her regularly and that I found a serious personal belief system.
My experience with Christianity was aesthetic more than it was either theological or doctrinal. I loved the smells, sights, sounds, and, after confirmation, tastes that surrounded my hour in church. Being an Episcopalian was largely a sensory matter. Kneeling and rising at moments of joy and thanksgiving excited me. As I grew more ardent in my practice, I stayed on my knees throughout the Communion service. Some people knelt until it was their pew’s turn to go up to the altar; the few who became my models resumed this distinctly less comfortable posture after they returned to their seats, witnessing more directly to the rigorous nature of the event.
Almost every Saturday afternoon, my mother went to church to perform some volunteer service. She waxed the floors twice a year, polished the pews every two months, washed and ironed altar linens once a month, and served altar duty at least that often. I asked to go with her because I liked being in church when no one was there. Cool even in summer, the atmosphere made me feel eerie—not scared exactly but more like someone in a fairy tale, stepping back in time. While Mamie did her chores, I walked or crawled around under pews, smelling the stale candle wax and lingering scent from the past Sunday’s flowers. As I got older, I sometimes sat praying hard at the innermost rail reserved for the rector or bishop when he visited yearly for confirmation. My prayers were selfish, full of requests for more friends and less work around the house, for longer vacations and fewer days in school. I felt holy and important, very much an actor. I still remember standing outside myself, watching me on my knees, thinking, “God will surely hear me this time and show me a sign.” My Bible story pictures showed blind men suddenly seeing, lame old women throwing down crutches, and lots of people eating from the same few fish and loaves of bread. Our Sunday school teacher told us these scenes were miracles proving Christ’s power as God and confirming the faith of some believers. I thought I was a believer and wanted something dramatic to happen. Since questioning came to me quite young, I needed a sign to show that I could keep believing. If Mamie came upon me kneeling so devoutly, she smiled and gently encouraged me to move back to a regular pew, saying, “Now, honey, I’m glad you’re praying but not here where Bishop Carpenter does. You come back here to our family pew and pray all you want.”
My mother insisted that going to church in the wrong frame of mind lessened the experience. Rather than forcing me to say prayers or make lists of my wrongs, she suggested we leave time to read together from the Bible before going to service. Once we had eaten a light breakfast and dressed, including putting on our hats but not our gloves, we sat on my bed to prepare. Until I was about ten she read to me—always psalms—but from then on, I was expected to take my turn. We read our favorite psalm: the twenty-fourth for me; the ninety-first for her. Mine spoke of “clean hands and a pure heart,” of not lifting up one’s “soul unto vanity” or swearing deceitfully; I felt exhilarated just thinking about the “everlasting doors” through which the “King of Glory” would enter (heaven I assumed), and hopeful that I might “ascend the hill of the Lord” someday. Mamie’s was all about protection in the face of one’s direst enemies—“the pestilence that walkest in darkness,” and “the destruction that wasteth at noonday.” The “thou” of this psalm survives while ten thousand fall at his right hand and a thousand at his side. I caught my breath to think of the angels who could keep “thee” from dashing a foot against a stone or from falling at all. And I simply thrilled to hear, “Thou shalt tread on the lion and the adder, the young lion and the serpent shalt thou trample under foot.”
Fired and comforted by our readings, we donned our gloves and set off for Christ Episcopal Church, some ten or twelve blocks from home. At the Communion rail I left my troubles (Why did my schoolmates shun me? Would I ever have a teacher who interested me? Why couldn’t I have an Erector Set when lots of boys I knew were getting them?), nagging guilt (I should have taken the garbage out before Mamie had to ask me three times; I ought to have memorized every word of my history lesson so Daddy would be really proud of me for getting a perfect score; I must start keeping my fingernails cleaner so Mamie won’t have to worry so about my unladylikeness), even surface shame (Why had I lied to my teacher when she asked if I had helped Billy Mayo with his math? Would I really be punished for wishing my mother would stop badgering me to pick up my clothes before I left my room to go take a bath? Was I mean not to care that my playmate from across the street had gotten a rope burn when I lassoed him?). I was certain as I melted the awkward wafer and swallowed watered-down wine that I ingested calm and a powerful shield of protection. At no time did I seriously believe that these were even symbolic of Jesus’s body and blood; they were a way to unify my ragged parts, to heal my raw places.
By the time I was ten, I was helping Mamie set up the altar for early Communion. I handled the objects that made church possible: beaten silver pitchers; a smooth silver plate that held little flat wafers that I eventually learned had no taste and often stuck to the roof of my mouth; linen napkins each with a beautifully embroidered cross and meticulously stitched border; the wine cup with its silver outside and gold inside, decorated with cross and dove; the choir cross on its polished wooden pole. As I carried that cross from its locked closet, where it was stored during the week, into the dimly lit nave and buckled it into its leather halter at the head of the choir stalls, I imagined myself a monk attending his Lord on some solemn occasion. All the objects seemed mysterious and came to inhabit my fantasies about escape and rescue, this time of a kind man named Jesus whom all the officials wanted dead. I imagined myself running to warn Jesus about the mean Pharisees who were coming for him, or beating up Sadducees who tried to trick him, or (most exciting fantasy of all) scaling the cross in time to cut Christ down before he died so the world could benefit longer from his good ideas.
When I was twelve, I learned names for all these holy toys—cruet, paten, chalice—and became fascinated by the changing seasons of the church year. Every time we went from one to the next, all the altar fittings changed color—from lime green to royal purple, white on holy days, black for Good Friday, scarlet for saints’ days. Green and purple lasted the longest, causing me to conclude that there was a relationship between peace and growth, majesty and sacrifice. The symbolism for each color was woven into my daily thinking by the time I was in high school. Watching Mamie handling altar cloths or ironing little chalice napkins with more attention than she gave to Daddy’s shirts impressed upon me that the house of God deserved my utmost care, that its ornaments were even more precious than the ones at home.
All through high school and college, as my Protestant friends drifted away or actively revolted against their religions, I increased my piety. My love for language and poetry kept me religiously active even when I knew that the theology no longer moved me. The Book of Common Prayer is after all a work of major literary merit, written in the sixteenth century by Thomas Cranmer, slightly before the King James Bible group completed its monumental task. At eighteen, I had invested Cranmer with mammoth physical and spiritual dimensions and felt personally attached to a man who could write such powerful prose. My favorite parts were the Collects—short readings intended for specific occasions such as sickness, travel, times of the day, the seasons. Some were also for people in certain circumstances or professions: prisoners, teachers, men at sea, the poor and dying. The imagery, the simplicity of diction, the uncanny understanding of the human condition and the human heart touched me. Phrases still float to the surface when I am extremely happy, sad, or tired: “O Lord, support us all the day long, until the shadows lengthen and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over,” “Bless all who teach and all who learn,” “Deliver us, we beseech thee, in our several callings, from the service of mammon,” “Relieve the distressed, protect the innocent, awaken the guilty.”
By attending chapel several times a week as a college student, I discovered a service—evening prayer—I had never attended at home, full of such sheer poetry as, “Let the floods clap their hands, and let the hills be joyful,” or “He hath showed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.” Only Shakespeare and Keats evoked comparable shivers or yielded comparable rewards to my mind and spirit. During my senior year in college, partly to render service to the Episcopal Student Center and partly to satisfy my curiosity, I formally analyzed the Communion service only to discover that its structure was not unlike any well-made drama. Beginning slowly and quietly, the service builds gradually through