Church Beach, Goodhart MI in anticlimatic

Saw a video online using this song. Someone getting off of a subway and filming the steps and sidewalk in front of them, then suddenly glancing up surprisingly (to me) at the Cologne cathedral.

What a marvel. The sudden surprise of glancing up at it was jarring- reminiscent of the abandoned Ramona Hotel I found when I was 12. It would be hard to get close to something like that without knowing it’s coming, but more than the surprise- the shaky-cam realism of the cell phone video really helped me feel like I was there. I can almost imagine what it would feel like to experience it in person.

Shit like that almost makes me cry for reasons I can’t articulate. The absolute best of what we can do as a species. And for what, for why? To be “worthy” of housing religious artifacts in a shrine- to create a place worthy of religious peasants to make a pilgrimage. Quality for the sake of quality. Exalted magnificence for the glory of God (Humanity).

Yesterday I winterized the old, mostly abandoned Church, down at Church Beach- one of two I believe surviving structures from the ghost town of “Middle Village.” A cemetery of wooden crosses still flanks the Church, which sits on a beach and is the only public access to said beach for some 20 miles in either direction.

An 82 year old man climbed down from the bell tower when I showed up. I asked him if he ever rung the bell as he was coming down, and he did just that for me. Apparently fixing up the old church was his life’s work. He had a place just down the road that he built from nothing when he was in his 20s. Although it’s technically a Catholic church that has services, it had only 5 all year. He stops down every morning and unlocks it for tourists to wander in and check it out if they want, and locks it back up at night. Said he took the caretaker job over from an old Native stone mason 40 or so years ago, but didn’t reckon they would need one anymore. Wasn’t sure what would happen to the place after he died. I’m not sure what will happen to it either.

It’s tough because although I was raised religious, I haven’t believed in God since I was 16 or so. And I’ve hated going to Church services for even longer than that. But there is just something incredibly sad to me about its slow demise. People exalt God without realizing they’re exalting Humanity, actually. The cologne cathedral was build to be worthy of God by literally becoming like God to create such a thing. Do we aspire to that, without “Sky Daddy?” Is it even possible? We used to believe so. Do we, still? I’m not sure I do. And I’m not sure what to make of that.