The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me, and I to them. The waving of the boughs in the storm, is new to me and old. It takes me by surprise, and yet is not unknown. - Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature
I am at my mother’s house in rural Maine, sitting outside beneath a lazy-river-sky and listening to a diverse choir of birdsong. It is early afternoon and we’ve just gotten back from a short trip to Portland to drop my sister at the airport. My mom’s dog is scampering around the backyard like a muppet; at the age where her limbs seem oddly gangly. She keeps glancing over at me apologetically, having scratched me on the face because her love, like her limbs, is sometimes too big for her body and expresses itself in outburst.
This weekend we went to a small town Pride celebration and for the first time in nearly fifteen years, aside from Christmas, I attended a Sunday church service. The sun washed over the congregation from stained glass windows as we sang hymns and heard testimonials, all watched over by a bronze pipe organ in the apse. Since it was the final Sunday of Pride month, the church invited several queer congregants and allies to speak about how their faith had been informed and affected by queerness. My mother mentioned there was a number of missing congregants, perhaps by coincidence but likely not. She had asked my sister and I to join her while we visited, to experience how she spends her Sundays living in this town with a triple-digit population.
I grew up going to a similar church in Massachusetts; musical and affirming, convened in the softened light of Sunday morning to be in community and to practice faith. The service was wonderful and I’m glad I went, and through it all I found myself silently reflecting on my own relationship with faith — more specifically, with religion — planning this very essay. The experience of church began to sour for me when I first personally experienced the use of religion as an excuse for animosity. That was twenty years ago, and in many ways still ongoing, and every day since bears the reminder that organized religion got itself caught up in the pursuit of power from its very conception, fueling war, genocide, crusades, mutilation, hierarchy… So much historic evil has been committed under the guise of religious ideals.
It seems that a lot of Americans think of church as a form of therapy. Church is free, typically (we could get into tithing, indulgences, or financial aspects of cults that masquerade as churches, but perhaps we shall save that for another essay) and healthcare is expensive. It also serves the purpose of creating a sense of community which has been steadily disappearing from American life. I often hear the lamentation: when did we stop trusting our neighbors? I would like to posit a response, which is only one of many. We stopped trusting our neighbors when social media algorithms began driving news stories about kidnapping and break-ins and the monsters next door to the very forefront of our awareness… When apps like Nextdoor and Neighborhood Watch began to warp our understanding of the levels of danger in the average neighborhood and community members began surveilling each other. Racial biases and the social isolation of Covid, while news corporations broadcast a 24-hour outrage loop of the protests and riots in response to George Floyd’s murder (again, just one of many), further fueled the idea, especially in rural Americans’ minds, that we should not trust our neighbors.
I believe church is a valuable source of community, and I have an ocean of gratitude for the congregation my mother has found. After the service I spoke with one of the members who spoke, a queer woman, and thanked her for her openness. When I told her I was a writer she responded, “That’s so cool! I don’t know the first thing about writing”. I didn’t respond at the time, but I wish I had, because it was abundantly clear that, though she may not know about writing, she knew about Truth. She delivered a speech that was vulnerable and astonishing, the words she wrote bore weight and demonstrated to me, an outsider, that I was in a room full of people who were spiritually intertwined, and that there could be a place for me there if I wanted one.
My personal feelings about church have not changed dramatically. I know and have known that there are congregations like that one in rural Maine all over this country and the entire world, of all different faiths and names. I also know the flip side, and that there are variations and sects and all kinds of different practices, and that perhaps many of those different practices are exactly right for other people. It’s just that none of them feel right for me.
After returning home we spent the evening on the beach and watched the sun descend behind the mountains. In the hours after sunset, when the stars begin to pierce the oncoming dusk, I felt that familiar surprise. In my entire life, I have never seen a firefly up here, and for some reason this year they are everywhere. They illuminate in intervals like a glimmering diamond gown or a flint on the cusp of ignition, shortly before the loons begin their melancholic revelry that echoes off the sky. I let myself be still for several moments, I thought about climate change and how it will shift local animal populations and how it will impact humanity and I let the thought wash through me until I could bear it. Until it became just another part of that magical moment, one of those moments that make a person feel, all at once, miniscule and miles tall. I thought about my mother. I thought about my injury. I thought about how the wind, as it slithers through the way-up leaves, speaks in the same voice as water when it reaches high enough speeds.
I dug my feet into the sand and glanced over to the chestnut and pine trees which must be hundreds of years old. I imagined the roots systems and their span, wondered if I could dig my feet deep enough if I could tap into that system of communication myself, learn the secrets they have carried in their decades overlooking this lake that saw me from my infancy, the way my childhood church saw me. I thought about the subjectivity of experience and the necessity of release; the privilege of quietude. The arbitrary boundaries we impose as nations and as peoples, the atrocities they have wrought.
Every time I sit down to write or scribble a gleaming sentence in my notebook like I’m collecting a precious stone it is synonymous to prayer, and every time a reader feels the pang of recognition when they read a passage that rings true to them we are in congregation.
To end this piece I’d like to share a passage I wrote last week while still in DC, fighting through the mental fog of the east coast’s massive heatwave. It feels like fireflies are following me, which strikes me as the kind of thing a person might perceive to be a sign from God:
“The downpour had begun to wane and a small puddle formed on the sidewalk beneath a cedar elm. We looked and saw the whole world contained in that puddle with muted, fuzzy boundaries. Every time a residual drop of rain toppled from a leaf into the water we watched our little private world distort and shiver and return to how it was. How nice it would be, I thought aloud, to live inside a puddle world; where each disturbance was assuredly temporary... A world with soft edges and a resting state. You crept away and swiped at a mosquito by your ear. How silly of me to think I know an entire world, having only observed such a small part of it. We could be happy there, I'm sure of it.
There passed a couple holding hands and one of them was bisexual, and the other wasn't fully comfortable with that at first but they worked through it together, like a couple holding hands should. Then a child riding a bike with a single training wheel attached to the right side that he didn’t need but would not allow his mother to remove… A firefly approached me then; I swear it looked me right in the eye as it lit up for me. I'd never seen a firefly so close before. For the very first time in my life, instead of being an untethered lighthouse on the summer breeze I saw it mortal; scrutable, in the dimming day. Is that what all our heroes are?
The entire following week was immolative, allowing momentary reprieve in gentle gusts that blew from east to west. It seemed that the downpour had taken everything and the sky was set to replenish and leave us parched and overheating in the herebelow. Those days dragged on endlessly, fitting me with a constant film of viscous sweat. I called out for you a few times but you weren't there. I assumed and hoped you had a cool hideaway somewhere. There came, on those days, some respite starting around sunset... The kind of sunsets that recall serenity with absolute clarity as v-formation pinpricks sail noiselessly across its ray-streaked backdrop. I sat out back and watched the canvas change; its imperceivable cadence, where you can slip out of focus under daylight and return to find that dusk had come. Do you ever experience those moments of quiet? Do you ever think about the sky?”
Thank you for reading. If you found it worthwhile, please feel free to subscribe or share. As always, you can find me on Instagram and nowhere else on the Internet for now.
With Sincerity,
J.K.
As I read this, and look at the photo I am remembering Center Lovell and the fireflies and the loons. We visited once, with your grandmother before your mom had married. The grass hadn’t been mowed. I seem to recall fireflies like the grass that way. I’m pretty sure loons are indifferent. It was raining that weekend and very quiet. Your story reads like Maine on a summer weekend in warm rain. Thank you.