Empty Churches, Full Spirit

Greater Park Hill is home to more than 30 places of worship in just four square miles, and its faith community is as diverse and robust as the neighborhood itself. Normally, on Easter Sunday morning, churchgoers would have been showing up in their finest, ready to pack the houses for services of sermon and song. But this year, the sidewalks in front of all of Park Hill’s many churches – the Catholic, the Methodist, the Lutheran, the Baptist, the Church of God, and the Episcopal – were empty. Instead, sermons and hymns were delivered over the internet. The pastors of Montview Boulevard Presbyterian Church used as their closing prayer, “Praise Song for the Pandemic.” It was a poem by Christine Valters Paintner that praises, among others, nurses, doctors, janitors, garbage collectors, and scientists who are helping to combat the COVID-19 virus.  The poem concludes with the lines, “And when this has passed, may we say that love spread more quickly than any virus ever could. May we say that this was not just an ending, but also a place to begin.”

Photos by Reid Neureiter