"Braids" writing portal: Losing faith

The church burned to the ground. 

Irony, considering witches. 

But that’s what it did: burn, right to the ground, leaving only two half-walls standing and smoking. 

Smell of a camp smoke, ghost story and marshmallow, along with acrid plastic, chemical. 

Something shimmered in the air above the remains. Shaking the very sky. The holy ghost? No, a mirage. Heat waves distorting the lodgepole behind, unscorched in its evergreen foliage. No wind this hot late-July day, a dry 96 degrees. 

Someone burned it; it was her. Yet there she stood, among onlooking crowd, as gape-mouthed and head-shaking as any of them, covered in goosebumps all the same, that sense that the world had just shifted beneath their feet. If it could happen here it could happen to anyone. This was god’s house, after all. 

God lives in the trees, she knew, if there was a god at all. The trees live in god, she preferred to say. Godearth, trees for lungs.

*

Lodgepole pine, pinus contorta, grows tall, skinny -- utterly uncontorted -- in the mountains of Montana. Shore pine, contorta subspecies on the coast, grows shrubby and twisted, arthritic and wizened against battering Pacific winds, no taller than a 2-story house. But the subspecies on the Divide, latifolia, grows in dense, dog-hair stands, soaring to heights of 80 feet or more, thrusting roots into high-elevation, rocky soil where snowfall is heavy and summers dry. In nature, the trees grow just a few inches or less each year. 

They live 300 years or more.

*

Almost a year ago exactly, Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral burned. The “Forest” ablaze; the cock fallen.

The “Forest,” as it was lovingly known by architects and historians and others who lovingly know old buildings, was the name for the collection of timber beams that formed the latticework frame of the cathedral roof. These beams were made of sturdy oaks -- trees three centuries old, once abundant, the likes of which can no longer be found in France. 

Each beam was constructed from a single massive oak, more than 13,000 individual trees altogether. To build it, they felled 52 acres. Stumps in the ground, bones bent toward the sky: the “Forest.” Blasphemy. 

The forest cannot be replaced.

*

She loved the church. The eastern light in the Sunday School room on spring mornings, setting alight the stained glass of Jesus with the little lamb. The rows of tiny white chairs, the bean bags off to the side. Singing “Jesus Loves the Little Children” and “This Little Light of Mine.” Making crafts from wooden popsicle sticks and glass jars with decoupage. Reading Bible stories, comic-book style.

They really cherry-picked the Bible when indoctrinating the kids, won their hearts before their minds could intervene.

Jesus loves me, this I know. 

Once upon a time, she’d talked to god regularly, never getting a response but knowing it was just a matter of time before the seed of faith that had been planted in her heart was germinated by divine revelation. 

By middle school she was praying fervently, daily, sometimes crying while kneeling. She listened avidly to apocryphal stories told by other kids and by Bible camp counselors: one where someone saw the devil at her bedside, one where someone prayed away a tornado -- split right into and went around the farmhouse it had, only seconds prior, bore down upon, howling.

*

Lodgepole pine is an aggressive colonizer, and likes the sun. It also loves fire, needs it to reproduce. This tree, pinus contorta, is pyrophitic, seeds locked in resinous cones that deliquesce in the arms of wildfire. A succulent release upon a lover’s exquisite caress.

Another word for pyrophitic is serotinous: when seed release is conditioned upon an environmental trigger, such as fire. Serotinous derives from Latin (late, delayed), as does serotonin (serum), the word for the neurotransmitter that gives us a sense of wellbeing. A calm and relaxed feeling, melting the crystallized resin into something more liquid, pliable. Letting a seed ooze out into crackling warmth, urging it to split open.

*

Also destroyed in the cathedral fire: the building’s spire, atop which roosted a “spiritual lightning rod” -- a copper rooster, stuffed with religious relics from the crown of thorns and patron saints. The cock was ascended, they say, to protect the parishioners through some sort of spiritual channelling to which only the Pope is privy.

Billionaires around the world rushed to pledge money for the “Forest”’s restoration. 

The stumps, in the meantime, decomposed beneath Paris. Replaced by concrete, steel, and toxic lead. In the fire, at least 300 tons of lead melted from the spire gables and stained glass windows and poured like molten lava from the roof. 

Notre-Dame de Paris is a poisoned site. 

*

The night her grandma died, she prayed to god to let her know when it had happened, waking her up if necessary. Grandma was in her hospital bed; it was only a matter of time. God could give her a sign, right? A floater in her eye, a prick on her skin, a new creaking in the walls, which she would know to interpret as the message Grandma is with me now.

She slept soundly and woke to the news grandma was gone. They would drive to Denver for her funeral. 

She was confused, uncertain, wondering. In what could she have faith? 

For days, weeks, months, she studied and asked questions. The pastor placated her; her mother offered platitudes. God was dissipating before her eyes. 

At first, she mumbled her questions in quiet terror. Why does god allow certain things? Why does god order, right there in the Bible! -- certain unconscionable things? She feared Satan would snatch her soul for asking. 

But just as there was no balm for her doubt, neither was there punishment for it.  

Further she walked into awakening, flames roaring around her, breaking her open.