We are the Church

Growing up I remember hearing people say that the church is a building, but the people are the church. I fully agree that people are priority, however I am still enchanted by cathedrals, small country churches, church bells, stained glass, candles, and beautiful altars. Attending church may not be a part of your spiritual practice, but I came across a poem about a church that may speak to the way we long to show up in the world.

In this poem by e.e. cummings, he personifies a little church and uses each stanza to say what a building is unable to say. Maybe he is also shining a light on what church really is and how we can echo the words of this little church in the way we live.

i am a little church

i am a little church(no great cathedral)
far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying
– i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,
i am not sorry when sun and rain make april

my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;
my prayers are prayers of earth’s own clumsily striving
(finding and losing and laughing and crying)children
whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness

around me surges a miracle of unceasing
birth and glory and death and resurrection:
over my sleeping self float flaming symbols
of hope, and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains

i am a little church(far from the frantic
world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature
– i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;
i am not sorry when silence becomes singing

winter by spring, i lift my diminutive spire to
merciful Him Whose only now is forever:
standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence
(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)

e. e. cummings

Reflection by Cherie Shaw, CPE Intern