A Church Story

 The beauty of some of the Churches is the simple fact that it is almost, always, open. On the other hand, many other parishes have taken the unhappy writer of the Ecclesiastes a little too seriously "a time for everything"- A time to open, a time to pray, and a time immediately after, to close. It would seem like the heavenly call centre was open only on Sundays.

The huge, quiet, cool emptiness of a Church could be described as ‘peace well defined’. Sitting there enjoying this definition, I watched as boys came hurrying in from their games outside with a quick request for divine intervention during their exams. A young executive rushed in with his bags. His finger licked at the holy water, knelt down in prayer, one hand placed over his cellular phone, prepared to draw at the first vibration, only one knee touched the ground - a Gideon warrior ready to go to some corporate war. A sad old man prayed deep, weighed down by huge worries. The angel of peace hadn't fluttered his way.

The altar boys had moved in and were busying themselves. Young men and women of the choir got into their pews trailing smiles from some joke outside. There was a swagger in some of them, as though the entire Church was looking at them in admiration. I was the only one looking at them. The only other was a schoolboy with a lolly-pop in his mouth. He had absolutely nothing else to look at. As no other avenues of entertainment seemed to be on offer in the immediate vicinity, I decided to sit back and see what the activity at the front of the Church would lead to. It was a funeral. The corpse was carried in a deadly silence with a few eerie sniffs. The sniffing wasn't from the immediate family of the departed but from the boy with the lolly mimicking some scene from a television soap. The earlier mentioned sad old man now had his eye on the boy. A priest hurried in with a weak smile on his face. It would seem that his seat in the heavenly senate had not yet been confirmed. The boy on seeing him called out "Hello Father" in a voice that associated parentage. The smile weakened, a celestial bell somewhere hit a flat note.

A couple of nuns walked by, their plastic sandals clapping the granite floor. They eyed the boy with an element of caution. He was the type who would jump out from behind a bush and hug them-around the knees for absolutely no apparent reason. To their good luck, love and affection was not on his agenda today. He waved them on like a policeman handling heavy vehicular traffic. A hint of a smile showed up on the old man's face.

The opening hymn began. One of the tenors had a mouth that stretched out in the most odd and unbelievable directions-an amoeba in song. The boy and his lolly now had moved in and was staring up at him. He did this through the first and second verse and might have got himself a chair if it had continued. The poor little fellow must have had one too many caps of his grandad’s cough syrup.

Sermons and words of good that the deceased may not remember, poured out. A very pretty girl cat-walked into the Church. Our young friend followed in step, tripping over his toes. The sadness of the old man was now replaced by controlled amusement. The funeral was over. As they carried the body, the little fellow broke out into a dance behind the pallbearers, the sexton quickly removed him. The smile on the old man's face broadened. The pall bearers with the body went past me. The face of the dead suddenly seemed very familiar, very distant, but very familiar- Someone I had seen very recently. And then, suddenly, I realised where I had seen the face. I turned to look, but couldn't find the old man. He had simply vanished. Not a trace. The boy also wasn't to be seen.

Strange, unlikely, but maybe, just maybe, in the dance of a little devil one man had found eternal peace.