There’s always something off-kilter about being in a familiar place at an unexpected time. Nights and weekends, I avoid the schoolhouse. Nevermind that my presence there at odd hours signals that I’m trying to get caught up on something I didn’t want to do in the first place (darn those ungraded essays); an empty school has way too many groans and echoes. It’s creepy.
Tonight I make an odd-hour visit to a place that’s at least as familiar as my classroom. Holy Week is here, and I’m pulling my annual late-night vigil shift. It’s an hour of watch in a darkened church before a laid-bare altar. It’s a duty I never miss.
All is quiet. Oh, there’s the hum of the AC and the protest of the aging pew as I shift my ponderous corpus, but the silence is a special kind of thick that I meet only once a year—always on this night. Tomblike, perhaps.
No one can accuse me of being especially spiritual. I sometimes envy those who speak the language of faith with easy familiarity. I can’t. I squirm. Certainty comes hard, and grasp of the Things Beyond usually flits just beyond my reach.
In this place, though, I can understand the uncertainty of Thursday as it rolls into the desolation of Friday. The church is dark and bare. And silent.
Even so, even in this dim light, even I can rouse enough hope to whisper into the silence: Easter Comes.
Rounding the Square 