Home : The Voice : February 2002 : The Church Back Door

The Church Back Door

by Dee H. Wade

The church back door
swings upon two sets of hinges,
one figurative, the other literal.

The first yawns open as silent exit
for the disgruntled and the apathetic,
the disillusioned and the friendless,
who, for whatever reason and to whomever's blame,
disappear into the cold, disguising their tracks
like foxes on snow.

Through the literal back door
with keys in hand, jangling,
in and out, out and in,
stream opposite types of members,
close to the church's heart,
without whom the church is not
what it is,
but with whom the work of the church,
holy and humble, dreary and dazzling
happens.

At anytime of day or anytime of night
when they could be elsewhere,
they trek to the door of familiar passage,
reserving the front door for company,
palming the worn brass knob, remembering
without thinking to hold the key just right
to gain entrance to the committee meeting,
or to paint the nursery, arching a rainbow
across pink and blue walls,
or to prep the sanctuary for a Tuesday funeral,
at all times bringing into the church
energy, thought, love, and prayer,
enriching, enlightening, enlarging
the circle of faith, the boundaries of hope.

The back door of the church, solid and real,
scratched up and hinge-sprung
from constant use by caring hands
knows its own
and its own know it.

The more they know each other
the less the symbolic door,
the escape hatch for the lightly involved,
is needed.

Photo of Presbyterian Church in Smiths Grove, KY, by Ken Morgan.

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