TWO WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL

As I was snapping pictures of the devastating fire that gutted St. Luke's Evangelical Lutheran Church in Ridgeway, bystanders came up to me and offered their condolences, thinking that I was a parishioner. "No, I'm just the press," I said. Well, sort of. Bloggers are getting more acceptance by the main stream media, but, to be truthful, the call of a fire siren can beckon me out of my comfortable lair when everything else fails. I heard the call a little after midnight and soon realized that the wooden structure could become a conflagration very quickly, so I grabbed my camera and fired up my trusty vehicle and away we went along snow-covered streets to the site. I was an early arrival along with one pumper, its crew busy unloading hoses and hooking them up to a nearby hydrant. I came in from Elm Street to Prospect Point Road and as I traveled along the east side of the church, it looked as though the fire was confined to the vestibule of the side entrance. Smoke was so thick, I was getting worried that a fire truck would hit me, so I quickly dodged down Disher Street and parked further up the block out of the way. Then I noticed the fire coming through the roof on the west side of the structure and then my heart sank.
I had attended two weddings and a funeral at St. Luke's and was struck by the simple beauty of that small church. It was just the right size for a church, I thought, and just right for the community it served. The warm wood glowed from the caresses of generations of congregants and the aroma of beeswax and incense eased the mind. The funeral I attended was particularly sad as it was for a suicide. The weddings were both rather hastily put together and both ended in divorce. And now a really bittersweet memory is added: the church's destruction.
Do you have any memories of St. Luke's that you'd like to share? What would you suggest that the members of the church do?