St Mary's

Today, I've wandered into a small inner-city suburb, one I've driven through a hundred times to get to the nearest Tesco, and as I finally lift my attention away from the document on my phone screen, I turn to see a church. In a moment of quiet, the breeze rustling through my jacket, I slow my walking pace. It’s more peaceful than I remembered.

Living in a city is a dreary business, or so I've always believed. True, the lights are always on, music always brash, drivers always angry, but there is something intangibly chilling about how the people always seem to have something urgent to attend to—and how you are a roadblock in their path to salvation. There's something monotonously morbid about such a presence, living only to barge past your neighbours for the crime of existing too inconveniently.

I've driven past this building so many times I can't count, but now, reduced to a speed of two miles per hour, I notice the size of its spire. Is that what you call it? A spire? I'm not a religious person—never even been inside a church during a service—so I might not get the terminology right. Still, this church, in a secluded suburb of a Scottish city, is unfathomable to me. The idea that something so beautiful could exist amongst the city's offensiveness, that something historical and so physically intimidating could give me pause. I now realise that I have stopped walking.

The church is made of a light brownish, off-greyish stone, like most of the older buildings in this city, matching the heavy layer of clouds above them. It must be more than a hundred years old, maybe even two hundred, and it's tucked in between some tenement buildings that are made of the same stone, buildings that long ago used to house the Victorians. It's crazy to me, how old these buildings are, how many people have lived in them in centuries past. Those people in the black-and-white photos, never smiling, never showing much skin, always posed to look more fashionable than they actually were—those people lived in these buildings around me. They stood on this same spot as I am now. Were they young, like me? Were they workers? Were they wealthy? Did they hear these church bells ringing every Sunday and pack themselves inside for the service?

A truck roars past, nearly startling my phone from my hands. That beast is really too large for these narrow roads, which were built long before the rise of motorisation, with occasional potholes revealing the original cobblestones beneath that played host to hoofbeats and carriage wheels. Yet, capitalism must prevail. Goods must be shipped, to be sold for more than they're worth to people who can't afford them.

I glance back down at my phone screen. The document is still up, the white background glaring ferociously as the auto-brightness increases, as though questioning my lack of engagement. Why aren't you looking at me? it says. What could possibly be more important than me, that which contains your entire life and only link to the world since people stopped memorising phone numbers and postal addresses?

I turn the brightness down and reread the document. It's more of a courtesy notice than anything else, nothing that I need to sign or action. Just an official receipt of my agreement to the rent increase of my apartment.

They say "agreement" as though I had any means to disagree with it. Frankly, I do disagree with it. I'm living in a 150-year-old apartment that hosts mice in the winter and creaks playfully at the activities of my upstairs neighbours in the summer. It's a nice enough apartment, and there's not much to complain about, but it's hardly worth what they're asking for it. At some point, I guess we as a society forgot that housing is a human right. An expensive human right, apparently.

I glance back up, this time remembering to lock the screen and slip my phone back into my pocket. The church is still in front of me, of course. I wonder if it housed people in its long history. I wonder how much rent they paid.

Another car zooms past, blasting curse words into the vicinity of the church, words that are acceptable because they have been arranged to a tune and rhyming pattern. No, I'm not religious, so why does it give me a slight wriggle in the base of my spine that the church has to be exposed to modern sensibilities?

Perhaps it's because the church is so tall. It is intimidating, as I mentioned before, with a large front and a round stained glass window. It commands the attention of the street, much like my phone commanded the attention of my brain earlier. Although wedged between other buildings unassumingly, now that I've given it attention, the church refuses to let me go. Come in, it says.

Literally, there's a sign on the grassy yard that invites new worshippers inside.

I stifle a chuckle to myself at my own bad joke.

The clouds rumble, telling me to get a move on, reminding me that I've been standing here for too long and that I didn't bring an umbrella. I know, the neighbours will be looking out of their windows at me. Why is that person just standing there? What's to stare at? Are they going inside the church or not? Looks like rain to me, maybe I'll bring the laundry inside. Yes, maybe I'll close the window and put the heating on. Why are they still standing there?

Maybe I just wanted to stand here for a while, pondering life's existence, capitalism, and my aversion to organised religion. Maybe it's ok to just stop and think without any greater meaning or divine purpose.

I slide my hand back in my pocket, instinctively checking on my phone's safety as though it could have possibly gone anywhere in the last three minutes, and resume placing one foot in front of the other.