I’m a sucker for an ecstatic, mystical experience. Like pausing for a beat to admire a loved one while sharing coffee and macarons on a sunny afternoon. Or, like when moving homes, you find transported items don’t appear to belong in your new home right away—the fine bookshelves I custom-built for the office in our last home ended up disappointing us in every room of our new home (so much so that we almost sold them) until, voila, we tried them in the kitchen. And, oh my gosh. The way they stood along the far wall and added a little color and space for storage and organization…I’m still tingling. Still staring, admiring the fit.
The transcendence comes for me in the realization that the shelves had a space all along. I just couldn’t see it. I needed to let the shelves wander. Or was it my imagination? Give them time. Let them be. It’s like locking in the last big section of the puzzle you’ve been trying unsuccessfully to finish for weeks. When we are confused or blocked, we can tell ourselves all is lost and despair (which I’m very good at) or we can rest in the wandering and wait to see what happens.
I especially love these mystical experiences when there’s at least the pretense of some intermingling with the divine. Recently, on a Sunday morning actually, just before I processed down the aisle and climbed into the pulpit, our church secretary grabbed one of my hands and pulled me aside to tell me he’d been meaning to thank me for inviting him to be an usher during worship on Sundays. He loved being an usher, he said, because each week he got to listen to the “clanking of the coins” as our houseless friends tossed what change they had like basketballs into the hoop of the offering plate. He said he especially loves it when they miss their shot.
When he finished, I smiled and said something like it was my pleasure, and I’m so glad he liked it. All the pleasantries. And, as the organist blared the introit, signaling that it was time for me to leave, he let go of my hands and shooed me down the aisle just as this poem “the clanking of the coins” began to reveal itself to me. Throughout the service, I felt invited, as if for the first time, to listen almost in rapture at all the minor noises I so often ignore—the clanking of the coins, the clicking of heels, grunts & groans, make-up pads bopping cheeks, the sniffled cries that fly into the silence we leave during the prayers of the people. These were sacred sights and sounds that so many might quickly label as distractions or out of place. And that realization left me tingling as I blessed them and sent them away.
Clanking of the Coins
for Craig
He said he likes being an usher
at church for the ASMR.
Particularly the clanking
of the coins from our friends
in the back pews who sleep under
bridges down by the sea
and also the sound of little ol’
church ladies
wiping their makeups and noses
weeping just like their savior
showed them, and, too, the heel
clacks and clicks from his
best friend who recruited him to come
to church with her to share in the tingling.
The Macarons
She’s somewhere between dreams
of the future
and a vanishing sleeve of macarons.
Mixed with love and time,
processed on low speed,
sifted, until extra fine, she’s ready to be
needed. Alone, the cookies are life—
too white, too vanilla, too
hollow. They need filling:
Caramels, raspberries, and cookie doughs,
lemons and butter scotches,
s’mores & green teas, pistachio-brie. All the
chocolates. She has a bite-sized belief in everyone—
an acquired taste for the amalgam
of what’s unique—
we’re all sugar, she says,
eggs and almonds
baked petite.
And we take a while, don’t we?
Adventuring from the raw
to macaron
to a sleeve emptied,
swallowed
into something new.
Moving
things that look like they belong
in the kitchen
should be placed
in the kitchen
things that look like they belong
in the office
should be placed
in the office
if there are things that look like
they belong nowhere
send them out to wander
and let's see where they go
Garrett Mostowski is a pastor and writer in Detroit, Michigan