Give Thanks...For Church

 It's Sunday. For some, it's the best day of the week. For other's, it's a bittersweet day because it's one day closer to Monday and returning to the grind.

I suppose I go back-and-forth between the two extremes.

Growing up, we went to church on Sundays, every Sunday. I can't imagine it was easy for my mom to get three children, three young children ready and take them each week. I remember we'd sit on the small pews, left side, closer to the front than the back. Those benches on the sides were not big, but we all seemed to fit. How many hours I'd look at the wood grains in the pews, see the paint flaking on the window seals, stare at the ceiling and follow the lines in the patterns...

And that mural. 

I stare at that thing for hours and hours and hours, imaging those kids sitting in supposedly same benches almost one-hundred years earlier.

So many hours in that building, and not just Sundays.

Mine is a story shared by millions, a childhood where religion is a building block on which a life begins. The past couple of years have been different. A few years ago churches--and pretty much everything else--were closed. Even if we wanted to go to church, it was not an option. I think that experienced changed us both collectively and individually. 

These days, I walk the halls of a church I'm still figuring out. It's full of people I mostly don't recognize...but it's still church, still a place of worship. I'm grateful I can attend, grateful so many sacrificed so much to build it and to maintain it. 

Years ago, as I sat on those hard benches (without padding...), I used to look at the ceiling, the floors, the walls. We had no smartphones back then. I wonder if the kids who attend the meetings now do the same thing. Do they stare at the ceilings, the floors, the walls, the benches?

Probably.