"All Things Must Pass Away", or, Eligy For Saint Mary Magdalen

There is a conventional and oft-coined platitude best applied in the form of a Beatles song... "All things must pass away." For it is true that in life, no one gets out alive. Indeed some of us don't make it very far at all. Still many of us overstay our welcomes. But psychologists and theologists alike agree that humans universally struggle to achieve "symbolic immortality."

We have children to pass the family line, to be a legacy for us. They will in turn do the same, and so on. I don't have kids by choice. I revel in the upside and accept the downside as consequences of that decision. My attempts at achieving symbolic immortality are the memories of myself I leave behind with the people and places center to my life.

Whether those memories are jokes, anecdotes, blog posts, angry exchanges, or what have you, we all leave our ghosts behind in everything we do. "We may never pass this way again," goes another song, which implies we'd better do it right the first time. Or at least do it big.

One of the places I left a lot of fond memories burnt- all but to the ground- this weekend. Even though I had not attended a mass at Saint Mary Magdalen Catholic Church in Kentwood in the better part of 20 years, it was my home church. I always referred to it as "my boyhood church". It was a significant place. It was a place that elicited smiles as I would drive by all the way up to last Wednesday when I drove past it on the sunny evening in my Corvette. I smiled at the memory of playing baseball on the fields there, and of working at the concession stand. It was a place that many friends went to back then in my ever waning youth. Many friends attended church in that building even up to this weekend when an out of control fire raged for hours and destroyed the sanctuary.

 I made a lot of memories in that place. I'd like to think their ghosts survived within those walls, informing all that happened since. Now it is sure they are gone. With them, a piece of me. It was very sad to see the building, (which I was fond of anyway), as a sad empty hulk. A building once inviting, now foreboding. It died violently, spitting flame and ash and flotsam out 100 feet in each direction as it surrendered itself inch by inch to the violent, unquenchable inferno.

The charred remnants of the mighty wooden beams which soared over the sanctuary and provided much inspiration through architecture, are all that remains.

A view into the remains of the sanctuary looking northwest. This was the last place I stood watching mass from the hallway in the nave. The mass was for the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the church in 2006. Later, we had a good time at the festival held on church grounds. I won the 50/50 raffle and donated my proceeds to the church. It was the last time I saw a favorite priest, Fr. Jim Kawalski, alive. (Photo Courtesy Grand Rapids Press)

There will undoubtedly be a new building. The parish is strong and the diocese has already committed to rebuilding. A church, after all is its people, not its location.

This is the exterior door through which the above photo was taken. The fire burned so long and intensely that the steel I beams (added during a 1980s renovation, funded in part by a generous donation from my parents), deflected. The feel was "Daliesque"

But the new building won't be the building I was baptized and confirmed in. It won't be the building where I helped reconstitute the moribund youth group, was an alter server for mass and for the funerals of many distinguished and well-loved people from the clergy and community. It won't be the place where learned about right and wrong. It won't be the building where I met some of the best friends I ever had. It won't be where we staged  "lock-ins" and played music at insane volumes all night long with weary looking adults attmepting to be cool and have fun. It won't be the place where I won talent shows and danced and flirted with girls. Church is a much better place to meet girls than any bars. I learned that, here.

After college, I lived with some great guys in the nastiest house on the prettiest street in the uber posh Detroit suburb of Birmingham. Like this church, it was a formative place in my memory. A place where many rights of passage took place. a place where memories were made. The house fell victim to "neglect by rental" and to the irrational exuberance of the real-estate market of the go-go aughts. It was razed and replaced with a lovely new home. The former school across the street suffered the same fate. Now, I drive down the street as though it were just another street. There is no need to slow down. No inexorable tug to revel in the fond memories. Why bother? After all, it's just a house on just a street. Nothing to see here.

The new Church building will not be home. For me, it will be nothing. Just another church.  I and so many other people who have moved on will regard this once important place as another building. And while it is a joy that the congregation was not hurt, and will rebuild, it is a profound sadness to me that whatever part I, my family, and so many other people dear to me played in the history of the place burned up and flew away, like so much ash and tinder, never to return.

The icon of the patron saint of the parish, Mary Magdalen, kneels at the feet of the crucifed Jesus. It remains virtually untouched in the memorial yard in front of the church.
On this day after the fire, the church marquis on 52nd street read "Behold, I am with you always".