I can feel in my memory the pews I used to sit in, the strangeness as I run my fingers along the curved hard textured surface like nothing else I might otherwise expect, faintest hints of entropy and death that seem more present more real there, the thin dank smell of aging bodies lingering on seasoned wood that echoes all the ancient sounds and rhythms of empire, conditioning the complacent and secure with weak and fragile clogged expectations of sameness, routinely gathering papered layers of tepid dullness carefully and methodically and meticulously nested to insulate against the sting … the life breathing grace of what the gospel was once given to be. “For the one who wishes to preserve his soul will lose it, but the one who loses his soul on account of me will find it.”