A Church of My Own

I must have been about twelve.  Carol, Phyllis Waterbury and I were down on hardscrabble Maryland Avenue, in front of Louise Brueninger's and George Krell's houses, playing some game.  I caught a glimpse of  Reverend Christman's car turning the corner.  I bolted from the group, ran to Wizi's fully-leafed maple tree, and climbed up out of sight.  The reverend greeted the other kids with that righteous voice I disliked, and launched into the recruitment spiel I knew was coming.

I never joined the Armonk Methodist Church, or any other.  When meeting with the Forest Hills minister to discuss the upcoming wedding ceremony in 1957, he asked in which church I had been baptized.  I couldn't answer, and after a phone call to my mother, I learned my brow had never before been sprinkled with holy water.

I didn't "find religion" back then on Maryland Avenue, and I still don't "go to church" on Sundays.  But I guess I do have a religion.  I find it out doors and all around me.  When riding my bike on a Brunswick city street, through a mixed neighborhood or wherever, I experience a warm glow when a sad face lights up at my smile, and my warm "Hi" or "Buenos Dias".  Sometimes, if the change in the person's demeanor is dramatic, I even think that perhaps I have turned that person's day around, maybe lightened their step and given them hope that things will get better.

I have had acquaintances marvel at my riding my bike through Black and Hispanic neighborhoods.  "Q Street! - Why I don't even drive my car through there!  That's dangerous" they've said.  But to me, the real "danger" is to ride through life only on the perimeter.
 

I marvel at the love my sister and Buz, and their friends, show every day.  Oh they're Catholics, but I have come to understand that all faiths apparently practice reaching out to those less fortunate.  In Carol's case, what she and her friends have done is remarkable, going back to the days they traveled into the city to renovate tenements.  They also "adopted", in a sense, inner-city youths and, with unfettered love, welcomed them into their homes to offer them succor and show them a new path.  Even now, they join numerous other churches to provide food and shelter for the homeless.  They all are pro-active.  They don't just ride on the perimeter of life.

And I guess I did find a brick and morter church, of sorts, in the little LARC building in Brunswick where I assisted Hispanics and taught English and computer literacy.  There, I earned a modest ordinary income, but I came to understand I was actually highly paid by the emotional return I received from helping people.  I now know that wherever I finally settle, I will find one, or "build", a church of my own.