Highway of Storms: Soul of the Smallest Church

Along the eastern seaboard of America winds a highway renowned for tumult.  Called the Coastal Highway, US #17 tiptoes north from west central Florida to Virginia, following the track of some of the worst hurricanes ever to rake these parts.  On its way, it ranges past the barrier islands of the Georgia coast, setting of pirate escapades that have spawned Hollywood blockbusters – read ‘Jack Sparrow’ – whose inspiration flows from Edward Teach, aka ‘Blackbeard’.  Three centuries ago, his renegade sloops ruled these inlets and channels, but by terror of runaway facial hair rather than firepower, though a ‘haint’ lingers on to scare the bejeevers out of the savvy and curious.  Out in the gloom of these lagoons hang, too, the cries of those once brought in chains across the sea to work plantations of rice, tobacco and cotton.  All told, the air can weigh heavy here.

Just off this highway of storms, in a world of marsh and shallows, of estuaries, sedges and oak draped with moss, there awaits on a shy turn-off near Darien, GA, the ‘Smallest Church in America’.  As roadside attractions go, however, it does offer occasion to pause and ponder.  No trapping is amiss – worn hymnals and sacred writ on the pulpit, a dozen chairs, even a stained glass window from Britain.  Someone had left a few stray coins at the lectern the day I visited; this is America’s Bible Belt, after all.  An unruly guest book boasts names and comment from across the country and abroad.  The entryway remains ever open and ample parking costs nothing.  In a small tower outside hangs a bell the visitor may ring at leisure, and arcing above the genteel scene, a grove of trees that have withstood the rack of storm and time.  No gift shop, no food truck, no chatty guide, no carnival hype.

Most visitors snap a souvenir selfie, sign the guest book and within ten minutes return to the highway in search of a rest room.  Few would notice what is certainly the most arresting feature of this wayside curiosity that lends it soul.  It comes in the form of a homely bulletin board by the way out.  Close examination reveals that the board is festooned not by formal notices or announcements, but by a farrago of scraps of paper upon which visitors have penned personal prayers.  Sheaves of these intimate phrases are left pinned to the cork by travelers who paused in silence beneath the shelter of the trees and left these entreaties – for redress, for healing, for hope, for peace – in the hope that someone, somewhere, that Heaven was listening.  These pleas will disarm any eavesdropper for lack of pretense, their earnest, their natural eloquence, their earthiness, their humility:    

The most riveting prayer came in an unsealed envelope addressed simply to ‘God’.  Inside: carefully folded tissues stained with tears.  The mega-church down the street or faith communities on hometown corners might envy such a bulletin board.  It doesn’t take much: solitude beneath sheltering oaks, some scraps of paper, a searching heart.  Taken together it’s a sign of the deepest of conversations whose grammar trembles with suffering, with desiderata, with mystery and with life.  And all of that in the smallest of churches.