The Beginning of a Spirituality ~ Part I

WAY UP HIGH, SERAPHIM ...

As a small child of no more than four, the Mass was mostly in Latin and very little made sense to my young ears. Except for one word - one word spoken one time within that hour of babble when I knew that I was being named specially among the crowd and recognized - the word was seraphim. And even though it was not Sarah, I knew it meant Sarah because after all, it wasn’t English anyway and that was just the other language’s way of saying Sarah.

A few years later the babble turned familiar and my curiosity waned until one Sunday I noticed what had been there always, hanging high above the altar. It was way up high, so high that if you sat too far up in the body of the church, you could not see what I oftentimes saw and oftentimes did not. It was rectangular in shape from the angle just below it, a box which hung by four chains made of what looked like wood and decorated on the bottom with colors of turquoise and cream and something of a darker hue from the perspective further back. There seemed to be no light attached to it and nothing hung from it to identify its purpose and so I would look at it and wonder “Why is this here?” and “What is that for?” And sometimes, because the box hung from chains and there was a rather large space between it and the ceiling, I saw it. It was a cross, but not a real cross, more like a shadow cross sitting between the box and the ceiling. But there was no real cross making the shadow cross so maybe it was some other kind of cross. Sometimes I would see it and look around at the other faces in the community gathered and wonder if they too could see it. Other times it was nowhere to be found and I would still look around at the other faces and wonder if they too could not see it. And even though I could not see it every time, I was sure of it; I knew it was still there even if I was the only one who knew about it. Somehow I think I was.