lunch with the dead at st. paul's

I'm not much of a church girl.

But I was when I was growing up. My mom was raised Presbyterian and my dad was Catholic so when they married in a civil ceremony in the 1950s, both their families freaked out. It was today's equivalent of a devout Muslim marrying a Pentecostal Christian. The two just could not have seemed further apart at the time, according to thinking of the day, at least among my relatives. The happy medium my parents struck was to raise my brother and I in the Episcopal church. My brother was an acolyte and I always sang in the choir. The parishioners at our church became an extended family and it was all comforting in its unchanging familiarity.

Later, when I became an adult and aware of the politics in the church I attended, I grew more uncomfortable and wary of the self-righteous and the smug smiles of the pious. When my favorite priest, a wonderful, warm and incredibly witty scholar of ancient texts was abruptly ousted from my parish because he was unmarried and rumored to be gay, I left the church in disgust, never to return.

But in the months following 9/11, I spent a great deal of time at the church pictured here. St. Paul's stands at the foot of what was once the Twin Towers. It stood witness to the rise of Manhattan around it, to the Revolutionary war, to slave trading, to the Civil War and the Great Depression. And on 9/11, its walls shook and its grounds were showered with debris and wreckage, but still, by some miracle, it stood as it has since 1766.

Many people have sought and found refuge at St. Paul's and I imagine many will for years hence, at least, I hope so. I know I have.

On the morning following the fourth anniversary of 9/11, a little over a week ago, I sat and ate my lunch in the graveyard. The headstones that mark some of the graves are perfectly smooth, names and dates washed away by centuries of rain and snow and pollution and time. They sigh and lean on one another. I wonder what the dead must think about all they have witnessed here in this tiny garden where time in a way has stood still. I wonder if they mind me eating my lunch here. I don' think that they do.