THE LITTLE CHURCH THAT COULD
She sits quiet and still on a hushed countryside. And as the moon rises and reflects the past through her windows, she dreams. She dreams of hammers and nails and the plain folk who fashioned her in their image -- stark and simple -- no crosses or stain glass windows mark her intent. She is as plain as the men who built her, men of faith.
They gathered there, these men of peace and love. They gathered within her walls with their wives and their children by their sides. And in their gathering, they prayed for peace. But, it was not to be, for the desire by some that all men live in freedom, regardless of the color of their skin, brought war to her doors.
And so, she dreams of thundering horse hooves, carriage wheels, and cannon balls -- of the bullets embedded in her walls, and the blood of soldiers that soak her floorboards. She dreams of the music of a young solider silenced by a bullet - his body lay in stillness outside her door, his drum by his side. She dreams of the shouts and curses and tears that rose from the bloody conflict waged under the September 1862 skies, and of the quiet hope that remains even after a battle.
She dreams of loneliness as years of weather and neglect damage and nearly claim her demise. But then again came the sound of hammers and nails: The will to restore, the will to rebuild this beacon of hope. The will to give this little Dunker Church on Antietam National Battlefield in Sharpsburg, Maryland her cloak of history.
She reaches out beyond that cloak and dreams of cornfields, wooden fences, and stonewalls -- of Antietam Creek as it drifts on and on season after season. She dreams of the soldiers that stand atop monuments on this solemn battlefield -- and the 23,000 luminaries that light up the night each December in memory of those fallen, wounded, and missing soldiers.
And, she dreams of morning, of visitors that come in and sit on her benches: men, women, and children who gaze out her windows to the battlefield beyond. She hears in their excited voices of history being made in Washington, DC where the 44th president of the United States has been sworn into office.
The Little Church that Could stood tall through a Civil War, through troubled days, and the darkest of nights. She stood tall and strong, and dreams still of the quiet winds of peace, freedom, and equality for all -- and somewhere, as the Little Church that Could dreams her dreams -- Abraham Lincoln smiles.
Copyright © 2009 Carol Larese Millward
This essay was inspired by the photograph above, which was on the cover of a journal notebook my daughter gave me for Christmas.
