The little chapel near the fish tank
It is always quiet in the little chapel near the fish tank. The chapel is off the corridors of a rehabilitation hospital, around the corner from the cafeteria and physical therapy department. Next to a table calendar marking the monthly holidays for all religions in alphabetic order (ending inarguably with Zoroastrianism), there is a notebook with an attached pen, where patients and visitors record their pleas and prayers. The book is public, but the contents are private. Reading would feel illicit, an act of arson, as if the pages might ignite.
Even the air in the little chapel seems enriched. Lists and schedules become briefly superfluous. They have no place here and need to wait outside on straight chairs by the fish tank. My appointments are in a clinic down the hall, but I like to sit for a few minutes on a velvet bench under the skylight. It’s not in prayer, though it is in peace.
Late one recent morning, my eyes were closed when I heard footsteps. Probably a supervisor was popping in to adjust the thermostat or check a bulb. No one else had been in the chapel while I was there. I waited for the supervisor to leave. Instead, after a pause, there was a small whoosh, the jangle of some keys, silence, and then a murmuring. One eye opened involuntarily.
On a small unrolled rug, a man was kneeling, forehead to the ground. My one eye could see the top of his head. He wore some kind of hospital uniform, though not scrubs. Keys hung from a belt. Obviously, he knew I was a few feet away, but the timing of his prayers and the timing of his work breaks were probably inflexible. He murmured, rose, knelt again.
Though I was there before him, I had become an intruder.
What is the protocol for this moment?
Walking past someone in the midst of prayer might be an act of disrespect or might be an acknowledgment of privacy. The calendar on the table listed all the holidays in the world — it was an entire religious course — but there was no rule for this.
I closed the one eye. Let us be a bit uncomfortable, I thought, but in it together. I was here for peace and he was here for peace.
The little chapel had room for us both.