A story for Holy Week about the holy spaces that hold us.

photo by Render Photography

The first time I stepped foot inside of Calvary Baptist Church on the corner of 26^th and Blaisdell in Minneapolis it was near the end of 2014. I was twenty-eight. I was struggling significantly then. A year before I’d been let go from a prestigious magazine photography gig, and was told my photos didn’t pass muster, all to see my images remain in print for months after my termination. I couldn’t afford my rent any longer, had to move in with my dad, during the summer all my girlfriends were getting married and buying houses. I just wanted to be a mom, and I felt so utterly lost as only a mercurial twenty-something can be. It was most certainly, one of the darker chapters of my young adult life. In this portion though, a little flicker withstood the storms: I was beginning to make my own faith.

My atheist boyfriend at the time had found this brick corner church for me. I thought we were joining a church that would check all my boxes including converting him (spoiler alert: he never did, but this isn’t a story about trying to mold people to our liking, though Calvary taught me about that, too). It’s about a church, and how a community can, if it tries, and if a certain amount of Spirit dwells, be the kind of Jesus to people that folks desperately hunger for. This is also a story of how a building can become something more than a structure, how it can hold parts of our lives that need a gentle cradling, a talking to, and by their own magic remain fixtures in our lives long after we’ve moved on. Also, for good measure, this is a tale about how you can and should love imperfect places and imperfect people, that their messiness isn’t calling for abandonment, but fidelity.

Really, it was love at first visit, and like church at Calvary does, it began with a song aptly titled, Enter In. I was already on the edge, but in the moment when the chorus began, my boyfriend nudged me to watch a little girl’s hand intertwine with her mother’s—their differing skin colors contrasting with one another. I started crying. I left the sanctuary and walked upstairs to find a small room to compose myself. It would be the same spot, four years later, where I’d tell myself jokes to keep from breaking down before I walked down the aisle to meet my beloved. I came despaired, I left wed, and there was a lot of learning and beauty in between.

A few weeks later, I found myself in a room off the fellowship hall interviewing for a part time administration position. My father was enraged when I accepted the offer, “I didn’t send you to private school to become a church secretary!” We didn’t speak for weeks. But, like right things do, it fell into place and the job suited me. On Tuesdays, my co-workers and I’d sit around a tray of Cub donuts, sad off brand Folgers coffee, and debrief one another. My position focused on communication, and I often did the church announcements and wrote the church newsletter. I answered phones, talked to everyone who came through the church doors, and got things organized. After years of employment where I was mistreated or ignored, at Calvary I felt useful and appreciated.

My co-workers were and are some of the finest people I know, and each one of them has shown to me a bit of the Divine. There was Amy, the children’s pastor whose organization and can-do hard work ethic expressed devotion and love to all. Dan, the incredibly tall youth pastor loved to annoy me by playing elk hunting videos loudly when I came into work. After meeting and marrying Seth, also an elk hunter, Amy would remind me how God had used those moments to prepare me. Dean was my usual go-to, a devoted member turned manager who kept order of a somewhat chaotic, very South Minneapolis community. In the summer his son would mow the church lawn, and later, when I opened a photo studio in one of the rooms off the second floor, repainted for me. Bennett and John did facilities, John, who had an illustrious past as a criminal would tell me stories about prison and I affectionally called him my “work dad.” He’d chat politics with me as he mopped, and on warm days I’d sometimes find my car sitting in the lot freshly washed.

Then there was Pastor Jeff. The year before I’d come to Calvary, PJ, as I came to call him, had created a stir by preaching a sermon and ripping out the page of scripture where David rapes Bathsheba. He often spoke about what he called the poetry of scripture and the Holy Mix of life—a term that means the coming together of sometimes opposite emotions and realities, like joy with mourning. He and his wife Randi treated me like a daughter, welcoming Seth and I into their living room to talk after we found out we were expecting. Each Christmas Jeff would somehow find a monstrously large Christmas tree and put it up in the sanctuary. One afternoon he volunteered me to help him secure it and in a moment I was convinced the tree was going to fall and crush me.

Taking the job that was “below me,” ended up growing my fledgling photography business. When I’d come to Calvary I was building a lifestyle photography brand capturing mostly young families. Living in Minnesota, my work was mostly seasonal, and local studios were too expensive for me to afford. PJ approached me one sunny afternoon asking if another photographer and I might want to share the space. He told me he’d always envisioned a photo studio in that room. We ripped up old carpet, painting the peeling floors gray, and freshened the walls with white paint. It was a beautiful space that allowed me to earn income throughout the rest of the year when I didn’t shoot outside. I often would edit there, too, and I loved the way late afternoon light fell across the floor. Pastor Jeff, who often had visitors would sometimes bring them up to the studio to show them the space. I knew he was proud of me. I captured so many sessions in that space, and I even chose that room to get dressed in on my wedding day.

A place is nothing without its people, though, and Calvary had that in spades. There was fellow artist and creative Laura whose studio was just across the hall from me. C John was the resident king of caring about social problems whose tirade against Styrofoam cups put me into a laughing fit. My friend Leah and I met doing announcements together in matching Target skirts. Later, she’d stand as a bridesmaid in my wedding. Brandi and Sam lived on the northside and would sometimes have me over for dinner, letting me witness Christian life as a family-longing child of divorce. Once, a bunch of us church women got together at Kendra’s house and made soap. When I was newly pregnant, unmarried, and throwing up constantly, Julie made me homemade trail mix and put them in individual bags. I liked watching JoAnn knit during long sermons. Ann ran the preschool and one day, when I wanted to cry into my lunch, she asked me to join her, and we sat and visited instead. Calvary was and is full of complicated, beautiful people. There were people I didn’t care for, or get along with, but when I think back to those years those aren’t the faces I remember. On our wedding day our entire wedding party took a little happy hour after the ceremony at Pastor Jeff’s newest project—a pub right down the street. This was a dream come true space for him and had been where he’d given Seth and I premarital counseling.

After Seth and I moved to Stillwater we determined we needed to find a local church. Sometimes in our conversations we’d bring up Calvary, remarking on how special of a place it is, what a great pastor Jeff is. At the end of one of those chats I told Seth that I think you usually get one Calvary in your life, and that’s if you’re lucky. I don’t prescribe to a celebrity culture when it comes to worship, I think attending church is important, even if we don’t like the pastor or the people or the building. A beautiful church can be a taste of something miraculous here in this imperfect, hard place.

A few months after Penny was born we got invited to an anniversary church picnic for Calvary. We strapped our kids into our minivan and made the drive to Pastor Jeff and Randi’s beautiful home on the river. I got to see and hug so many people who I’d missed, faces I’d forgotten, and I got to introduce Seth and our children to them all. Lcie and the Calvary band were there, setting up and throwing down tunes just like at church. Priscilla and Langston couldn’t stop dancing. We ate too many chips, stayed longer than we intended, and I walked back to our car nearly missing the rain with such an odd combination of nostalgia and closure, as Pastor Jeff would say, a holy mix.