Pull Up a Pew
No collection plate, no altar call, no paywall. Just a seat saved for you.
You know the pew. Hardwood back, a little creak when you shifted your weight, that strip of worn red fabric on the seat gone thin and shiny from a thousand Sundays before you ever sat down. You know the sound of the piano feeling out the first notes of a hymn, or the organ if your church was the fancy kind, and the rustle of the whole room reaching for the hymnal at the same moment.
You know the smell too. Old carpet and burnt coffee drifting in from the fellowship hall. The little plastic cup of grape juice and the cracker that stuck to the roof of your mouth. The bulletin folded into a fan because the air conditioning never quite reached the back rows. And if you went to my kind of church, you know the felt board, the gold stars for memorizing verses, the vest with the patches, the candy you earned for getting the words exactly right.
You know the other part, too. The altar call with every head bowed and every eye closed, that same soft song looping while a voice asked whether you were really sure, whether you knew where you would go if you died tonight. The quiet fear that followed you out to the parking lot and all the way home. We were handed that fear young, and we were told it was love.
Some of us started asking questions anyway. And asking questions in that room is a lonely thing to do, because the second you ask one out loud, the warmth you grew up inside can turn cold fast. A lot of us walked out of those buildings with no idea whether anyone else had ever walked out too.
That is what this is. A different room, for the people who left the first one. No plate coming down the row, nobody counting your wallet or your soul. Everything here is free, and it always will be.
If you want to support the work, you can become a paid subscriber as a way to help keep it going, and I am grateful for every person who does. It is $6.66. You already get the joke.
And if you cannot spare it, do not give it a second thought. Pull up a pew anyway and sit as long as you like. The only thing I will ever ask of the free seats is that you save a spot for the next person who is just now starting to ask questions, and let them know this room exists.
We sat in the same pew once. I am glad we are sitting in a better one now.