I’ve prayed in a number of different structures – Synagogues, Quaker Meetings, Methodist and Presbyterian Churches, homes and living rooms, factory floors and fields – but I think the Meeting for Worship that has always worked best for me is the barn, cathedral like structures of peace, community, work and simplicity.  There is something very honest about a barn, simple and unadorned. In a barn, there is no dogma thrust upon us, no single way we are required to think. I think it is so – from my readings of the Bible and the Kaballah – that Jesus loved barns and shelters also, because they were so simple and functional and nourishing.

I am not a Christian, but I love just about everything I have ever read and heard about Jesus, and my wish for him is that he not ever hear the hatred and anger and judgement and argument invoked in his name.  How hurtful that would be to a spirit that understand that cruelty and self-righteousness is the true heresy. Jesus, I think, would love worshiping in a barn. I think of him sometimes when I am in one.