Spare me your motivational talks. Spare me your antibacterial soap. Spare me your tubs of ready-made supermarket macaroni salad, and just give me back my little country church, where we were so hokey that I really thought I was the cat's meow when cruising down the street on a tractor as a 10-year old, as old men drove by and saluted. Me and my sister looked forward all year to playing on the metal frames that my family set up for the game booths for the annual festival. We swung on them like a jungle gym for as long as we were allowed. And we were innocent and as real as the ground under your feet.
I remember my grandma peeling cucumbers in the church garage and I remember my dad being so happy about the way the organ music just filled you up on a summer Sunday afternoon as people processed out of Mass. And I remember times when we didn't have any music, and some woman up front would just start singing something a capella, not fancy, not flashy, not anything technically good, but it hits you deeper than where music normally goes.
Looking back now, that little mountain church house,
Has become my life's corner stone,
It was there in that little mountain church house,
I first heard the word I've based my life upon.
--Little Mountain Church House, Ricky Skaggs
Great memories. Thanks for posting!
ReplyDeleteIf I had had those kinds of memories of a church, I might have never left... As it was, I went to a 70s-style big church that seemed kind of impersonal. With mean nuns. And the head priest hated kids. So my memories arent as pleasant. But I do have fond memories of the Stations of the Cross enacted at Easter. I always wanted to act in it, but I didnt stay in the church long enough. The bigger kids got to perform it... I had quit the church by then. Each Easter, I always have the urge to locate a Roman Catholic church where they are having the stations of the cross, but I never know where to look.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Sarah--Did you have a church like this growing up?
ReplyDeleteI'm fond of Little Country Churches as well. Unfortunately our diocese doesn't see any value in them. They seem to be in favor of the Mega-Church model where the majority of members don't attend regularly and the one that do hardly know each other because you are just a face in the crowd. So under the guise of priest shortages and changing demographics they are shutting down our beloved Little Country Chuches one after another.
ReplyDeleteNo, I didn't have a church like that growing up, I just liked reading your memories. They created a vivid picture in my mind :)
ReplyDeleteI do have an affinity for those old, small country churches. They feel comfortable and quaint and filled with history. I tend to dislike the modern buildings. They dont touch anything within my soul. Sometimes it seems that when they build those old churches, they build them with heart in them. They showed their love through how they created it... We just dont put buildings together like that anymore. They seem so prefab.
ReplyDeleteBut I'm talking about architecture, I suppose, and you were talking about the spirit of the place. I like my current church because not only is the building itself ripe with history, there's a loving spirit there. I wish I'd grown up in a church like that.