The Open Door
Elayna opened the door and hesitantly walk in. It was a small white church building reminiscent of the country churches that lined pastural scenes throughout America in the late 19th and 20th centuries. She and her daughter had driven from the state capital to a popular tourist attraction in the northern part of the state.
The spot had changed since Elayna had first visited with her niece from her husband’s family at least five or more years ago. The landscaping now consisted of mounds of meticulously kept white roses and wild grasses with white wheatlike blooms. There were raised beds of sweet potato vine with green and white caladiums, dotted with white bachelor’s buttons. Elayna loved the landscaping and drew deep breathes of the rose-scented air.
The outside décor was black and white-- black rod iron furniture with white cushions and checkered black and white wicker tables and chairs. “How chic,” Elayna thought to herself. “They really got this ambiance right. This place is perfectly curated. It draws you into this fantastical scene, inviting you to linger and buy, aspiring one to recreate the space in one’s own home and garden.” She even thought she might change the palette of her backyard from blue and white to black and white. All the women in Elayna’s family had an eye for fashion and décor. Her niece in Los Angeles was getting her degree in interior design. And, Elayna’s mother, sister, and niece had recently completed a major backyard renovation at her mother’s home in Los Angeles. The renovation included a new concrete paver sitting area, and gorgeous wooden pergola. The finishing touch would be the outdoor furniture. “Maybe they might like the furniture here,” she thought.” So, Elayna took pictures of the black and white décor and texted them to her niece, in Los Angeles for her mother’s vision board.
But the main event at this tourist attraction was not shopping, howbeit tempting. The main event for this trip, was to visit with her brother’s children, one from Georgia and the other a short distance from the site. It had been years since she had seen them in their adult iterations. Their reunions had been thwarted by busy lives and the quarantine of COVID.
Elayna’s daughter and she greeted her niece and her niece’s boyfriend from Georgia, on the sidewalk leading to the venue, as the four exited their individual cars. Elayna’s niece had arrived from the niece’s maternal grandparents’ house in Dallas, an hour earlier than Elayna and her daughter. The four headed to the coffee shop of the venue. And Elayna’s nephew, and his family had just arrived and were dismounting from their car, parked in front of the site’s coffee shop, when the party of four arrived.
This would be the first time, Elayna would meet one of the newest additions to the family, her nephew’s 3-year-old daughter, Elayna’s grandniece. Hugs were exchanged. The group chatted excitedly outside the coffee shop, as they waited to be granted entry by the attendant of the line of customers. Once inside Elayna treated the group to tea and coffee of their choice and they, drinks in hand, proceeded masked to the outside sitting area.
Elayna’s niece from Georgia had bought several bags of presents from the niece’s parents and sister to give to the little one. It was strange for Elayna to hear her nephew introduce his daughter to her aunt, Elayna’s niece from Georgia. Elayna, the oldest of her four siblings, had always thought of herself as the auntie. Slowly, Elayna was overwhelmed by a warm maternal-like love for this brood. The little one with coiffed afro puffs, had constant exchanges with her father, Elayna’s nephew. “Where’s my daddy,” was her oft-repeated phrase. Having found him, she scrunched up her little face and uttered with delight, “I love you Daddy,” to which he replied in kind. “My sweet family,” Elayna thought.
The bright carrot-top niece from Georgia with her beau; delighted Elayna. The two seemed the perfect match. It was so much fun to see Elayna’s niece take on the role of auntie with the little. Elayna’s nephew’s partner was so chic. Her long box braids, fashionable tee and bell bottom jeans made Elayna reminisce about the 1970’s when she and her high school friends visited the Washington Monument Elayna had worn bell bottom jeans with a tube top then.
“Soak it all in” she internally whispered. “This is a good day.” The kind of day her, now heavenly residing, father would have loved. He loved being with his family. He would go out of his way to bring them all together and would surely have planned and enjoyed this kind of get-together.
The stores on the site had multiplied since her last visit. After gift giving, pictures and facetime with other family members in Georgia, Texas and Los Angeles, the group left the coffee shop’s outdoor eating and began to explore the various shops on the premises. They first entered the large home goods store, browsed, took pictures and bought candles. Then the familial group dispersed into smaller groups to explore the smaller shops.
There were six smaller shops each precisely curator to inspire, a particularly intimate, sensory experience and purchases. There was a jewelry and leather shop with delicate handmade necklaces, rings, and millennial-chic satchels, murses, and purses. And there was a men’s shop staged with hints of hunting and fishing gear, cologne and various typical male sundries--- baseball caps, multi-tool kits on a ring, and books with the faces of the celebrity curators of the space. A bath and body shop held perfumed soaps, oils, and candles. And the children’s store had toys modeled after those of years gone by. The white shiplap, red-roofed stores gleamed in the bright sun and stood in a square with a grass area in the middle. At the North end of the square was the little white country church house.
