The teenager believes that, if someone tells her something, at least some part of it must be true. If someone tells her she is funny, it’s not because she strings together words in such a conjunction that they leave her mouth amusing, but rather because they think of her entire existence as just elaborate, expansive ridiculousness. If someone tells her they love her, it is only because they want someone to truly love them themselves. And if God told His people that He is omnipotent and that he has control over everything, it is because He wanted them to feel eternal comfort and good hope in a world with a tremendous lack of both. This is what the teenager believes, and this is her theology (or lack thereof), but when she goes to church each Sunday morning (early, to help set up the makeshift house of the Lord in a run-down high school gymnasium) she doesn’t share her beliefs. Rather, she borrows everybody else’s; she wishes to escape the inevitability of herself for a while, although it never quite occurs that way.

She is the only teenager in the high school on any given Sunday morning; as the only face in the congregation with a constellation of zits and pimples and a hairline that hasn’t quite begun to recede, she is hard not to notice. The older ones, the regulars, the ones whose faiths had been established long before she was even conceived, look up to her, but in a vastly different way than she looks up to them; the teenager says things, they expect very little, the teenager exceeds their incredibly low expectations, and they are left awed, vaguely amused, and filled to the brim with pride that they have brought a child to know the Lord, Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost, and all the rest of them. The teenager has a Bible that is filled with many markings, many more than the older ones whose pens have long been written dry and whose pencils now tend rip the holy pages, though they are filled with more questions than answers or musings of any sort; if any of the congregation were to read her bible, naturally the teenager believes they would wander off, disappointed.

Her duty on Sunday mornings is tables; while others place red plastic chairs with gum stuck underneath in tidy rows and cover posters about the dangers of STDs with decade-old certificates of thanks from the food bank, she places brochures and leaflets about Christian women’s shelters next to the business cards of the seemingly unnecessary multitude of reverends and three jars of jam meant for newcomers (though newcomers are a rarity). As she has been attending the church most Sundays for almost a year, she has earned her place on a hand-drawn calendar produced by one of the reverends, that dictates which day she is to be prayed for. Her day is coming up, on the fifteenth day of this cold winter month. She places the stack of photocopied calendars next to the newcomers’ jam, pleased that she forgot to take a jar when she first arrived.

As the band of worship fumbles, the participants singing different parts of the revamped hymns at varying tunes in rehearsal for the upcoming service, the teenager lays a yellow tablecloth on what will be the refreshment table and thinks of the Five Pillars of Islam. She looks behind her as she does because she is nervous, feeling as though pondering such a thing in this makeshift house of God would be frowned upon. Even so, she has a test coming up. As she glances, her eyes meet those of whom they call the worship leader, who the teenager shares a smile with before continuing on.
The first pillar of Islam is a declaration of faith, to say with authenticity and unwavering belief that there is no other God but God (only in Arabic, God is Allah) and that Mohammad is His prophet. The teenager has already done this, in her Christian way, a few months before, in the beautiful swelter of August. As she remembers the day, the heat, the potluck, and the very moment she gave her life to Jesus and also lost her footing as she was dunked in the cold lake, she takes the lid off a white Tupperware container filled with stale tea bags. The people who drink the tea (not including the teenager, who never found lukewarm, flavored water to be appetizing), who are undeniably stale themselves, don’t appear to mind.

The second pillar of Islam is ritual prayer, five times a day, prostrating on a prayer mat faced towards the Kaaba. The teenager does pray, of course, though she isn’t terribly good at praying and doesn’t feel qualified to pray for anybody and, when asked to pray aloud, seldom does; she prefers the hands-clasped, down-on-your-knees-before-Jesus sort of prayer that is done privately, alone, in ones room at some terribly late hour when everything worth praying for tends to make itself known. One of her many goals is to establish ceaseless prayer, through which she can always talk to Jesus, always have a confidante, always feel connected and alive in some capacity beyond her undesirable self. However, while she has many goals, she has a profound lack of anticipation or ambition to fulfill them and, truthfully, there are many nights when it is painfully evident to the teenager that she and Jesus seem to have very little in common.

