Old Churches

Trinity in Orange City, Iowa
I love the reflection of the tree branches in the windows.

It's May 1 today, and as I said earlier, time for some photos! Today I wanted to share three black and white photos that I took one really cold winter day and never got around to doing anything with them. 

Originally I wanted to enter them in a black and white photo contest. I never got around to it due to some minor procrastination/motivation issues. Surprise, surprise. The contest was for black and white pictures of old, historic buildings in Sioux County. Since one of the oldest historic buildings in Orange city was reduced to nothing but ash a few years ago,  I choose to do some churches. 

I am a little church (no great cathedral)

Far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities

I do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,

I am not sorry when sun and rain make April

My life is the life of the reaper and the sower;

My prayers are prayers of earth’s own clumsily striving

(Finding and losing and laughing and crying) children

Whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness

Around me surges a miracle of unceasing

Birth and glory and death and resurrection:

Over my sleeping self float flaming symbols

Of hope, and I wake to a perfect patience of mountains

I am a little church (far from the frantic world with its rapture and anguish)

At peace with nature

I do not worry if longer nights grow longest;

I am not sorry when silence becomes singing

Winter by spring, I lift my diminutive spire to

Merciful Him Whose only now is forever:

Standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence

(Welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)

EE Cummings