100TWC - Day 30: Faith

Early morning sun filtered through the intricately-patterned windows, stretching gentle fingers of blue, red and gold into the dust laden air. Individual motes sparked and glinted, moving at the insistence of unseen currents and draughts. Despite these small movements, the atmosphere inside the chapel felt still and calm as Moira closed the heavy wooden door behind her. It moved silently and smoothly on ancient, worn, but well-oiled hinges. The latch clicked into place, unnaturally loud in the quiet of the nave.

The building was deserted. Although services were still held regularly, Moira had come in the middle of the working day, when worship was the last thing on most people's mind. She had chosen the time deliberately, craving the silence and solitude. She started up the aisle towards the altar, wondering briefly how the gleaming woodwork and worn leather pews stayed so clean in the midst of so much dust. The air was heavy with it. The smell of age, tinged with the slight damp of decay, was everywhere. Yet the stalls looked newly polished, and the gold design on the pulpit was as bright as if it had been wrought that very morning.

She sat down in the front pew, stroking the woodwork unconsciously with her hands. She dropped her head, chin resting on her thin cream blouse, eyes staring unfocussed at the old corded hassock in front of her. She had come here to pray, but now that she came to it, the question she had meant to ask of her God eluded her. She was certain He knew what it was already, of course, but He still needed to be asked, although Moira wasn't entirely sure why.

She hadn't forgotten her problem. Problems, in fact, since they were many. But earlier it had seemed to her that all her troubles had come together, forged themselves into one burning question. If only she had the answer to that question, everything else would be alright. Or, if not alright, then somehow it wouldn't matter so much. Gripped by her need of an answer, she had hurried here to pray. But now, surrounded -- no enveloped -- by the serenity of the chapel, all urgency had deserted her. And so, it seemed, had the question.

The anguish welled up inside Moira again. Stronger now. Coloured by frustration and anger. Those problems -- those agonising quandaries and life-sapping convoluted complexities -- were still out there waiting for her. Outside the church, were all was not serene and old and quiet. Why wasn't God out there, where he was needed, instead of keeping himself shut away in here surrounded by gold and stained glass and polished oak? And why didn't he answer her question straight out? When he must know what it was, even if she couldn't remember it?

She stared up at the face of the plaster Jesus, hanging from his cross behind the pulpit. His blind white eyes stared at the floor in front of the altar. That did look dusty, Moira noticed. The stone flags, worn into hollows by hundreds of years of faithful feet, looked as if they had been covered with all the dust left over from the woodwork and leather, marble and gold.

Moira began to sob quietly.