There are a few churches in Baedal, but most of the House Ecumenal buildings are like this: small, nondenominational. They say they're open to anyone, and anyone can see the effort they go to to appeal to as wide a swath of believers as they can. They mean well, but sometimes with these buildings, in an attempt to communicate how they're different from the Twelve Point Divinity, they hang up crosses.
It's not welcoming; it's watered down. There's no familiar anchor here to hang on to, just empty white walls. It feels like praying to a corporate logo, an advertising campaign with a soundtrack of easy listening music.
He comes anyway hoping maybe this time it will help, but knowing it won't. He sits down among the scattered handful of other people trying to reach out to what they think of as God, their hands slipping as they try to hold on to their old faiths in a city that bulldozes over it, and even that is not enough, because he's still not like them.
He's prayed a thousand times before in this city and it's never helped; he doesn't think God can hear him out here. In Lebanon and Turkey at least there were people like him, so He never felt that far away. His faith may not have been consistent his entire life, and much of the time after he left home he may have been alone in it, but Wolfgang has always felt like God was there. He can't feel His presence in these carefully calculated buildings which they don't call churches even though they are.
He shouldn't have come here. It's just making him feel -- what, angry?
He gets up in one forceful motion and leaves in a hurry, but stops outside the door, leaning against the wall and trying to rein it back in. He's never felt so cut off from God. Here, he's screaming into an empty room where, his entire life up until now, someone has been.
brock marsh.
It's not welcoming; it's watered down. There's no familiar anchor here to hang on to, just empty white walls. It feels like praying to a corporate logo, an advertising campaign with a soundtrack of easy listening music.
He comes anyway hoping maybe this time it will help, but knowing it won't. He sits down among the scattered handful of other people trying to reach out to what they think of as God, their hands slipping as they try to hold on to their old faiths in a city that bulldozes over it, and even that is not enough, because he's still not like them.
He's prayed a thousand times before in this city and it's never helped; he doesn't think God can hear him out here. In Lebanon and Turkey at least there were people like him, so He never felt that far away. His faith may not have been consistent his entire life, and much of the time after he left home he may have been alone in it, but Wolfgang has always felt like God was there. He can't feel His presence in these carefully calculated buildings which they don't call churches even though they are.
He shouldn't have come here. It's just making him feel -- what, angry?
He gets up in one forceful motion and leaves in a hurry, but stops outside the door, leaning against the wall and trying to rein it back in. He's never felt so cut off from God. Here, he's screaming into an empty room where, his entire life up until now, someone has been.