Last night, I stood in a cathedral with towering ceilings covered with painted white-winged angels. There were ornate wooden carvings at every turn. The way the late summer light filtered through the stained glass at just the right angle to illuminate the nativity scene could stop your heart for a moment.
The altar is made of onyx and marble. The statues are brass and gold. The organ can blow your hair back, or at least you are sure it would when you close your eyes and imagine standing in front of its impossibly tall pipes.When all the organ stops are pulled and its pedals fall like a row of finger-flicked dominoes under the flurry of the organist’s deft, dancing feet, it makes you forget whatever was worrying you when you walked through the giant oak doors that evening.
But that’s not where I went to church last night. Church was being held at the convenience store down the road. It was pouring rain when I left the cathedral. The frantic windshield wipers on my Hyundai struggled to ward off the onslaught.
When I pulled up outside, I noticed a young man in his early 20s with an unruly beard and torn heavily-soiled jeans sitting under a partial awning, turning his gaunt body at intervals so he would never be fully exposed to the relentless rain.
As I was getting out of my car, a man in his 30s wearing a baseball cap and Carhartt jacket walked right up to him and asked ― with the ease of someone asking a loved one how their day had gone ― if he could use a refill for the empty coffee cup he could see held close against the young man’s sunken chest.
The young man looked surprised at first and stood there for several silent seconds before deciding to follow this stranger into the store to take him up on…
The post Cathedrals And Convenience Stores appeared first on FeedBox.