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+, originally uploaded by suitablegirl.

Sometimes, I just wish I could stay at church.

It is the safest, most peaceful place I know and it's beautiful, too. 

Light focuses through the dome, like heaven shining one golden beam at a time; it's the opposite of the searchlights one sees outside of clubs or parties.  This light isn't agitating for anything or beseeching us for our attention.  This light is calm and each mote illuminated by it starts to resemble a manifestation of grace.

The mosaiced faces of Saints gaze down at me from every arch, with their oversized Byzantine eyes, and those eyes, they are so evocative and wise.  Those eyes are expressive, perfected by humility and tempered with sadness.  Such eyes don't dance, they watch, with the intense worry of a new parent beholding their child.

The Byzantine chanting gloriously ricochets throughout the cathedral.  It is emotional xanax, the purest anxiolytic substance possible, available without a prescription for over two millenia.  Each chorus is so gorgeous, such notes seem like the only apposite way to communicate with the divine.

While the choir sings dazzling ancient invocations, I commune with those who are lost, some of whom I was never allowed to meet.  My identity, my blood, on either side, flows through the Orthodox church.  My ancestors never haunt me anywhere else, which is my loss, for such visits are like a cool hand on an ever-feverish forehead. 

And me, I am in the left corner of the pew, in the left corner of the church, on the left side of the Lord, just feet from the memorial for the dead, which is exactly where I belong.  Waiting pensively for Holy Communion, repeating the prayers with which one prepares for such mysteries, because surely whatever I've said is lacking, either I didn't concentrate properly or give each word the reverence required...whatever I've murmured in supplication is not enough.

It isn't.

If it were, I would not be alone.

My heart would not have broken twice today.

My lap would not contain a pool of my tears.

My G-d is a jealous G-d, but he has flawless hearing for his childrens' cries.  If only he could hear mine.