After sauntering through the shops, Elayna decided to look inside the church building. Pushing open the dense door, a welcomed wave of cool air greeted her in contrast to the blistering heat outside. Posted just inside the door was a curious sign that read:
The doors of the church must remain closed at all times.
The sign took her by surprise. So much so, that she paused to read it again. She thought there must be a typo. Elayna read the sign again, this time forming the words with her mouth,
The doors of the church must remain op...
No! The sign read “... closed at all times.” It was amazing how her brain had taken over her reading, replacing what she expected or wanted to be there, rather than what was actually printed on the page.
Elayna, surveyed the inside of the church building. Unused for several years, it had been perched somewhere in a rural part of the state, brought piece by piece and reassembled at this place of commerce. The consumers and tourists (Elayna among them) had all come to this specifically curated space to eat the food and buy the wares. And the church building having given up its original use, sat at the head of the square and evoked, ...what, a sense of nostalgia? When the town church building, situated in the center of town was the center of the town’s life?
Elayna admired the beautifully varnished wooden church pews and crafted wooden ceiling buttresses.
The couples posing at the altar, as if exchanging vows before an ordained minister, made Elayna smile, remembering her wedding day. The little white church building was really beautiful, a wonderful specimen of modern American mid-century church architecture. And Elayna especially loved the modern multi-spoked wooden light fixtures, a nod to candle lit fixtures from back in the day. As, Elayna snapped one last picture and turned to exit she paused. Instead of leaving, she glanced toward the exit door opposite where she had entered. And, there by the door was posted another sign, a replica of the first. It too read:
“The doors of the church must remain closed at all times.”
Yep, she really had read it correctly. “Stop it, she whispered to herself not sure of thr emotions that rose in her chest. “You are being judgmental. You loved the aesthetics of this place. You will probably replicate the black and white color scheme in your backyard and take up the dying yucca plants in the front yard, replacing them with white roses. Yes, you consider yourself a master of decorative homestyle. Are you jealous of the curators’ huge success, financial prosperity and marketing prowess?” She, reminded herself how they had put an obscure town on the globe. What had made her so uneasy about this beautiful white building in this iconic square. Elayna tried to identify her emotions. Why had the sign upset her?
Immediately Elayna was transported to her hometown, Cincinnati and the little church building that housed the congregation of her parents’ youth. She sat on those pews inside the memory, herself a little girl in the Baptist church of her parents’ youth. She conjured the Easter Sundays when her grandmother dressed her and her cousin in matching crinoline dresses, white gloves and frilly Easter bonnets. She flashed in her mind’s eye to the deacon’s devotion time just before the main church services began. Elayna’s maternal grandfather, a life-long deacon, would utter a prayer signed always with, “This is the prayer of your humble servant.”
Her play-aunts, the organist and choir director had accompanied the illustrious choir with songs like “Lead Me Guide Me” for the alter calls, and “Let Us Break Bread Together” for Communion. And, after the singing, her parents’ pastor a handsome, tall, imposing, yet welcoming white-hair Black man, rose to the pulpit to preach a provocative heart-stirring message. Then the same deacons from the devotion time, often her grandfather and her play-uncle, husband to the organist and best friend and next-door neighbor to her maternal grandparents, would rise from their front row seats, walk to the area on the ground level, just below the elevated pulpit, turn to the congregation, and with hands extended utter the words,
“The doors of the church are open.”
This was the climax of the service, the invitation to join with others in the confession of faith in Jesus, God’s Christ and an invitation to become a covenant partner or member joining the koinonia or fellowship of this stellar congregation of believers. An intense wave of tearful longing overwhelmed her. “Funny,” Elayna thought. “I can’t even remember the details of this church building of my parents church congregation. Only that phrase:
The doors of the church are open.
Hers was the longing to be surrounded once again by those lovers of Christ (now among the cloud of witness in heaven) engulfed in their boisterous praise, love, fellowship and vibrancy as the Church.
Elayna’s father, the patriarch of the little brood gathered on this day, had been a pastor and community advocate in Cincinnati, Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles. He was born in Cincinnati, as was Elayna. Elayna’s father and his siblings had lived in public housing, in Cincinnati before his mother, with her savings from day's work, as a maid and nanny and his father’s salary from work at a glue factory, had afforded them to move to a home in a working-class Black neighborhood called Madisonville.
