The Droplet Sermon

    It’s going to rain. I can smell it in the heavy, syrupy air. It smells like damp grass and wet stone. The sky is increasingly a churning gray, not unlike granite, and the fields on either side of me are emerald in a way you only see during storm season when no plant experiences thirst. The air is heavy yet cool. The humidity attempts to dampen my face; however, I pedal faster on my bike so as to not give it the chance, but you can’t escape the atmosphere in which you exist.   

    I like riding down old country roads in the early Spring. This is the time when the fields are whispering about revival in anticipation of the floral parts of later Spring. The few flowers that have arrived early to the season stand lonely yet righteously in the grass as I whisk by. If you listen closely you can hear an eerie silence in the trees, not a single birdsong to be heard from the avian choir that normally performs in these parts. Animals always know things before people do. Squirrels know when to gather food, deer know when to run, bees only hang out in healthy ecosystems, and birds know when it's going to rain. The older folks back in town say cats can tell when bad spirits are around, and dogs can smell fear. A stretch I know, but these are the same folks who think crosses around their necks will ward off life's uncomfortable certainties, such as death or any manner of emotion deemed sinful. In a way, animals are more intelligent than humans, and I find that I prefer their company to most people’s. I suppose that's why I spend so much time away from town and in the valley adjacent. The town is full of idealogues and antiquated ways of thinking. I suppose most small towns in the south are. The values of the people who live in these towns are only echoed by the decaying buildings and scarcity of life that are to be found in them.  

    The speed I can get on my bike almost feels like freedom if I imagine myself riding away to someplace better, livelier. Somewhere more accepting of men of my persuasion. Better for now are the woods, where judgment struggles to exist under nature's reality, survival of the fittest. No one cares if you kiss boys or girls there. Where flora and fauna accept you as you exist, for they have more important things to worry about and can pay you no less mind. Nature really has it figured out, unlike the church. In the valley, you'll find a community of creatures who, whether knowingly or not, support each other's lasting survival without really taking notice of each other all too much. Yet, back in civilized society, I think we take notice of each other much more than we ought to. We call it community and charity, and a litany of other good-willed guises, but I think we just like to feel superior to another in a time of need. It makes us feel good about ourselves and thus inspires the ignominious habit of moral grandstanding, not dissimilar to katydids who lure cicadas in with their song of goodwill.  I don’t think a bee who flutters around pollinating, squirrels who hide their nuts in the ground only to have them grow into healthy trees, or birds who eat pests otherwise searching for fruitful vegetation would call themselves righteous good doers. Nor by these very acts would they consider themselves holier and thus closer to their creator. They do not spend a moment of their day considering a creator at all, and perhaps that is my favorite part. If Mother Nature were to be the patron of our local church, we would be better off for it and generally no less cheerful than the bird choirs that make joyful noise in lonely woods just because they can.  

    The woods not far in front of me offer me shelter from what now looks like an impending storm, and I find myself racing towards it. At this speed, with my coattails flying behind me, I resemble a bird in fearful flight. I fly past the “Welcome to Town” sign in the direction of the woods like a bird fluttering out of its cage. I know of an abandoned chapel just beyond the tree line. I can stay dry in it while the rainstorm passes. The irony, of course, is not lost on me…of my being an apostate racing towards a once sacred, albeit forgotten, building for refuge.  

    I left my church about a year ago to the great disappointment of my mother. Although, I think she cared more about the whispers and conversations she would have to deal with at Sunday services and church events more than she cared about my actual departure from religious thought. It is not exactly a positive reflection on you and your virtuousness to produce the only gay son in the church. While I am sure I am not the only one - and I do have doubts about at least two other members of my former youth group, not the least of which is the preacher's daughter - I am for now the only pariah known to the public. Thus, I hold all the weight of public vexation. Still, she goes. I think her method of arbitration with her God, and thereby her church leaders, being the arbiters of my, and more importantly her, soul’s fate gives her comfort. It's all she has ever known, all her parents have ever known, and all their parents have ever known. It is one long habitual cycle. Morals in my town are passed down like heavy cardboard boxes that crowd every person's attic, basement, or barn. They’re full of items from dead relatives and such, but you never really make the habit of looking inside them to take inventory of which ideas are worth keeping and which should be tossed out. My mother has our morals in the hallway closet for easy access lest we have a visitor or God himself come to take inventory. 

    I can see the abandoned church building now that I am within eyesight of where the woods meet the fields just outside of town. I am so quick in my pursuit of shelter that my bike wheels shake at the heavy-footed nature of my peddling, but I cannot outrun nature. The first drop of rain falls on my nose, then another on my hand, and then suddenly the sky falls out. I am soaked with its tears. I pedal faster until I reach the woods, faster still until I see the old church sign. It used to be white based on the paint that has chipped almost completely off of it. “Welcome All” the sign says deceptively. The building itself is in no better shape. White paint-chipped wood panels cover almost every exterior wall, windows have been knocked out here and there, and nature has reclaimed most of the inconspicuous dirt path leading to it. There are wisteria vines up the front of the building all the way up to the old bell tower. It's a fitting fate for the building, I think. The skeleton of an invasive species being overcome by another. Both uniquely choke the life out of those who are in their grasp. That is one of my favorite parts about nature. It cares not for what you used to be or currently are. It always heals no matter the trauma we inflict on it, if given time. 

