Church Doors Burned Away

by Dee H. Wade

Church doors burned up, burned down, burned away.
The white painted brick church on Belmont Boulevard
that looked just like a church should look
assumes architectural history,
but much remains.

Behind these doors,
their memorial traced in charcoal,
the sanctuary lies in smoke stenched ruin,
roofed only by a magnificent October blue sky
over warped metal, rafters, pieces of pew and plaster.
They congregate like corpses in accidental embrace.
A hymnal, blue cover gone, edges blackened,
exposes the progress of flames stopped at
The Head That Once Was Crowned,
hymn number 149.
No lives were lost here;
but can we say there’s a loss of life?
Certainly the setting was burned away,
the going out and the coming in of generations,
spiritual wallpaper patterning a whole heap of living.
The baptisms, children’s choirs, weddings, funerals,
and a million hymns, prayers, and sermons
that occurred in this place, faithfulness
back dropped in particular array
are here and now ended.
Despite burning grief,
memories animate and inspire,
and point, not just in self reference,
but beyond themselves, when truly framed,
to the hope that sprung them into original birth.
When the doors are burnt off the heart’s sanctuary,
what idols are expelled and do angels enter?
Is dross destroyed and is gold purified?
Our refuge was never impregnable;
Our God never contained.

Refined are the people.
A homeless family gathers more tightly,
prays more squarely, and sings more lustily
when put on the street by sheriffs of circumstance,
because God’s best promises come
       in wilderness wanderings.