Elayna was a PK, a preacher's kid. and she herself had taken up her father’s mantle and she too was a pastor. She remembered her Ministry Training 101, in the basement-church of the public housing, where her father had once lived. Elayna and her siblings and her mother had been recruited many summers by her father to help plan and run Vacation Bible School and field trips and to lead the singing for Sunday services in this basement church edifice that smelled of Pine Sol.
lyana’s thoughts turned to the huge white gothic, British-modeled cathedral in Los Angeles that housed the congregation her father was called to pastor, after receiving his Master of Divinity at Howard. University in Washington, D. C. Elayna, while watching the televised wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex; Megan and Harry’s televised wedding had remarked, that the cathedral in which they were married, gave her the vibes of the church building where she and her husband had been married. She and her husband of 42 years were the first couple her father married in that building, after having accepted the call to pastor that congregation.
She had given her father’s eulogy in this same space. The cathedral in Los Angeles dwarfed both the modest church building of her parents’ youth and the one planted at the venue. The three buildings, however, were now connected in her mind. When her father had first arrived to pastor the congregation in Los Angeles, he became immersed in the heritage of the congregation and the building. The cathedral was one of the largest in Los Angeles. On the corner of Adams Boulevard and 11th Avenue. Its construction was financed and commissioned by a devout couple in the 1930’s, the McCartys. He, a physician, and his wife had studied the great cathedrals of Europe for years had longed to build a cathedral to show their love and devotion to Christ and Christ’s gospel.
The neighborhood of the cathedral began to morph over the years, as had the demographics of the congregation. The pastor that preceded Elayna’s father, had been a pioneer, insisting that the congregation be racially integrated in the 1960’s. The congregation was integrated. And as the White flight of the seventies took hold, the congregation and neighborhood ultimately became one of middle-class and affluent Black people. Truly there is nothing new unders the sun as the neighborhood is presently experiencing a reverse demographic trend with increased gentrification with the influx of White residents reclaiming the once abandoned urban core.
The congregation that Elayna’s father inherited treasured the legacy of their fine edifice, as did Elayna’s father—lover of all things antique and in need of retrofit. He started a building campaign to repair the edifice. When the congregation’s board wanted to tear down the parsonage next door to the cathedral (a well appointed California craftsman bungalow, and build a modern parsonage, Elayna’s dad had insisted that it be renovated and used to occupy his family. With people and buildings, Elayna’s father had always adopted a posture of restoration rather than condemnation and demolition.
Elayna’s father’s vision for the cathedral was as an open place. The edifice was to be open to the congregation and the community for service and sanctuary. He treasured and protected the legacy of the building, but for him it was to be used at the pleasure of Christ to serve, rather than to be admired as a museum piece for its exquisite architecture and appointments.
Her father was the poster child for “The doors of the church are open.” Sometimes to the chagrin of the keepers of the legacy of the building, her father opened the doors to the building at every turn and in multiple ways. He made sure that the daycare housed in the church was a rich program offered to as many as possible who needed childcare. He shared the facility with a Korean congregation (now occupied by an Ethiopian congregation). And he opened the doors of the gymnasium for after-school basketball for the neighborhood latch-key kids, keeping them safely and healthfully engaged and out of harms way. Elayna’s father had used the parsonage for AA meetings and the gym showers for homeless neighbors. And later in his pastorate, he engaged congregations with large buildings to house the homeless, especially during times of inclement weather.
It was her parents' legacy of service to humanity in the name of Christ that sparked her reaction to the sign on the door of the little church in the square. In all fairness the sign was probably posted to make sure that the building maintained its cool air-conditioning in the summer’s blistering heat. But, with COVID 19, many church buildings, except for building maintenance staff, had become vacant and the doors of the physical buildings closed. She had seen many a sign on many a church building, recently that read, similarly to the sign on the door of the church in the square.
Elayna’s mind returned to the present where and she gave one more glance to the interior of the church building, walked past the sign at the exit, through the door and into the square. The sign had reignited in her the passion, first ignited by her grandparents and parents that the Church was more than the building. Whether the Church meets in buildings, homes, backyards, parking lots, online or open airfields,
The doors of the Church will be open at all times.
“What an exciting time,” Elayna thought. “The Church of this era has the opportunity to be deliberate and creative in how the Church is open and thriving in this season.” The symbolic and the physical doors of the church are open to serve, to love, to worship, to enjoy the beauty of God’s architecture in the hearts and in the edifices that hold the Church of our Lord, Jesus, God’s Christ. Selah!
