It's Been A While

Yesterday I found myself seated on a pew in a church. If you know anything about me, you'd know that this is a strange occurrence. In the past eight years, I think I've attended maybe five proper services. That may not sound like much, but if you knew that I spent every single Sunday of my life until I was 17 in a church heavily involved in church activities, you'd know something was up.

How the heck did it happen, you ask? An acquaintance invited me to her home church where the concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra was performing in a free string recital. It was pouring in Philly all evening and without an umbrella, I arrived and uncomfortably sat atop a bright green pew cushion with water dripping off the ends of my hair and my trench coat. It was an old church and smelled musty. I remembered what a friend had told me recently about the source of mustiness: black mold growing inside walls. But then why did the smell seem so comfortingly dry?

I thought physically being inside a church would strike me in some way, but it didn't. Throughout the performance my mind went blank. I found myself staring not at David Kim, but at the architecture of the chapel. In the middle of the god-awful Shostakovich trio in E minor (I confirmed that I detest 20th century composers), I wondered what my offering would go towards. For kicks, I reached for the Bible shelved on the back of the pew in front of mine and opened the good book to a random place. My eyes fell to Genesis 31:9, "Thus God has taken away your father's livestock, and given them to me." I read the full chapter for context, and I had several profound interpretations, but in the end, I just sat there like a bump on a log not moved in any particular way. Not by the music, not by the people around me, not by the Bible verse and certainly not by the sacred structure in which I quietly sat. What's up with that?