I attended church today - an effort considering the events that happened the last time I visited. Has it really been that long?

It went as expected. The polite women greeted me. The children avoided me. The men kept their distance. Church has become more like a social gathering than a sign of faith. The same groups abound - cliques - that have formed in the elegant and sacred walls of the church. The body intended to take in the meek, the desperate, the weary has dissolved under the pressures of the very evils the ‘mass’ would proclaim to eschew.

I was welcomed, of course, I think people want to draw in the ‘demon’ than shun him. The irony of my name isn’t lost upon these people. The others in my family are known here and I know they inquire about my name to them. Never do they ask me. I admit that I look down on them for their lack of courage.

The priest - someone I have known since I moved to this state - and I have become quite close despite my sporadic attendance. Somehow we understand each other - even if he tries too hard to get me to attend more regularly. He asked me to see him after the mass concluded.

Despite the social beast that the church body has become, there is still silence when the priest speaks, and a soothing calm as the words are repeated by each person in unison.

I saw him after the mass in his office. He told me I looked tired. I told him he looked too hard. He handed me an old bible and a worn, wood beaded rosary. Told me he had been holding onto it for 4 months. The bible had pieces of paper that marked special pages.

It was his. He told me that the pages were worn, yellowed - the rosary likely to break as soon as I left. He said it was strung together by faith.

And that I needed faith to sustain it.

And with that, I end tonight’s post. It hasn’t broken yet.

‘Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.’ - Martin Luther King Jr.