We had about six churches in our little
town. The Methodist was a slender,
straight church tapering to a steeple-bell, with the sanctuary jutting out from
the T-arms of the other rooms at the back---quiet and scented of Johnson’s wax
and lingers of perfume and something like an old man's wallet and the crackle
of Cokesbury pages. That picturesque church was cramped on a lot inside the
squares of sidewalk-all-round, but taken through a long-distance lens, it could
have graced any green sway of hills in England.
I can still remember the Calligraphy-lettered
names-in-black at the bottom of each of the twelve tall Gothic windows with
their stained-glass radiances of crowns and shepherds gilding our cheeks and
hair during eleven o'clock church. My young eyes had traced the shapes of those honored-in-glass names hundreds of times a year as the quiet annual succession
of ministers (Methodists send;
Baptists invite) droned from that
straight-from-IKEA blonde pulpit behind its matching In Remembrance Of Me
table.
Tiny black
classic fans up high between the windows moved in a synchronous dance of black
filigree all the Sundays I was a member, in those ancient days before A/C, and
even after, to "help it along" when the place was filled for funerals
or convocations.
Even church suppers at the Methodist were
quiet affairs---families came respectfully up the back steps and into the door
of the big room used for suppers and the before-Sunday School assembly and
wedding receptions, the Daddies lifting their hats from just-slicked after-work
hair, and the Mamas bearing casseroles and platters with the whisper of waxed paper over the ham and the rolls and
Apricot Nectar Cakes.
There was such a quiet presence to those
meetings, those activities, even Vacation
Bible School---attended
by every kid in town, with the Baptists and the Catholics tamping down their
energy for the indoor parts. We said the Two Pledges, sang earnest, gentle songs,
and then did paper crafts, heard the Story, strung beads and tied yarn and burst
like a spillway through the doors for recess and KoolAid.
The Baptist, now---that was a huge pile of
bricks, with enormous TARA columns filled with bees, and creaky, thunderous
wood plank floors with the sway of pews like ocean waves into the distance. But
it was LIVELY, somehow, with wonderful music and a gusto to the singing, with
fiery exhortations from the pulpit when the Spirit moved them and the
between-Sunday-School-and-Church scarcely-hushed chatter buzzing to a close
only AFTER the choir filed in.
Forty conversations sounded like hundreds,
echoing off those cavernous spaces and hard wood pews, with more going on as
the places filled, and unmuted calls out three-rows-over to a neighbor in
greeting. I loved it---it was full of life and energy,
lots and lots of the young folks I knew from school, friends I'd envied for
their fun tellings of happenings in church or VBS (which we all also
attended---you just went to BOTH every Summer), and the year that we all made
bookends by tapping tacks into little tombstone-shaped pieces of wood is
memorable---we must have sounded like a woodpecker brawl in there . There were also youth trips and youth choir
which met at five on Sundays, before BTU and evening services.
Their Church Suppers took on the aura of those
Barn Dances (perish the thought) in which everyone gathered loudly, and all the
females brought their VERY BEST casseroles and cakes and pies, served in their
best dishes and garnished within an inch of their lives, like those checkered-napkin baskets auctioned off to admiring swains at a hoedown. There was kitchen-pride and surreptitious
comparison involved in both
denominations, but the Baptist Ladies seemed to set the best tables. They
cooked more like they MEANT it.
That church also had a scent---one I can't
name, but I'd recognize it this minute and be right there in that bright buzz of people and the spirit of
hearty worship. I looked online at a friend's granddaughter's wedding recently
in the local paper, and just by happenstance saw the obituary of my very first
boyfriend, when we were about fourteen. I was immediately transported to the back row
of those hard pews, way up under the overhang of the balcony, where all of us
"couples" and other young folk sat during church. The memories rushed in, and I could smell all
the same familiar scents---Broadman pages this time, as we shared the hymnal, the
Vitalis on his elegantly-arranged pomp, the surrounding wisps of Evening in
Paris and Chantilly and Blue Waltz and cold mouton jackets, and the lingering
whiff of hot dogs or Frito Chili Pie and Pine-Sol wafting up from the downstairs kitchens.
I don’t believe I’d recognize the Odor of
Sanctity, but that ole-time familiar scent of Church Gatherings---oh, yes.
