Ecclesiastics

The church is a sort of hospital for men's souls and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies. - Thoreau

photograph by Scott Hales

their steepled spirits reached up for heaven

the windows of their souls blown in stained glass

inside the candles were lit

the chapel crowded with prayers

both soothsayers and naysayers

their foundation was firm

with multiple layers

there were no plastics

in this humble congregation of ecclesiastics

where they leaped and tumbled in glorious gymnastics

Author's Note

"Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downwards through the mud and slush of opinion and tradition, and pride and prejudice, appearance and delusion, through the alluvium which covers the globe, through poetry and philosophy and religion, through church and state, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, till we come to a hard bottom that rocks in place which we can call reality and say, "This is and no mistake." - Thoreau