Sanctuary

"Every conversation about God must start with silence." It would seem, then, that Harry had been having that conversation for thirty years. Still, he knew the reverend meant well.

He'd come to meet women. He got the notion in his head that if he showered and shaved, put on his Sunday suit, sat quietly alone in the pew, not quite in the back, that some beautiful woman would see him, take care of him, want him. That perhaps out of some sense of Christian duty, this woman might invite him over for a meal and feed him the rest of his life. What was left of it.

Perhaps it was unfair of him. Not only to this woman, if she existed, wherever she was, but to himself. He felt unnatural in his suit, out of his beard, seated on a hard wooden bench he had never adjusted to as a child. He could feel the sweat glands swelling, he could see a stained Saint Peter. What are you doing here, what is it you're looking for, why should I open anything to you? He wanted to laugh.

"We don't need to be confronted by skeptics. We're skeptics ourselves." If this was the kind of church that practiced it, and if Harry was of that disposition, he might have leapt up and shouted AMEN! He might have opened his arms to the sky, waiting for something to fall into his lap.

The postlude arrived, the congregation processioned out of the sanctuary. Harry stayed seated, listening. The music, an air of Bach's, connected his sadness to his hope with some terrible thread he concluded only the greatest of composers knew how to use. Weaving it in and out him, stitching the pieces together, until by the final chord he reached something that felt nearly whole.

He left. The reverend was at the door. "Thank you for visiting." It was only then that Harry realized how beautiful she was. Her hair was silver and sweet, and reminded him of something.