    I run up the half-rotten wooden steps and open the front door. The door stutters open with a loud enough creak for the door to threaten falling off its hinges completely. Inside is dry and seemingly harmless. It looks like any other church back in its day, devoid of life and impeccably designed so that it is easy to funnel people in and out. The pews are all facing the stage at the back of the building where the main stage is. Although “main” is a strong word seeing how it is not very tall or large, so as not to make any one person acutely aware of the innate inequality of the church’s hierarchy which consists of those behind the pulpit and those in front of it. There are empty bookshelves scattered about, and the books that are left are mostly dusty decaying copies of the “HOLY BIBLE” left sporadically on pews. Everything is dusty, dirty, broken, or forgotten. The few busted-out windows give way to some plant life who daringly sneak in, and that's about the only life to be found in here. The old wooden pulpit is still center stage, standing humorously proud in front of its kingdom of dirt and vine. 

    After some time standing in the entryway and observing the room, I creep further in. The old wooden floorboards creak eerily beneath my feet, so I decide to take a seat at the first pew I come to. I half smile as I sit in complete silence, all but for the rain which has now enveloped this plot of land. This is probably the most comfortable I have ever felt in a church I muse. I sit in silence while I wait for the rain to pass, and my mind wanders quite a bit. I start to think of all the old sermons given on the small stage in front of me. I wonder if they ever did help anyone reach a higher state of being, or did they just add to the moral baggage its listeners were already storing in their attics, basements, and barns. I sit in silence some more and listen to the rain against the metal roof, half rusted away in some places. There was a small hole in the back middle of the roof, so that a quiet but consistent “drip…drip…drop” made its way onto the pulpit center stage. I thought to myself “Now, that is a sermon I can accept, one that is taught by the old and wise Reverend Mother Nature.” 

    As I listen to the drip-drop sermon, Mother Nature speaks of being still and listening to the rain. So, I do. I sit and think about being still enough to hear her for whatever that means. I listen until I get bored again. I wonder if there had been someone like me in this church, who may have even sat where I am, feeling suffocated and alone in a room full of people. I wonder if they ever escaped like I did, to some wooded patch or riverside where nature offered peace. Or did they spend their days routinely coming here until their spirit much resembled the church I sit in right today? 

    As I sit and think about this fictional sufferer I created, I hear rustling a few pews ahead of me and freeze. Had I not noticed an animal walk in the front door while I was busy with morbid pondering? Or did the Devil himself finally come for me for thinking ill of God and his people inside one of his sanctuaries? Although, it wasn’t his anymore, so that scenario is unlikely. It belonged to Reverand Nature now. I stood up and quietly said “Hello?” ... as if a bird or squirrel would ever respond back. I felt compelled to seek out my fellow parishioner lest I miss out on meeting another fan of the droplet sermon. I walk a few steps forward, the floorboards creaking with each move, I advance a few rows up. I pause.  

            “Hello? Is something or someone there?” 

    No answer again. I look around for something I could use as self-defense if I needed to, not that many dangerous animals existed here. Being a human and thus a benefactor of the destruction of all natural things, I posed the biggest threat. In my search for defense, I find only a weathered Bible which was falling apart at its spine. I guess I could beat something over the head with it if needed, it's heavy enough to at least scare the creature away until I can run out the front door. Ironic I think, to use the Bible as a physical weapon when it was meant to be a spiritual one. Before I can finish this thought, a small obsidian cat peaks shyly out of an aisle and looks at me with innocent eyes. I can’t help but smile at the ridiculousness of the Bible half-loaded in my hand. It meows at me; I smile back at it putting down my weapon on a nearby pew. I slowly approach it, making the “pssp pssp” sound all people instinctively do for cats for some unexplained reason. It hesitates at first to trust me. I would too. Finding a friend in a church seems unlikely to me as well. But after enough mutual observance, we come to an understanding. I let it make all the first moves, and it joins me in my quiet listening. I find myself sitting on the floor with my back to the end of a pew with a warm cat in my lap. A black cat and a lavender boy, both outcasts in any religious circle…sheltering in an abandoned church. It was quite the holy trinity if I had ever experienced it. I empathized with my new friend, mostly because both of us would be frowned upon by the original patrons of this building, and I couldn’t help but find joy in the irony. Both of us represented a sin in one way or another.  

    The rain got louder after we had both gotten comfortable on the floor, as if to quiet my mind and remind me to focus on the droplet sermon nature had so carefully cultivated way up in her atmosphere. 

        I continue to listen, 

            “drip…drip…drop” 

It floods the pulpit ever so slowly. I have lost the meaning again I think, but I listen anyway. I think she speaks about cleansing or healing. Or maybe she speaks of time and the passing of it, a vital part of both concepts to be sure. Or some other important lesson. Perhaps she speaks of nothing at all, and I, with a mind blemished by religious thoughts, read too much into a natural occurrence. Either way, all I can think of now is how animals know when it is going to rain before we do. This purring creature in my lap smarter than I, ran to shelter before me. And how this is the first time I have felt safe in a church. I feel a small tear stream dampen my cheek as I think about the glory of existing in a place so lucky enough to have calming storms and black cats. Then another tear or two comes when I appreciate the building I am in for sheltering me regardless of how I speak or feel about it. Slowly, I begin to contribute to the message of Mother Nature’s droplet sermon.  

    With my very own, less profound, 

            “drip…drip…drop”.