mary! And there’s another scene of Jesus stretching out His hand over what look like big dinner rolls—the story of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, of course! This was no dungeon—it was a … a storybook! Why hadn’t he seen these images before? They all looked so … black … from the outside, but from the inside—everything was different. Everything was so beautiful—the colors, the pictures—this was great!

Just then, the door—the same door he had entered through a few minutes before—opened and a man dressed in black clothes stepped in, touched something on the wall beside the door, and made a sign or gesture of some kind around his head and shoulders. He then went down on one knee while facing the center-front of the church. Surprised, Charlie took a step backward and sucked in his breath. The man stood up and seemed to notice Charlie for the first time. Charlie thought of running, expecting the man to chase him, but the man in black only smiled and nodded at Charlie and, without a word, he turned away and stepped through another door near the front of the church.

Charlie was standing right in the middle of the huge church so he could see all the windows when the minister(?)—no, the priest—had surprised him by his sudden entrance, and equally sudden disappearance. He thought for a few seconds and decided he’d seen enough for one day and started again for the same side door to leave when it opened again and a lady stepped in, quickly touching the wall as the priest had done and making the same gesture around her head—oh! It’s that … thing Catholics do … what do they call it? He thought it had a name, but didn’t know what it was. The lady gave no indication that she noticed Charlie, but turned in the opposite direction the priest had gone and walked calmly along the side aisle and stopped by another door—in fact it was three doors all together in a group. That was really odd. The lady stopped by the first door she came to, but instead of opening it, turned to face the middle of the church and put her back against the wall, looked up and noticed Charlie for the first time. They made eye contact, but the lady’s expression didn’t change, as if she wasn’t the least bit surprised to see him there. She looked at him for about 3 seconds and then looked down at the floor, as if she was lost in thought. Then another man came in the same way, making the same gesture and walked back by where the woman was, but then stepped into a pew, seemed to do something with his foot and … what? … knelt down? He didn’t notice Charlie at all. What were these people doing? Waiting for something? But what?

Charlie headed for the exit again and almost reached it when a few (but only a few) of the interior lights snapped on. A second later the priest reappeared from the door he’d gone into several minutes before, but he was now wearing a white robe and what looked like a long purple scarf over both his shoulders and hanging down in front. He smiled again at Charlie and walked right past him in the direction of the two other people, but no words were exchanged among any of them. Charlie put his hand on the door and took one last look at the people—hey, where did the priest go? Then he recognized the kneeling man as Rick’s father, who still didn’t seem to notice Charlie at all. He just knelt there, staring up at the front of the church. Charlie glanced over his other shoulder in an effort to see what held his attention. He saw a big table … a shiny golden box … a single candle in a red glass beside the box … a HUGE cross … with a life-sized Jesus on it! He pushed against the door and ran outside, all the way home.

What a strange—no, what a wonderful place! … It looks so different from the inside than it does from the outside. Who ever would have thought that?