Brattle Street Elegy: In a Magical Place

Today I live in Seattle, but my heart is (and always has been) in Boston. When I got the text, in between Sunday meetings, that the Longfellow Park chapel had burned, the tears sprang rapidly. I found it difficult to explain to my Pacific Northwest ward mem￾bers the depth of the loss to the Church and countless members around the world. My first memories of church are in that building, as is my first experience with repentance. A fellow Primary classmate convinced me to stuff grass through the mailslot into the bishop’s office, something that haunted me for days until I confessed to my mother and then had a very pleasant visit with Bishop Gordon Williams. Years later I had the privilege of returning while attending graduate school and starting my career. During that time, I learned to serve and love in ways I could not previously have known without the people, places, and events that I believe could only have come together in a magical place like Cambridge.

Even though I have been gone for over a decade now, I have spent the last five years traversing thousands of pages of oral histories regarding the Church’s growth in New England and in the Cambridge area in particular, hoping to produce, at the end, a manuscript that would have meaning and messages for many— not just those of us who have come to love Cambridge because it is a part of us. Having invested those years in this effort, I am flooded by the realization of all the things that have transpired in the Longfellow Park Chapel—the most significant of which were not publicized events, but the little life-changing interac￾tions, moments, and bits of inspiration that have impacted thou￾sands of people over the last fifty-three years. I know my life was changed there, and will ever be grateful for that.