Demolition

By poetjude
- 2111 reads
When I was nine years old, I met God in church. I recognised that strange familiar inconsolable longing in my heart; a longing that will never be fulfilled in this world. I did not know his name. He came to that church like most of us do – firstly to the flat car park where flowering weeds forced their way through the cracked tarmac.
I have a human heart that belongs to the early evening when the dusk is drawing down and that was when I noticed God in the dust motes drifting between the empty pews. There were flowers in the side chapel and he was there too. There was music at a time when I first heard about a death of a stranger, God was there in the beautiful sadness. These were the things that were written and echo the secret signature of my soul. I hope you know what I mean because that lovely pained desire is found in the loneliest places.
I knew ten years ago that the building was to be knocked down and replaced with a new church on the outskirts of town. Quite a lot of parishioners were upset about that. But I had moved to the city and those glimpses of the divine were becoming scarce. Sometimes, at dusk, in the haze of pollution, God was there, yet I could not get out of my own way, egoistic, rebellious and mostly drunk.
It isn’t about finding him and knowing his face any more but rather about choosing whether to follow his ways. Repentance is difficult.
So, back to the church of my childhood; they knocked it down. I drove by recently and saw the church where I had seen God, touched the cold face of a dead friend, watched my old headmaster’s coffin carried away, sung Vivaldi’s Gloria. I saw the building reduced to pile of rubble and I felt nothing.
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Comments
So evocative. Really loved
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I loved this Jude but I
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