Leaving Church - Barbara Brown Taylor [5]
With the help of a Habersham County map, I finally found Green Street. Ed drove as I counted off the three blocks from Washington Street. At the corner of Green and Wilson, I looked up to see a white frame chapel with huge clear glass windows and green shutters sitting in an old grove of white pines. The only indication that we had found the right place was a historical marker out front. Grace Episcopal Church, it told us, was organized December 12, 1838, for three local families and “many coastal families” who summered in Clarkesville. The square acre of land was purchased for $100 in 1839. When Bishop Stephen Elliott Jr. consecrated the new church in 1842, he declared it a “very neat wooden building, with tower and bell, prettily located, and an ornament to the village.”
I had not seen anything so clean and upright since my last trip to New England. The small porch of the church was supported by four square columns. Just to the left of the double front doors, a thick rope leading to the bell tower was draped over a hook just taller than a second grader. The churchyard bore evidence of having been loved by generations of gardeners. Native azaleas and mountain laurel grew among stones that someone had placed in pleasing constellations, long enough ago for moss to grow on them. Ancient boxwoods grew under the six sash windows, and there was a large holly out front.
Simply to stand in the presence of that building was to rest. Peace poured off the white boards and caught me in its wake as the sighing of the pines reminded me to breathe. When I did, I could feel the clenched muscle of my mind relax. My shoulders came down from around my ears. I shook out my arms and put my hands flat on the side of the church. Was this what happened to wood that had soaked up a hundred and fifty years’ worth of prayers? Did all of that devotion seep into the grain like incense so that any passerby could catch a whiff of it?
When I walked up the painted gray steps to the porch, the old boards creaked under my feet. I stood in front of the heavy doors, which had survived so many humid summers that they scarcely met anymore. When I bent over to look through the huge keyhole, I could see a narrow slice of the sanctuary but no more. I tried the doorknob, mostly to feel the cool metal under my hand, but when it turned I was not really surprised. The generosity of this church was already established fact in my mind.
I stepped into the smell of candle wax, old books, and sun on wood. To either side of me, identical red-carpeted stairways led up to a tiny balcony, which was supported by four pillars in front of me. Besides the red under my feet, the only three colors inside the church were the white of the walls, the brown of the woodwork, and the shiny brass of the processional cross that was attached to the front of the high Victorian pulpit.
There was no central aisle for weddings nor space up front for baptisms. When the church was built, such socially significant occasions would have occurred back home in Charleston or Savannah. Instead, three sections of boxed pews filled the small space between the front door and the altar rail. Opening and shutting the little gates, I counted the seats. There were five in each pew on the left, four in the middle, and five on the right. In a pinch, the place could seat eighty-five people.
The church I served in downtown Atlanta seated four hundred and fifty people, not once but twice on Sunday mornings, with an earlier service in the chapel at 8:00 AM. Grace Church was a dollhouse by comparison, which was a large part of its charm. This was a church I could get my arms around, a