Take me to church (and warm me up, please)

Mid-winter scene
Montreal, QC
February 2019
This photo originally shared on Instagram

Just outside a church in the fading late afternoon light, small knots of people rush across the icy path, racing to mass as the distant thrum of the organ gradually rises through the century-old stone walls.

I notice these icicles hanging from the eaves, simultaneously dangerous and gorgeous. There isn't much light to work with, yet these accidental, temporary freaks of nature still manage to capture and reflect so much of it that I blink hard a few times to ensure it isn't some kind of illusion

It isn't. It's quite real, and it's more than enough to keep me standing here in the cold for a while as I try to stay out of the churchgoers' way on the narrow path.

As I look for ways to tell the story of this resonant place, I'm struck by the seeming permanence of this giant institution, with the impressive building, in a city within a province where the Catholic Church held sway far longer and more pervasively than it did elsewhere.

This building predates everyone here, and remains a vibrant anchor to the community that surrounds it. The sound and light filtering out into the now-darkened neighborhood are ample proof of that.

Yet the ice will be gone before we know it, a temporary adornment to a permanent scene. A reminder, perhaps, that there's no time like the present to get out there, to connect, to take it all in. Because soon enough it all disappears.

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