It had to be the most fucked up Church in the city of Toronto, crammed with alcoholics, geriatrics and these kids with face tattoos of skulls smoking cigarettes. Yet somehow upon entering, I felt at home. Even as an agnostic, there is something comforting about a Church. Its the quiet. I feel God not when the Priest is speaking but in the silence before.
I didn’t know what to do when all the regulars were speaking amongst themselves. I looked up at the stained glass window next to me and there was Jesus, in His technicolour glory, staring directly at me.
"What do you want with me? Why can't you just leave me alone?"
He didn’t answer.
The topic of the sermon was obedience. I’d never liked the word. Maybe it was obedience that made religion so hard to swallow.
Maybe you should shut up and listen more.
The priest, a kind man with a Filipino accent, said one thing that stuck, one thing that made sense.
“We always mistake our part for the whole.”
Halfway through the service, we all joined together at the front of the Church and prayed silently and out loud for things we wanted.
“I pray that more people come to this Church,” a woman with a Jamaican accent said.
“I pray that my niece who is struggling with alcoholism finds help,” said a well-dressed woman in her eighties.
“I pray that I get better,” said a woman even older, who must have been beautiful once.
The woman next to me, middle aged with a sad face, held my hand. Her hand was warm and by the end of the prayer session, mine was, too. That fall Sunday morning, I got religion for the first time. I felt close to something bigger than me. When we do communion, I drink Jesus’ blood and eat his body.
I say a prayer for a secret.
Before I leave, seven people come up to me and tell me to come back next week, that they need more young people. I nod and smile. They are so human that don’t have the heart to tell them that I won’t return.
That’s the thing about God; once He touches your life, you see Him everywhere you look.
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