The chorus drones a divine melody. Eyes flutter. Ears perk up. Incense fills the cathedral, from its stony corners to its highest ceilings. His love embraces the space. So God returns, again, to bless the forsaken. For churchgoers, the ceremony is a rebirth of sorts.
I float in a sea of entranced bodies, compelled by fervent supplication. My muttering fills the gaps between the priest’s call and the congregation’s response. Months have passed since I last entered any of God’s hallowed grounds. But I didn’t cry, squirm, or quiver. Instead, my mind turned towards men––transgressing this body, their body, and the body of divine law. My thoughts drowned out the chorus song. I couldn’t hear God’s voice.
I guess he made me stillborn. Now the priest approaches the pedestal for the sermon. He cracks the tome open, reciting the Book of Matthew. Each syllable steals into me, loosening lungs, lips, and limbs. The wooden pew manages to hold my body together.
I remember God’s touch again. It pierces through the hardness of good Christian teaching, tapping memories of my Nigerian Protestant upbringing. They steal me away from the sanctuary. I am suspended in the innards of my childhood church––a shoebox, not a cathedral. Images of my family populate my mind space. I watch this still life turn motion picture, as their likenesses jostle with the power of the Holy Ghost. But the chorus song forces my mind to return. Memory felt warmer than this place.
I stretch my neck to look up at Jesus. He’s wooden, instead of flesh. His body lies reposed on a bronze cross. But his eyes can’t see my disdain. The pomp and circumstance is sickening. As the congregation recites the Creed, I whisper, why make all this majesty to worship the poorest of men? This cathedral was too empty to contain God’s love.
But we made God out of suitcases scattered in shoebox sanctuaries. His love spoke through the vocal cords of our screeching children’s choir. It was the lilt of the shoddy American accent we used for our white neighbors. It lined the pots of rice we ate after what felt like a lifetime of ecstasy in a single service. God wasn’t as grand, or as beautiful, or as ostentatious as this place. We felt him, regardless. It was about his touch, not how we touched him.
But the priest’s sermon ends, and it’s time for communion. The nun enters the holy space. She passes the Bible to the priest. He kisses the Bible. Repeat: a kiss upon the Bible. The priest passes the Bible before the body and the blood. The congregation kisses the priest who kissed the Bible. The priest beckons us to read. We must read the Bible to become Catholic. Pick up and read. Pick up and read. But my mother’s scolding overshadows his call. Their Bible is a knife.
My hope, my fear, my love, and my hate spill out as tears. I unfurl, bereft of direction. I lay prostrate before the cross, parched for something called a future.
Suddenly, the priest commands our departure. But I couldn’t leave that place if I tried. My mind shattered in the sanctuary. It seemed the nun noticed, since she approached me after the service. It’s your choice to chart the next step, she says. Apparently, my Catholic faith could start today.
I flip through the Bible she hands me. If this Bible is a map of sorts, all I’ve journeyed through is the fullness of my mind, not the infinity of divine text. All I’ve known is sense at its most violent yet beautiful extremes. It’s all I have left besides a panoply of recovered images: human, divine, and otherwise. Now I make a soft kiss under moonlight, the matter of soliloquies. I turn a glance at ocean eyes into fiery want. I find the sinful sublime. It’s a cacophony of emotions, but it’s mine all the same. It sounds better than Gregorian chants.
I almost trip into oncoming traffic as I leave the cathedral. I know deep down that their Bible is not enough. I have to make something for myself, from myself. Catching my breath, I sprawl my tense body on a cold metal bench, like Jesus himself. I am overcome with sleep. Suddenly, I see an image of flickering candles around the sanctuary. My last thought: how do I become a body that not only flickers, but sparks?
