There’s a non-denominational chapel downtown in the middle of a park with fountains. I’m pretty sure the place was built by Christians; they had a Christmas tree out front. By the same respect, they’d had a giant menorah a couple weeks ago.
It was a quiet day. There’s a wall around the park that keeps out most noise and a few stray birds were chirping in the still green trees. The fountains weren’t running—not in winter—but the chapel itself was open. I walked up the long ramp to the entrance.
The chapel has no windows. There are no paintings or tapestries inside. It’s a round building: a great spiral, twisting ever closer to heaven. But, there is stained glass, in the ceiling: many colors, working in or working out.
There’s chairs. I know that seams really basic, but chairs: not pews. You can move the chairs around. Anyone can move them. That really is a simple thing. There’s someone in a wheelchair? Move some chairs out of the way. Push them together. Face them all away from each other. There’s no podium or lectern. Everyone who comes in is equal.
No one else was in the chapel, so I sat cross-legged on the floor in the center, looking up at the spiral of colors and light.
Friday is Christmas. There it was: so close and so huge.
We are having Christmas dinner with Morgan’s family. And will they take us to their church? Will the people there stare and point at me? At Morgan? At Morgan’s family? Is this why they’ve shunned me for so long? What is that church like? Pews and a pulpit, stained glass images of Jesus and fire, banners that declare love gazed at lovingly by people who hate me, who would hate Morgan, Who hate us because we decided who we were and that we wanted to be together, because we love each other.
And then what? We’ll never have a wedding in that church. Morgan’s family will always be whispered about because of that, because they had to go to outsiders to have that. They’ll never sing hymns for us or see us down the aisle. We’ll have to sneak off to some bureaucrat's office and our wedding march will be played out on a typewriter. In triplicate. Sign here.
But, I want to say to Morgan, Merry Christmas! Here’s my gift: some kind of stability. A real job and not some flash-in-the-pan contract. Let’s buy a house. Let’s plant a garden. Let’s actually build our lives together. I want to care for you for forever. Let’s burn as brightly as we can and then go gray and dim together.
I will give you everything I can. A kidney. A piece of liver. Let me be your family.
There was a woman in the chapel with me, sitting in one of the chairs. She smiled at me.
“I’m so sorry!” I said, struggling to get up. “I was just overcome.”
She nodded and pointed at the ceiling.
“Yes,” I said. “The colors. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
She smiled and nodded, then reached in her purse and pulled out a tissue that she handed it to me.
She waved her hand at me.
I dabbed at my eyes and blew my nose. I was turning around and around in the room, looking up. “You get a real feel here, right? I mean, just you and… whatever. You feel it.”
I looked back at her. She had a questioning look on her face, like she didn’t understand me.
I pointed up. “Closer to heaven,” I said.
A weird sound. Not a grunt but a kind of moan: short and throaty.
“I’m sorry I turned away,” I signed. “I didn’t realize you were reading my lips.”
Her face lit up. “You sign? But you were talking.”
“I took ASL as my foreign language in college,” I replied. “I don’t have the ear.”
Morgan’s brother is deaf. A large part of how we met. It’s funny, really, that when Morgan talks about him—quotes him—Morgan signs but also has a voice for him: deep and slow.
The woman in the chapel smiled wide. “You’re doing fine. I don’t have to use my notepad.”
“Thank you for the tissue,” I told her.
“That was a very loud prayer.” She laughed again (that strange but familiar sound). “Even I could hear it.”
“I wasn’t praying,” I replied. “I was just thinking.”
“I don’t know the difference,” she said. “But it looked like praying. A good prayer.”
“I hope you get what you pray for,” she told me.
“Thank you,” I said. “I’m working hard on it.”
Kristi had left for lunch while I was gone, so it was just me and Gabi in the NOC.
“Are you upset that I am Muslim?” she asked.
I shook my head. “Why would that upset me?”
“You just seemed so surprised.”
“I don’t know what I expected,” I said. “I set myself up on that.”
“Did you go to the square?” she asked.
“I went there and I prayed so loud a deaf woman could hear me,” I said.
Gabi laughed. “What did you pray for, so loud?”
“A good Christmas. For everyone.”
“Ah,” Gabi said. “Yes, I might have heard that down here. You pray very loudly.”
I laughed. “Well, not everyone can hear it.”
