The Cathedral of Life

...would be outside in a space like this,

or inside if you need it to be.

Not in a suburb of North Canton

in Stark County. The Cathedral of Life

would be in Greene County, Ohio

in a town named Grassy Point,

or Silver Creek. You would want to go there,

walking in upon eager feet, ragtag but ready.

No pressed shirts, no button down skirts.

Not a polished shoe in sight.

Dogs and ferrets, hummingbirds.

One eyed pirates and wheelchair dancers.

Everyone welcome, wearing the last week as clothes upon their backs,

and carrying a cup full of wishes with a bendy straw.

The call to worship would be spoken

in pentecostal languages,

the right one for every set of ears, or every pair of eyes,

if that is the way you hear, by seeing.

The wind through the leaves,

the acorns plunking,

a pair of blue herons on their dinosaur flight.

We would gather together, hearing the language

that tells us God is near.

The altar would be piled high with dog-earred books,

a jelly jar of zinnias, wet river rocks,

a bowl of ripe cherries, twisted sticks,

a tape of your grandmother's voice,

the drink you left on the bar in Montana,

her favorite pillow, a street truck enchilada,

a Huichol painting signed on the back,

a trinity of clay marbles, a cairn of sand,

a picture of yourself before you became you.

And when someone rose to speak,

(it could be anyone who speaks),

he would not talk of sins but stories.

Of splinters. Of something rising in his best self.

And we would listen, a cicada stillness in the air,

then laugh, then cry, letting the salt out of us.

Trading it for fresh water.

Someone would pray, or all of us would pray.

Saying -- with more words or less -- thank you and please.

Thank you for the five deer in the field. The nun on the bench.

The quick sprouting of fall peas. The phone call.

The smell of clean sheets. A room of one's own.

Please bring release. Please offer mercy.

Please show us grace. Give us greater capacity.

Let us bow down and lift it all, every bite of living.

We would pray to ourselves, our distant brothers,

our new sisters, the ones who see.

We would pray to our dead mothers,

the far away fathers. A humble Buddha,

a one-armed Jesus, Mohammad with hippie hair and flip flops.

We would pray to the eastern sun, the westward weather,

the earth that keeps spinning.

We would pray to the ones who hurt us,

left us, or recused themselves from our lives.

The ones who know, the ones who listen,

the ones who still can find the soft spot in our skulls.

We would pray in silence, or in singing.

We might shout out or at. You may even

need to lay your head on a cold marble floor

and weep. In each case, someone will place

a hand upon the small of your back

so that you will feel heat. You will feel held.

There will be music. Dylan, I suspect,

but played by a young woman on piano.

Maybe Thelonius Monk or Abby Lincoln.

Pink Floyd through expensive speakers,

Karen Carpenter and Mama Cass.

And maybe the music would not even be music.

Labs barking their "you've come home" bark,

soup simmering in the winter,

the clatter of a table being set,

the rusty hitch of a swingset moving back and forth.

I'd hear my music as a whisper, a night whisper in the dark,

the orange harvest moon rising in the window.

We would spend time in silence,

but it would be a ripe silence.

No bowed heads or nervous nail picking.

Our eyes would be open, every muscle relaxed

as we reclaimed the finite bodies that hold our wider selves.

One woman -- with dementia -- might speak

about her garden and some salty perch

throughout the silence, but her words would feel

like bubbling water, water cleaning us too.

Her reality a mystery no greater or less

than the mystery of our own.

There would be touching in the cathedral of life,

though I do not know exactly how that would work

having never seen its natural occurrence where I worship now.

But if I need to reach out, a hand would grab for mine.

If a shoulder was required, your heavy head would find one.

If anyone needed to be reminded that each is wholly holy,

we'd find a way. Kisses on breast scars,

a leg pressed against a leg, fingers walking the lines

of waiting lips. It would just happen,

the same way a sycamore bends to the breeze,

the same way water springs from source,

the same way all life leans to light.

Communion would be served on rough hewn wooden platters

and in hand-thrown clay goblets. Still bread, still wine.

But they would not be body and blood shed for our sins.

They would be sustenance for the journey.

Food to keep us going. I would serve you, and you would serve her,

and she would serve me. We might hold our hands out,

like humble cups waiting. Or we might open our mouths,

so that something pure can be placed on our tongues.

Or we might grab the loaf and tear off the hunk

we need, some weeks more than less. And we might sip,

or we might gulp -- unquenchable -- or we might pass the chalice

back and forth between us until the glass is empty.

Still bread, still wine. Maybe peach wine.

Shared in joy, not solemnity.

Then we would pass the peace. And it might take hours.

Me telling you about my seventh grade gym class,

you reading me a poem about the bruise on your left arm.

Him standing alone in the meadow, counting the second between falling stars.

Her layering spinach on ricotta for lasagna.

A group playing two hand touch on the open lawn of the church.

Everyone doing whatever it takes to regain a stronghold on self,

on the beauty of other, and the goodness of God.

Feeling the solid certainty known from love and -- not forgiveness --

but the softness born in moving from strength into strength,

giving grace upon grace, moving from one amen to the next so be it,

until we are to meet again.