Here, this place of worship of nondenomination…enough to know that it’s theirs, not much longer — arching Magnificat, delicate yet hulking, an elemental transcendence of elements, less rock and stone than an architecture of them that is in its totality history itself, an earthrecord, time bound within a complex of complicated masonry, ascetic iron, vitirform trills, rills of gold. Here, they’re here to pray, to flagellate themselves with tongues, to mortify — to pray though for what they’re not sure exactly, besides the condition of prayer itself, innerness, attentive mindquiet: for salvation, maybe, for an afterlife, perhaps, let me go without pain — to consecrate themselves worthy of such terminal martyrdom, it’s important before anything else to make a firm ground of faith, to more deeply found their belief. Please, let us go, let me loose and I promise to do whatever I’m asked, even hope…O if only You would send us an angel, an aeroplane and fast, parachute me a new pair of shoes. Redeem me first, then we’ll talk about trust. Blame, later bargain. All fall to their knees, the Sandersons prayer to prayer. From its console in back, the great organ shakes, throaty pipes, its diapasons woken to rattle, giving a gag; divisions shatter like the stains of the glass, admitting pure light. To pray for their own souls, no — to prey on the souls of family immemorial, sacrosanct and died long ago, whose scavenged holiness might merit for their inheritors, they wish, the most meager of Miserere, all they Psalm to ask. To be delivered into the very hands of the stigmatic, openpalmed, dirtynailed…clasped seeking prayer, clasped seeking the blessing of prayer — for the miraculous resurrective unto the sacristy’s hide, Amen, hold me near. Mold weeps from the altar, flows from the skinflint folds of the wormworn antependium, the glaciate rot of settings high and without jewel atop the jut of the retable, the reredos, oozing wet down the apse westward toward the opposite apsis, down the nave, also, toward the stumps of the transept, its cruciform arms uncrowned, without hands, fingerless…sheathed in thorns iceformed, iciclebarbs, clots of cold veining the floor, which is marble. A dust stirs, as they kneel to rise only to kneel again, then rise again, and then again kneel. Hassockfooted sons of a Father with the head of a Son, they swallow their paternosters in a teemed teething of lips: less to invoke the divine, His mercy, not one authority holds, than to ensure the remembrance of history, the good faith of record — if such ideas as History and Record could ever exist in a future to which we, too, would impossibly survive.
Pray, Miriam’s offering encouragement, pray your hearts out, if hearts you have; this is your last opportunity, be…how do you say it? be grateful, that’s it, for your lives, for its plenty, what was. Thank us; thank your God for us.
Again, she reminds — don’t forget to enjoy yourselves. I’ll be back to collect you all in an hour.
