Exercise

Just a small writing exercise...

Picture a Catholic church. Now picture people queuing up in front of that church because the church door is relatively narrow. What would you think you would see when you walked into the church? Stained-glass windows? Pews? Candles and a donation box? 

We saw all of those things when walked into a church in Augsburg this afternoon. 

Now, when you think of this church -- your church -- does something like St. Patrick’s Cathedral come to mind? Do you picture gothic architecture? Do you see flying buttresses, spires and trefoils? 

Well, the church we were in today was Catholic, but I wouldn’t say that it was a Gothic church. It didn’t look like St. Patrick’s. 

Now, this church today, it had an altar, of course, and we’re all used to imaging rows and rows of pews facing an altar. But in Augsburg today, the church also had pews that were perpendicular to the altar. So if you were sitting in these pews looking at the altar and the priest was behind it, facing the majority of the congregants, you would see the priest in profile. 

Now, I want you to imagine someone sitting in the pews I just described, the ones perpendicular to the altar. Do you see him there? If you were standing in the nave (the central aisle) facing the altar, he would be sitting in the benches off to the left. Can you see him there? 

Now, this man, he’s just sitting there, and because it’s corona time, he’s wearing a surgical mask. But the mask is hiked up really high on his face so that there is hardly any space between the top of the mask and his eyes. It’s like he’s trying to cover his entire face with a surgical mask, trying to hide his identity with the thing. How is that even possible? 

Anyway, this man looks mean. In fact, when you look at him, you wonder to yourself who he is and why he’s there. After all, no one is sitting near him, no family, no friends. He’s just sitting there, isolated from everyone and looking intently at all the people who enter the church and walk down the main aisle. 

And he looks super mean. His eyes have something of the Grinch to them and his gazed is a fixed one, and when you look at him and he doesn’t look away you can’t believe it. You think to yourself, Is he not looking away? No, no, I must be wrong. He must've looked away. No one would stare for that long. But no, he’s looking right at you -- still.

Anyway, point is, what would this man say to you? 

Would he (a) say something in Latin, something such as, “Nemo me impune lacessit delinquit,” which means, “No one offends me with impunity”? (b) Tell you that he is the caretaker of the church and it drives him crazy when visitors not only look at their mobile phones while in the church, but also play videos with the sound on? Or (c) say that he’s really a nice guy, but a few years back he had a stroke and ever since then, his face has been fixed in a grimace?