Ways to worship

I attend Audubon Park Covenant Church. I consistently (incorrectly) call it Audubon Park Community Church, I think because this tiny place, which could maybe hold one hundred worshippers, sits smack dab in the middle of my neighborhood.

Its smallness utterly appeals to me. So does the average age of the congregants. I don’t have official data, but I’d guess about fifty percent of the attendees are widowed or divorced women over the age of eighty. For this woman who lost her own mama years before she actually died, there’s something so comforting about these crepe-skinned grandmothers who smell of talcum powder and wisteria, women whose hugs are surprisingly bracing and questions alarmingly astute.

But not all of us are yet retired. One sweet lady is Bekka. She sits a row or two in front of me. I park near her because I love her clear soprano and because if I don’t sit near the front, as she does, I will scroll Instagram during the entire sermon (sorry, Pastor Sarah—I promise it’s not you).

Bekka is about thirty years old. Her mom and dad and sister attend our church, too, except for not right now. Her sister is in Alaska working as a deaf interpreter for a kindergartner. And her parents do humanitarian work in Congo. So, for now, it’s just Bekka and her long brown braid.

Aside from the aforementioned spot-on soprano voice and Little House on the Prairie hairdo, I also admire Bekka because she works at Barnes and Noble (eye-yie-yie) and because she takes notes during church. I do that, too, partly as a way to keep from scrolling Instagram but partly because writing helps me process, helps me remember, helps me know what I know, you know?

Except that last week, when Jerry and Jim, my pew mates, and I rose to receive communion, I saw Bekka’s notepad lying on the pew. And I peeked at it.

Not notes. Nope, not notes at all.

A poem.

And in that moment I loved Bekka so much, which is weird because I’ve talked to her like maybe four times ever, but I mean so much. Because could there be a more profound way to worship and adore our great and good God than by writing a poem?

I didn’t read the poem. It could have been an ode to hot dogs for all I know. And if it was, you go, girl. What was in it doesn’t matter to me. It’s the act of creation. Of joining in the act of creation.

The next Sunday, the Fleet Farm workers tended our vegetable patch at the same time we parishioners sat inside singing our hymns and bowing our heads. Here’s what I know: the sweaty bodies outside, hands plunged into the dirt, were worshipping our good and great God as surely as those of us inside. Maybe more so.

A poem, a sweet bell pepper, a hymn, a call and response prayer?

Yes. All of it worship.

Thanks be to God.