Articles/Essays – Volume 42, No. 4

Brattle Street Elegy: Looked like a Church, Sounded like a Church

How I’ve enjoyed your memories, especially of the bright and beautiful people and the warm acceptance! 

I find myself thinking of the physical structure which no doubt cannot be replicated under current codes but which I pray will be rebuilt to model and honor that lovely church. I arrived in 1965 as a college student and an investigator and to a building that looked like a church, felt like a church, sounded (the organ) like a church, and drew my heart and mind skyward through the rose window. 

The typical building where I first explored the gospel in high school never felt quite right, and it has taken me some time to adjust to similar buildings since. It boils down to “Do architecture and beauty matter?” Of course they do. By its very difference, the Longfellow Park chapel nudged us to accept difference, be happily different, and to seek more that was lovely. Had it not been for my years there, I not only might not have joined the Church but I also might not have stayed in the Church. I’m still gratefully running on fuel I stored within those walls.