Every time I bring Joshua downtown to see the doctor now he says, “I go church….I go church!” He has a routine down for our visits and it goes something like this. First, we stop by St. Paul’s Lutheran right across the street to pray, then we go see the doctor. After that we visit McDonald’s in the basement floor and visit with the life size Ronald McDonald mannequin. I have broken the routine once or twice to his great disappointment. Hard as I try, I can’t make it a perfect world for him. But, today things went as planned. The first time we stopped by St. Paul’s I had no intention of doing anything but finding a quiet place to pray. On the outside the building is unassuming, humble in comparison to the massive 10 – 100 story monstronsities surrounding it in downtown Chicago. It’s appearance there is almost miraculous. There are gardens in the midst of concrete superstructures with cars flying around it in every direction as fast as they can possibly go. If the buildings around it could talk they might say, “That little building is irrelevant and old. I cost bazillions to build. I’m much more important. When will we bulldoze it and build another skyscraper I want to know!” On the outside the windows and walls are built and decorated with carefully crafted stonework in equisite detail and the stained glass windows appear to blend in on the outside as if they hold nothing unusual to the eye. As I entered the sanctuary I heard the sound of organ music. This was not just any organ music. It was the kind of majestic organ music that takes a person a lifetime and many hours of daily practice to master. Even though the sky was grey outside, the light was streaming through the windows putting on a glorious display of light all around. I found stone archways, magnificent ceilings and old style pews lined up in straight rows. Josh says , “WOW” with a whisper of a voice because he is amazed. Now my Joshua has sensory integration problems and normally loud noise and too much visual stimulation would drive him mad but he loved this so much that he did not want to leave. I have since realized that my son loves the music because it is not random sound. It is perfectly organized sound with precise detail. The light that streams through the windows is organized into amazing pictures and there are two disk shaped kaleidoscope windows where the colors are aligned in a carefully designed display. Many perfectly arranged details make sense to him. So, we talked of the windows, John Huss, St. Augustine, Solomon and more. Josh knew the ones that portrayed Jesus as he started saying, “Jesus!” I found myself picking up the hymnals and found some of the great, old hymns of faith. In reading over many of them and singing them I realized the depth of meaning in all of this. I was reminded of Jesus’ suffering and felt that deep understanding and compassion I so desperately needed to feel in my heart. In since learned that this building was first built in 1857 and was destroyed two times in the Chicago fires. Going to that old church is no different from entering into prayer. As I’m going along in my daily life stopping to pray seems like such a small, weak, mundane, old, irrelevant thing to do in comparison to all of the monstronsities of life I must face daily. Yet, once I enter in I find peace, hope and all the compassion I ever needed. But, I would not have been able to experience that unless I made the decision to enter in. You have to stop and go in to experience it. Going there doesn’t solve all of my life’s problems. It’s not going to stop whatever painful circumstances I will face in the future. But, it does put all of life into proper perspective and give me the strength to carry on. Maybe it’s because I attended church as a child surrounded by stained glass windows, organ music and I sang from a hymnal. But, in this modern world where most church services don’t include hymnals or even more than one stanza of a classic hymn, I say, “hand me a hymnal!”
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