on designing a church, and my relationship to spirituality.

I was recently sent this great writing by a friend and thought it would be a great writing exercise for me. I love that the author, Reggie James, let it go into stream of consciousness and I thought it could be fun to do the same.

I think like many people I have an interesting feeling about religion. I was raised in an environment that didn’t have religion per se - being Chinese and from the mainland, my parents didn’t grow up with a doctrine either. Religion was largely removed from society with the Communist regime.

At some point I did ask my mom about it. She said there was one church in Beijing. She had a classmate who was one of the few people who attended, and once accompanied her. To my mom, it didn’t rouse any spiritual beliefs, and she remained atheist throughout her life.

My dad on the other hand has always encouraged the spiritual. We traveled a lot when I was younger, and we always found our way to places of worship. Tibetan temples in Gansu, Greek Orthodox churches in Egypt, Daoist or Confucianist shrines in China, Roman Catholic churches in Lima or France or Italy, local churches at home in Suwanee. I never really learned how to pray either. Even at temples and shrines in China, my dad always had a different method for introducing me to the place. Sometimes he would push the incense smoke onto my forehead, and sometimes he would tell me to wash my hands at the fountain outside. There were never any traditions to follow, surprisingly, regarding how I held my hands or I knelt to pray on the pad. I have many a photo of me looking really really awkward before a giant golden Bodhisattva or Guanyin.

He always told me that faith is from the heart - as long as you believe, you can be blessed. Note that there’s no guideline on what to believe. While my dad knew how to treat Buddha and speak to him, he never really gave me directions. When I was younger I was a little resentful of this fact - I always looked a little dumb wherever I went. When I went to visit my grandfather’s mausoleum, I didn’t know how to bow to him or what traditions we were following. They were just part of what I was supposed to do.

Now being a bit older and having some more life experience, I do see religion and faith and spirituality differently. I wrestled with the Buddhist background in my family. I bought a Buddha one day at some occasion and my dad was upset with me - there’s a way to “invite” him into your home that I had missed. According to that faith, could I believe in reincarnation? That my being was just one on the path to enlightenment? There was one time when we were in Lima that the minister was throwing the holy water out onto a crowd before him, and my dad pushed me into the herd to get a little sprinkle on my head. Could I believe in that God, which asked me to perform various rituals (to me, strange and foreign) to affirm my faith?

I have been learning about a lot of things as of late. I’m thinking about a lot of things as of late. Being of Eastern descent in a Western world is weird even if it’s all I’ve grown up with. I see little kids choosing to get baptized at six or seven years old. I see evangelists walking the streets of New York, looking for someone to talk to. I see people who look like me pray to a God that didn’t come from their ancestry. I have often wondered if my shakiness on my future or on my identity would be less so if I had someone or something to believe in that way.

I don’t think I can believe in a form of worship as an institution or doctrine. There are so many guidelines and ways of living that I don’t know yet, and so many touching sayings and prayers I haven’t heard. There’s a logistical obstacle here: I can’t choose what I think is the “right” doctrine for me if I don’t know the entire selection, can I? If my mind is not pulled to one immediately, at the least? And even so, is my choice to believe in something itself denying the overwhelming presence of faith? Then, am I just lying to myself that I believe in something, until I do?

When my mom was dying I prayed a lot. In the last month, I prayed to any God that there was or will be or has been. I spoke to the air hoping that someone would hear me. Sometimes, I prayed with my sister sitting next to me. We had lost most of our hope, but I still begged for a miracle that would save my mom. My sister listened to me go on until we fell asleep holding each other and crying.

My mom passed in our family home and with family surrounding her. I think that was the miracle I was given.

I still visit churches and places of worship and I still pray from time to time. The place and the act are still sacred to me, even if there is no distinct entity I think of. I try to respect the things I don’t and can’t know, and let them lead me well into the future. I don’t know who or what is watching over me, but I think that there must be some forces stronger than me. It might just be destiny or fate or the way life moves through time or science or reason or thought or magic.

I grew up referencing a “老天爷“ - in English, literally “Old Sky Grandfather” and practically, “the old man (who is wise by virtue of time and age) in the sky”. He watches over us and our actions. I grew up hearing that “好人有好报” - in English, literally “good people get good news” and practically, “a karmic force brings good to good people”. There’s no doctrine attached to these sayings that I know of. They stay close to my heart and to my mind.

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If I were to design a church, I would focus on the mood first: on aiding introspection and open dialogue and emotional release. I always admired the humility of churches in my hometown of Georgia. They’re simple and deceivingly plain on the outside. But I do love the stained glass of Gothic churches in Europe - they bring the light in such a beautiful way that I’m sure they inspired many a conversion. And I love the smell of incense at temples and the way they permeate the air and stick onto your clothes. You feel as though you have done something today. At the least, you have visited your maker.

My church would be a block at the very edge of a city, hopefully facing towards water and towards the sky. It would avoid the shadow of other buildings and breathe next to nature. It would have paneled floor to ceiling windows of different colors and mosaic glass that would bring the light in and diffuse across. There would be recessed lighting as the color fades away and people are brought inside. There would be tall ceilings to encourage people to acknowledge their presence, as their voices and footsteps echo against the walls. There would be a skylight, too, to help people forget the bustle of outside and remember nature’s effect on us all. There would be naves on either side of the central aisle, like a classic Gothic church, to give privacy to those who want it. At the end of each nave would be large frescoes with sculpture molded onto it. I don’t know what the frescoes would be of.

The pews would face away from the city street, at the quietest corner, and towards the central nave. It wouldn’t be circular like a common church, however. I don’t want there to be an impression that the central nave is somehow grander than the others - those are places of great worship too. The central nave would lead to a narrow square box, where at the end, someone could take confession or speak their prayer aloud in privacy.

The two side walls would be made of glass, too, with long flowing curtains hanging over them. The light would gently move through them and they would move from time from time as people walked by.

The smell of the church would be something like old leather and tamped-out cigarettes. There would be a light gardenia twinge or lavender wash floating through the air - that’s the hand soap at the bathroom. There would be an ever-flowing fountain by the door. That’s to wash your hands in from the dirt outside, or to take a sip from after a long day.

It would be a place of refuge and internalization. It would be a break from a hard day at work or a place for deep prayer and escape. There might be a wall somewhere where people can leave messages, like at a shinto shrine, as a symbol of their prayer.

These are things I think of when I think of church. Something inviting, something otherworldly, but something personal.

Edited to add: Center for Architecture, “The Global Phenomenon of Multifaith Worship Spaces” ; Mar 15, 2022 10:06 PM EST New York, NY