You can see all 52 in this Google Photos folder, or by searching the #njchurcheverysunday hashtag in Instagram.
I was inspired to do this last April, after visiting Newark’s Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart (pictured here). I had been taking photos at the Cherry Blossom Festival in nearby Branch Brook Park and took the opportunity to visit, for the first time, the church where Mom and Dad were married in 1955.
That magnificent church is one of New Jersey’s true treasures. Aesthetically, it rivals the cherry blossoms. My fascination with churches over the past year has centered around how the two things — one natural, one man-made — differ so radically.
The fleeting beauty of the cherry blossoms mirrors our lives. On Saturday, I attended a memorial service in Philadelphia for a work colleague, Joellen Brown, who I wrote about last week. On Sunday, I took Mom to place a palm wreath beside Dad’s gravestone in Totowa, NJ.
“I’m getting tired, Bob,” she said to the ground, not to me, for both our names are the same. “I want to go home.”
In real life, nothing lasts forever.
Meanwhile, our church buildings aspire to permanence, which is something unobtainable. No matter the religion, churches are monuments to longing and redemption and our innate belief that love lasts forever.
Next weekend, I plan to visit Branch Brook Park again and consider the fleeting beauty of the cherry blossoms. I also plan to visit Sacred Heart again, marvel at its architectural grandeur and existential folly, and say a prayer for Mom and Dad and Joellen.
This, I hope, will become an annual pilgrimage, as I seek just one more year of inspiration. Again and again and again.
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