A young child sits silently and obediently beneath her mother’s soft, strong arm on the wooden and high-backed pew. Her thin legs dangle and swing from the seat and only the preacher’s head, mouth earnestly uttering old and sacred words from the Bible before him, appears in her line of vision. He’s the ring master at the centre of this Sunday circus, flanked by organ and piano on either side and a host of clowns dutifully performing various assigned tasks.
But above centre ring, high above the preacher’s balding head beaded with perspiration waits a ceiling. It’s higher than her mother’s arm, higher than the preacher’s waving arms and higher, even, than the upper reaches of the ornately carved baptismal chamber. Peaks of white rolling mounds like the icing trim of a wedding cake are cut into perfect rows and lines and squares, an infinite grid of white. The child runs her eyes down each row and back again, loving the curves, cultivating a tenderness for the mounds and lines. If she could dip her small finger into the ceiling and then her hand, she could pull it back to her coated in a buttery smooth loveliness. But the ribbons and waves of white are not to be disturbed.
It’s there, above the warm realities of her close, teeming world, she firmly believes in the God they’ve come to worship, this solemn congregation that never looks up. She sees His omnipresent mist swirl and seep between wooden columns, caressing each white moulded dollop of plaster in His translucent cloud of being. She sees Him sway and glow with the rhythm of the sermon and swell with love at the crescendo of a favourite hymn. And at the service’s close, as the last worshiper steps into the sharp morning sun and blinkingly greets his fellows, the mist slips unnoticed behind, and she sees it unwind itself from the columns and rows of crevices and silently hold each worshiper’s torso close as they walk away, the strands pulling and separating with the growing divergence of paths.
