A Quick, Cheap Metaphor

My life is like a church sanctuary. And I don’t mean this as a spiritual illustration. The picture of a church sanctuary just happens to pop up in my head as I box life up into this quick, cheap metaphor.

My life is like a church sanctuary. It is 3:00 P.M. Sunday afternoon and the pews are filled to a bursting point with people. Up on stage dressed in Sunday’s best, a red-haired chipper, high-energy lady leads the afternoon events. Nervous students sit in their pews clutching the arm rests or tapping their shaking toes against the ground. In their hands, music books shake as much as their toes.

Outside, a beautiful Sunday afternoon follows the movements of the sun waiting for its queue to fall asleep when the large, orange orb drops below the horizon. Meanwhile, a music recital is under way. Each student can’t enjoy the cool spring afternoon past the old sanctuary walls. They can’t even see through the barriers they built around themselves. They are in a dark dreadful tunnel. At the end of the tunnel lays, not a light, but a black grand piano. It taunts them to no end.

When the timer clicks zero after a beautiful Sonatina; when life consist of a few more seconds; when unnatural, unsettling quietness hangs in the air only disrupted by tiny footsteps down hardwood stairs, the long awaited moment arrives. No one could ever hope for that moment, especially the poor student standing up for his turn at the dreaded piano. But the moment is inevitable, mandatory and steadfast.

The student will stand up. He had prepared too many days in advance for this. The days had been long, prolonging the dreaded moment. He lays the music on the bench and looks at it longingly as he leaves it behind. Though he had memorized the song several weeks before the recital, the sheet music is soothing, available if things went terribly wrong.

The student will walk out off the comfortable pew into the isle. Now he is exposed for every one to see. They look around with glaring eyes. “You will fail,” they say, “We are waiting for you to fail”. The poor student looks back at his pew; his home, the sanctuary within a sanctuary, and walks further away into the jaws of hopelessness, failure and condemnation. Up the stairs through the tunnel to the piano, his footsteps echo around the room. Everyone is so, so quiet. Are they breathing? Are they alive? Can they see through his church cloths to the racing heart underneath? He sits upon that bench and waits. The seconds tick by. Like hours, they drag on until the moment can’t wait any longer. His little child fingers rest on the piano for one last jolt of the clock hand and then he plays.

Time becomes a thing of the past. For those few moments nothing exists but the piano and his dancing fingers. A rhythm and a beautiful harmony of chords and notes take the place of minutes and seconds. The melody rings around the suddenly enchanted chamber. And then as quickly as it began the moment is over. The last chord is played and the audience claps. The young boy smiles, bows sloppily and quickly runs to his sanctuary.

My life is like a church sanctuary. I am that boy waiting in the pew. Like a prisoner about to be executed, I wait with shaking hands. The pew is my home, my family, friends, and comfortable hang outs. It represents the familiar things in life where I feel safe. The dreaded tunnel is only an illusion I create for myself. It is a barricade between me and the “other” unfamiliar parts of my life. At the end of that tunnel are the things I need to do, the mandatory, inevitable, steadfast priorities. Outside of the pew is my journey towards those things I dread most.

Many times I have taken that journey away from the pew. All the while I could hear the taunts of failure. As real as the tunnel I had created for myself, the taunts impeded my voyage to do those hard things outside of my comfort zone.

But always, when the moment came, the one I had imagined in horror for so many days and had dreaded to the point of exhaustion, everything worked out. I played my piece on the piano, the seemingly ravenous crowed clapped as reality slapped me in the face for my prideful fear, and I ran safely back to the haven content from accomplishment. Over and over again I have done this. Even as I write these words at midnight on October the 17th, I sit in my pew, awaiting the next hard inevitable thing. My hands shake as I see it coming. I clutch the pew arm rests until my knuckles turn white and my toes tap nervously against the hard word floor.

Then I hear the footsteps…