It was my intent to write a post about keeping warm if the heat goes out but my heart is just not in it. It is sitting on a wooded hilltop with the smoking rubble of a tiny church. We have two churches in Cummington and Bruce and I have a foot in both. We generally attend the one that we live next door to, primarily because of obligation (we are the only young couple left attending and we hate to leave the old folks behind) and partly for convenience as we walk there. But our hearts have been in the West Cummington Church. The minister is one of our dearest friends. His boys grew up with our boys and they are still best friends. Our friends attend WC and the theology is much more aligned to ours.
This was no fancy church. It was one room; no bathroom, no church school room, no kitchen, no grand organ. But the light lay in a slant across the pews in the morning and music from the old piano sounded like an angel humming. The communion vessels were hand-made by a local potter and a quilter had donated a gorgeous quilt for the big wall. My sons were married by the minister, my grandson was baptized there. The first time I heard my son sing in public was at a service in our little church. When we walk in the door, the men who go to men’s group with Bruce great each other with bear hugs. It was the warmest, most beautiful place in the world. And yesterday morning, it was destroyed in a fire.
There is much to be thankful for. Nobody was hurt. The congregation is smart and talented dedicated and cohesive. We will rebuild. I have thought some about why I am so wounded by the loss. I think it is because we have so few places left in the world. The ubiquitous McDonalds and KFC, the same,same, match, match of the suburban housing, landscape, the slavery to a particular fashion has made most places look and feel much like every other place. billboards display the logo for Coke in Detroit and in Tokyo. In the midst of all of this nowhere, Cummington is very much somewhere, a particular place with a particular feel and nowhere is this more evident than in our church. It had heart and soul and a quirky personality that would not have been improved upon by indoor plumbing.
Forgive me for using this forum as a place to share my grief. So many of you have become friends and I know you will understand my need to vent, to sit with my sadness and give it a home for a bit. I will be back tomorrow but for now I need to hunker down and spend time with these feelings. Bless you.
Kathy
January 18, 2010 at 9:05 am
I’m sorry for your loss. It sounds beautiful and I can understand your grief. Even an atheist like me might love a church like that one.
January 18, 2010 at 9:06 am
My prayers are with you and your congregation. Although I believe one can’t know exactly how another is feeling, I have experienced a type of this loss. It was to be a school that a group of parents had worked on all summer. It was a very old church building. At the end of the summer and a LOT of work, a former tenant arsoned the building leaving us with no school to use in the next two weeks.
The grief is real. Take the time you need with it. It is who you are and who you need to be.
January 18, 2010 at 9:13 am
What a terrible loss, Kathy – I’m so sorry.
January 18, 2010 at 9:51 am
It’s funny you should say that because a lot of the people who attend are atheist, agnostic or from other faith traditions interspersed with very traditional Cristains. It was a spiritual place with no value placed on dogma but much on the importance of ritual and community.
January 18, 2010 at 11:22 am
My thoughts and prayers are with you and the entire congregation! I can’t imagine how this must feel. Many thanks for the hospitality shown to the firefighters while they were working. You can tell that these are people that care for one another and their community. God Bless.
January 18, 2010 at 12:17 pm
The building is just that a building. The Church is the people, so the church will continue to exist. The God I serve doesn’t show favorites based on the beauty of the building. He is more interested in the beauty of the soul. God’s not impressed by the with the money spent on the structure but by the works coming out. He gives us examples, throughout the Bible, that everyday hardworking people have an important place in his ministry. From Joesph the carpenter to the fishermen James and John who become his deciples. Kathy don’t mourn the building, what you found to be so loving and special there isn’t lost, it can be found around a picnic table, under a shade tree as long as the people that made it a family is still there.
January 18, 2010 at 12:19 pm
It’s so sad ! I’m sorry for you Kathy
January 18, 2010 at 12:34 pm
I have had that happen in the community I grew up in…I think seeing an old and much loved community place go up in flames brings to mind the saying “your life flashes before your eyes”…you see the remains of an old building, but it’s the thought of all the memories that were made in it. Of course, the thing to remember is that those memories live in your heart and mind, not in the burned timbers. Take this as a way to plan the perfect community spiritual gathering spot…a place for a memory quilt to hang as decoration and the local potter to make something that incorporates the memories of the old with the new. Out of the ashes can spring a new life for a fading gathering place.
January 18, 2010 at 12:47 pm
You don’t need to apologize for sharing your grief on your blog. One of the beauties of Internet friendships is that we can identify and connect and sometimes, give voice to the same emotions in our life.
My paternal grandmother physically died years after her mind died. We were happy for her to go and be free at last, but we grieved the end of an era. She was the last one left of that generation.
That’s what you are grieving – the end of an era. Yes, the church can be rebuilt and the community will again thrive, but in other ways it will not be the same ever again.
Give the grief room in your heart. Time doesn’t so much heal grief, as you get used to it.
Nancy
January 18, 2010 at 1:29 pm
How sad! It’s always terrible to lose a place that has been a center of community.
Like everyone says, give yourself permission to grieve.
peace to all,
Shamba
January 18, 2010 at 1:54 pm
I mourn your loss, and I feel your pain. Yes a building is just a building but one that had cherished memories. In our city they are so anxious to tear down some old building and build shiny new one with no personality……. just steel and glass. I love to look at old buildings and wonder about the lives that passed thro them. Give into those feeling and mourn your loss, it will be time to re build soon.
January 18, 2010 at 3:32 pm
Kathy,
Though it’s just a building, it’s also not just a building, like your home and the home you grew up in is not just a building.
A church that has long been part of your life and community, where important events in your life have been celebrated, memorialized or sanctified, is probably similar, heart-wise, to any other home-building in your life.
It’s a huge and terrible loss. In a strange way it may also feel like you’re losing the important happenings and events and memories tied to this church where the morning light lit the pews just so.
Though those events and memories aren’t actually lost, one of the most important pathways to them is lost. The other pathways will suffice, yes, but this place was so important, sacred in even the most secular sense, and so deserving of your tender grief.
It probably saddens all of you who have loved this church that future generations will never know what you’ve known, that those who are young now may barely remember it and not carry cherished memories that you do. That’s another loss of connection that happens at a time like this.
It’s sad for you that you have missed, for the good reasons that you shared, times to be in this special place while it was still there. We tend to feel this backward regret, the feeling that we always meant to spend more time, always thought we’d have the opportunity, the one last time more than what was actually our last time there.
Though you will rebuild, it’s always sad that it will never be the same.
The new church may become more precious in some ways, for the love and honoring and remembering that go into the rebuilding. It will be, hopefully, a special sharing and strengthening in the community. But still, it will be sweet newness built on top of the sweet and sorrowful old.
All of us who have ever had to lose and/or rebuild something bound to our personal ad community histories, precious and irreplaceable, know the feeling of this and are poignantly sorry for your loss.
Deanna
January 18, 2010 at 7:41 pm
How very sad. Your church family will be in our thoughts and prayers
January 18, 2010 at 10:03 pm
{{Cyber-hugs}} to you, your family, and your church family. You’re in my thoughts and prayers. I’m thankful no one was hurt but wow… what a loss for you all.
January 19, 2010 at 11:05 am
Well doggonit. I’m so sorry, Kathy. Virtual hugs for you and yours (((KATHY)))
January 20, 2010 at 9:37 pm
Oh, Kathy, I saw that on the local news but didn’t realize that it would effect you. I am so sorry!