Love and Salt

Sunday morning I ride my purple beach cruiser down the bike path.  Even though I live near the beach, my neighborhood is just two ticks beyond the salt line.  I can’t smell the ocean.  Culver City smells like jasmine and bottle brush.

It will be hot today.  The bike path is already beginning to sizzle, so I need to get to the Mar Vista Farmer’s Market before all things green surrender.

I turn off the bike path and coast down Grand View Boulevard. Almost to the market I hear music.  People are singing but I can’t see them.  The sound washes over me, literally.  I pass under it and circle back the way I came, frantically looking for a massive choir in the middle of an empty street. 

Then I look up.  The heat and pressure of the air have sucked white curtains out of the open windows ringing the top floor of a dingy grey five story building.  The building is trying to fly.

I’ve abandoned the Farmer’s Market plan now, parked my bike and circle the building, determined to find the music.  A tiny woman approaches me, asks me a question in Spanish and I can only point up.  She takes my hand and leads me to stairs I would never have found. As we climb the stairs, the music meets me half way and pulls me up. At the top of the stairs, she squeezes my arm and leaves me standing dumb struck in the entrance to a Mexican Catholic Church Service.

The walls are chalky white.  Massive windows are cut floor to ceiling, all thrown open and at this height, above the smog check station, above the cars that devour Washington Boulevard, above the endless rows of single level houses between Mar Vista and the ocean, above the melting asphalt below, cool salt fills the room.

I sit in the only chair I can find.  I think it was left open for me.  They were expecting me.  God was expecting me.

A young man speaks for about fifteen minutes.  I don’t understand the words, but completely understand the message.  Then everyone stands and begins singing again.  They know this song very well. I’ve never heard it before, but I know this song.  I don't need to know the words.  My heart is vibrating with the waves of breath and sound and harmony that move all around me and through me.  And the breath of the singers combines with the breath of the Pacific and the breath of my neighborhood and I stand and swell with 40 strangers, supported all around by something that feels like Love.