Three hundred years is a long time. Imagine how many people move from childhood to old age and beyond seeing, experiencing the same spiritual home, essentially unchanged from generation to generation to generation. Imagine that it is beautiful, elegant, simple, and perhaps imperishably pure. That was the First Congregational Church of Pomfret, Connecticut. Which died today.
A lovely church burned to the ground today. Don’t tell me it’s just a building, a materialist artifact. It’s a sacred place. Countless people were baptized, married, and memorialized upon their deaths there. They went there in hard times to renew hope, in good times to express thanks and humility. It was a place whose shape and legacy served to make them live up to the best in themselves. Its purpose was inspiration.
Its loss is not a brick and mortar accounting transaction. It’s a death in the family. A death for our own Lake, who has enlivened and informed this and the previous site for years. We are all in mourning tonight.
What music is appropriate? Later, I know, my wife will help me, but she is not here, so this is all I can think of:
Thank you so much for posting this. Gorecki is right for the occasion. I had the chance to speak at this church to this congregation in September, and they were wonderful hosts and listeners. Our school will host them in our chapel for as long as they need us to, and they will actually be able to have a service tomorrow morning.
I waited to see the steeple go, and when it did, my heart sank like the last structure collapse I witnessed. When the rope to the bell in the tower burned, the bell fell straight down and clanged on the brand new front steps that just finished drying and getting pavers. A death knell.
Thank you for posting this remembrance, 300 miles away.