10pm, Sunday

Well, really 9:00. Every single Sunday.

I stroll down the center of the little town, the safe haven, the bubble, up to its glass doors that have gold handles that make you think you should pull, but for some reason, they're push.

I guess it's a church, but that's not what it feels like. That's not why I go.

My walk is five minutes at most, but you couldn't pay me to be on time to this. Because when I walk in at 9:05, and I walk past the font (which is more modern than most, I'll give it that) without dipping my fingers in the ever-flowing holy water, the twenty wooden chairs to the left of the center aisle are already half occupied. 

You’d think that the one rehearsal we have per week would start on time, given that it’s one hour before mass.  That could not remain more hilariously untrue – in fact it gets pushed out more by the week. The director sits at a 45 degree angle with the piano, facing the people to her right, laughing, clad in the same black getup she either wears every week, or has multiple versions of.  

The same getup she wears to the funerals.

And when I see her in her office.

Maybe it's just her color.

Her hands are everywhere but on the keys - in the air, pointing frantically, flipping through a hymnal, waving cheerfully at the next person who walks in the door. She’s never any less excited to see all of us, and always seems as if she forgot to blink the entire day.

Such a wondrous person it takes to live with such frivolity, to act with such authenticity and kindness, but to simultaneously spar in vain for control over a group of "adults" who are very in touch with their inner child.

Walking into such a scene already makes me feel warm.  Laughter echoing, someone larking about music technicalities that only 10% of the choir understands, and likely 0% cares about. The room fills with the catch-up of people who love each other, but for some reason allow this to be their once weekly interaction.  

Everything in the church is yellowed and orangey, strangely almost never affected by the light coming through the simple but welcoming stained glass that runs around the circumference of the subtly circular structure.  We’re encapsulated by it.  And while my inclination is to say we sit over in the corner, that much is impossible, as there aren't any.  So when we finally do start singing, the sound moves around in circles and then up into the ceiling, and lingers there for a bit before fading away.

Getting everyone to shut up is a chore, but the director does it with such ease, voice comforting and booming simultaneously, everyone slap-happy and giddy over absolutely nothing and everything at the same time. Oftentimes I can be heard crying at a disastrously stupid joke that shouldn't be made in a church as she tries to reign us in.  People in the row behind me can be heard whispering ridiculous things in my ear and that send me reeling all over again.  

Aside from this, I’m one of the people in the room that actually took this pretty seriously. The singing part, I mean.  The way these two elements of the choir could exist so effortlessly together is what kept me coming back each week. And maybe, the fact that this was my one interaction with a few of these people made it that much more precious.

Rehearsal starts, I realize I don’t have my song book, nor do four or five others, but we know the songs well enough. We run back to get them, singing in dysfunctional harmonies. My book is all the way at the left of the bookshelf, and there's no space to go behind, so I wait for everyone to clear out.

Our sheet music is behind the altar. Here sits an old, warped book case that holds tons of timeless hymnals, cover to cover with our twenty-first century plastic black binders, packed  full of age-old music that people have tried so very hard to improve, and more often than not, have failed to. 

Through the wall, on the other side, sits the tabernacle.

Sometimes I don't like when I find myself back here alone.

Sometimes I do.

I don't understand the feeling of being behind the altar when you don't believe in God. At least not in the way it's being preached. At least not in the way that the body of Christ is inside the tabernacle that we’re behind, and that's why it's weird to be back there.  

It's quiet even though I know people are singing 10 feet away from me.

People can do funny things by venerating. The solemn area is honored and feared by so many, so that even if you don't believe what they believe, it still feels different. It feels like intruding. People have done something to it. They have made it holy. And it really does feel like that, not just like it should be that way.  There’s something wonderful about that. Something disturbing.

I get my book, and I walk out, and the heaviness is lifted by her laugh and gesticulating and franticness… all over some certainly botched church music.

People start to show up at 9:45, more than on time, unlike all of us.  We ignore them all and keep singing. They also ignore us, or pretend to.  

Sometimes I wonder if I was actually making noise for those four years, in those 30 minutes of actual practice time before mass. Not a single person ever looked over.

We pray back there, behind the altar, a wall between us and the tabernacle, the bookshelf about to buckle under the weight of its own existence. We hold hands. 

You probably haven't thought about how you’d hold your friends’ hands because you wouldn't normally do it. I'll tell you, though - you’d hold hands differently than you're used to, the fingers of your right hand locked over theirs, sort of acknowledging that you both need each other, hands clasped tighter than your acquaintance to my left, who is reluctant to let their palm so much as graze yours. It's not like how you’d hold hands with a partner – it means more. Because, like I said, you’d probably never do it. 

I don't know that I've done it much since then.

People say things. 

I go four years without saying anything, but I listen to everything.

I don't pray, but I am with these people when we are back there. I don’t pray, but I say the Our Father. I say the Hail Marys. I say the Amens. I’d still say them. I mean them, but I don’t. 

I just mean I want us to be ok.

I don’t go on Sunday at 9:05 because I believe in God. 

I go because I don’t believe in God. 

But I do believe in people singing.

And every time I'm singing, I’m looking up to something. I'm singing into the ceiling.  It's just a ceiling – hell, I don't know.  It's not even a special ceiling, it's the same color as the pews and the floor and the walls and the lobby and the font with the water I won’t dip my fingers into. But I'm singing up into it nonetheless, and my voice sits there in the rafters for a bit each time before it waves goodbye, and fades away, and goes somewhere else.