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.

A Few Pictures From Inside The Farmington Rock Church...

Before everyone came in, I stood in the back of the chapel and took a few pictures. For members of my church, this room holds historical significance, but for a child recently moved to the small sleepy suburb in 1970, it was where we attended church.

It's not a big space, but it felt so much bigger when I was younger. As I sat and listened to the Sunday School lesson today, I felt the crisp air-conditioned air waft around me. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, there was no air conditioning--we all folded up our programs and turned them into fans to earn a small amount of comfort. 

The pioneers who built it sacrificed almost everything to relocate thousands of miles from their homes, and the building that remains stands as a testament to their commitment and faith.

The room with rock walls several feet thick remains a functioning chapel, and is not upstaged at all by its sibling chapel built decades later to the north. We use the newer chapel for our main services--soft seats and all, but the older one, that's the one with personality, with charm.

The older chapel is also where my father's funeral services were held.

Like most chapels, the building is unused a majority of the week. Thousands of cars pass by it day and night. Thousands of worshipers have sat on its benches. I don't know how long the building will stand, because eventually all things decay. It may take years or centuries, but one day, a solitary parishioner will no longer be able to stand at the back of the room and remember all that the building means to them. Such is life.

Behind The Scenes...At Our Little Church

After church last Sunday, I picked up my phone and took a short tour through a door and into history. I snapped a couple of pictures of what I saw.

Like an old car sitting in a field or a suit that hangs in the closet for years and years, the entrance to the oldest part of the church remains unused, an entrance used as decoration. There was a time when Sunday arrived, hundreds of people filed through the doors, bringing with them hopes and fears, leaving, perhaps, changed.

The Memorial Chapel is used each week, but few go behind the scenes. You pass through a door and into a small room which leads to a hallway. From there you can see the door to outside is barred shut. Now, now one enters, no one leaves. We all enter through the much newer "modern" doors (the most recent door on the rest of the building is around forty years old...) without thinking about it. We go inside--we leave when we're finished.

Tomorrow the back of the chapel will once again be neglected by parents and children. It will remain a quiet place, a place removed from noice and little children's sticky fingers. It's a space alone in its memories.

Taking Pictures On Sundays Of A Grand Old Building...

On Sundays, over the past couple of months, I've been using our church house as the subject of my Pic Of The Day photos. This was the church we attended when we first moved to our town decades ago. There's a lot of memories for me tied up in the old building. And even though many other churches have been built here, the old Rock Church feels like the heart of our town.

Since I'm not a student of architecture I can't identify the style of the building nor can I rattle off building trivia as many of the long-time residents can. It's still a special place for me and hopefully, for my family as well.

The building looks great in all seasons. Spring brings new life to the grass and sycamores--summer brings out the colors even more. Those same sycamores provide thousands of leaves for autumn, and even though snow makes getting to the building difficult for some of the church-goers, the building looks absolutely beautiful in winter.

There are newer churches--every other church in town is. They hare more reliable temperature controls, more comfortable pews, and other improvements, but I'll take the old Rock Church any day. 

Keeping Cool At Church...A History

I grew up in the same neighborhood where we now live. We moved here when I was four, lived away for a few years, and eventually built a house across the street from my parent's house. When you live as an adult in the town of your youth, you end up going to many of the same buildings you visited as a child.

Unless, of course, those buildings no longer exist.

But one building I frequented years ago still does.

The Farmington Rock Church.

Today was Sunday and I attended services. Because it's summer, the a/c units are fully cranked. And, occasionally, not every square inch inside is a comfortable77º. For the past several weeks, as I've sat in our unofficial/official seats, I've forgotten to bring along my iPhone/iPad fan. Today I remembered and the thing worked beautifully.

As the cool wind offered much needed comfort I remembered how things used to be, back before there was no a/c in the building, back when all we had were paper fans.

Of course, not all the fans were paper. Many of the parishioners brought elaborate fans to cool them down. I remember looking out at the congregation and seeing a flock of fans moving back and forth, back and forth. For those of us who didn't own their own fans, we made the,. We took a piece of paper, usually the printed program, folded it and--Wha la! We had our own fans. Today I made one (to add a visual to this blog post...). It's the first fan I've made in at least three decades. And I used it in the same meeting house that once had no air-conditioning at all.

The technological advancements that have taken place since then are astounding. I know a/c was around long before I sat on those wooden pews back in the 1970s, but the building didn't have it so it didn't matter it have been invented. But my little electronic fan runs on an iPhone or an iPad, and those didn't exist back then. I wonder, in the next three decades, what things will be around to make those Sunday worships more comfortable. And will I blog about it then.

Probably.