This is the church at which I worship

We gather together. Photos/Keith Howard

I’ve found a church. A church I’d join. No questions, no small print. No dress code. No magic, no talk of magic that happened a thousand years ago in some far-off desert. The theology? It’s simple. Praise. Just praise. Hopeful, focused praise. No neat answers about death, no fluffy promises about heaven or eternity or about where you go when you die. No moral lessons to chew on. Just one rule: Shut up. Be quiet. Really quiet. Anyone can come. Sit down. Be quiet. That’s it. No deaf men seeing, no blind guys dancing, no cripples throwing their glasses away No mumbo.  No jumbo. Not here.

I’ve been to a few services. Last night, though. Last night hit different. Usually I check my pockets before I go, but a tiny miracle must’ve crawled out of one. For some time between a few nanoseconds and a lifetime, my brain quit yammering. It sat down, got real quiet behind my face. And in that stillness, I slipped somewhere. Maybe a trance. Maybe a meditation. Maybe a short walk into a parallel dimension. It was so like nothing it was one of the best somethings I’ve ever had. This church is heaven—even if it has no opinion about anything.

One problem, though. There’s a logistical issue with these services. They’re held at waterholes. Waterholes scattered all over Namibia. Probably all over southern Africa, too. Maybe throughout the world. I only know a few in Namibia.

You show up. You sit. You breathe. You shut up and wait. Sometimes something comes. A zebra. A springbok. Maybe a wildebeest or two. Sometimes a rhino, maybe lions. It’s like fishing. The kind of fishing that matters. The kind where catching something isn’t the point. It’s the looking.

Take pictures if you like. They won’t matter. Snapshots can’t capture anything nut images, and this is beyond two dimensions. Or three. Or however many the theoreticians currently propose.

Watching the waterhole isn’t about ticking off a list of flashy animals. It’s about paying as much attention to one scurrying mongoose as you would to a dozen rhinos. It’s about focusing so hard on what’s out there that you forget about how you look. Your ego? Gone. You teach yourself to catch movement. Tiny blips at the edge of your vision. Then? You. Stop. Caring.

From dusk to full dark at an African waterhole. Not a long time. Just long enough for time to fall apart. You stop fighting it. Stop trying to be anything. Stop trying. Stop.

You sit. You look. You exist. Quietly.

Now I’m back at camp. It’s pitch-black. The moon’s almost full, big and fish-belly white, staring down. It’s quiet. Quieter than a funeral. Quieter than 15-year-old me hiding in the bushes, waiting for the cops to drive past. Quieter than quiet.

It’s just as quiet as that waterhole was at dusk.

But quietness isn’t enough to catch the miracle. You couldn’t, I don’t think, ride the miracle trapped in a soundproof bunker 200 meters below the earth surface. Death is quiet, but there’s no miracle.

The waterhole’s quiet combines with anticipation that needs no fulfillment, praise that needs no object, focus for focus’ sake. This is the church at which I worship.

May you find your holy space.

You matter. I matter. We matter.