Almsgiving is the third pillar of Islam; all Muslims who are able must give 2.5% of their income to the poor, and the teenager’s church does this in their Christian way, by giving tithes and offerings to the church. Nobody expects the teenager to give to the church, of course, though when she does get a real job she plans to give to her favorite reverend, who does his job far too well to be hardly paid at all.

The fourth pillar is fasting in the month of Ramadan, an act for God that the teenager admires but hasn’t the faith to practice on herself, and the fifth is the pilgrimage to Mecca that Muslims are supposed to take at least once in their lifetime; the teenager ponders this as she walks back and forth from the washroom to the table with a kettle, to fill the coffee maker filled with far too much coffee for the small congregation to consume and decides, selfishly, that her walk to church is pilgrimage enough.

As sky’s sun rises higher and the time of the service grows nearer, the congregation begins to meander in the doors of the school, down the hall, and into the makeshift house of the Lord. Most wander past the tables that the teenager set up, noticing them minimally. The ones who find even the makeshift house of the Lord intimidating (men, usually), who worship in their own detached, intimate way, sit in the back on wooden benches usually reserved for sweaty teenage boys following football practice. Others, who are more social and whose masks fit more comfortably on their faces, gather around in little circles, speaking usually about the changing of the weather and their various physical ailments. They commonly thank God for the sunshine on their porch last Thursday morning, or for getting a date for surgery close enough that they can count the days, but far enough away that worrying seems redundant. The Lord is always nearby, as is the teenager, who sits in the middle of the cluster of chairs, awaiting the arrival of the people whose faiths she anticipates borrowing. She observes the groups of people and their chatter, and the reverend as he darts to greet them, his walk fast and direct and his motive clear. Donning his usual church shirt buttoned tight to his chest, he inserts himself into the conversations seamlessly, for just long enough to inform that he is truly so very happy that they are here with him, in this makeshift house of the Lord. The teenager admires him, and how he walks about the gymnasium as if he owned it himself, doing his work (and, coincidently, God’s work) with such passion that she can’t help but see how his God has changed him, and believe unwaveringly in Him.

When it is finally time for the service, the teenager sings, despite the fact that she is almost as bad at singing as she is praying. She raises her hands in worship, not for her God as much as for herself, in an attempt to feel Him in her heart and in the blood pulsing through her veins; it’s almost as if she raises her hand in attendance, to let her God know that, yes, she is here. The teenager wants to be certain that if her soul were to leap from her body, Christ would be the one to catch it. When the teenager cries during the service, at any given moment, she isn’t sure whether it is because she is in the presence of the Holy Ghost, or because of her mismanaged emotions, or perhaps menstruation.
When the reverend begins his sermon, he tells his congregation about the fervent mercy of his God. He tells them of His grace and faith and how slow He is to anger and how abundant He is in love; the reverend quotes God’s word with such vehemence that the reverend cannot contain it. As the congregation riffle through the pages of their Bibles, reading one verse after the other with scouring eyes, the reverend’s hands raise to the heavens as he bombards faith upon those who lack it, inspires awe in those who can’t bring themselves to believe, and makes those who thought they believed before wonder if they ever believed at all, as his overwhelming faith cannot be contained in his meager body and escapes through his elongated fingertips onto his congregation. And when he finishes his sermon, out of breath but kept alive by the breath of the Almighty, the teenager and the congregation are left in awe, wondering how they ever had any doubt in Jesus Christ at all.

And when worship begins again, the hearts and the voices of the congregation are renewed. They sing a hymn of praise, recalling how they were once lost from Jesus but have now been found by Jesus and His saving grace, how they are wretches still, but loved by Jesus nonetheless. The teenager wonders how one could ever hide from God, or find being rescued from a life of sin to one of absolute repentance to be easy, or lasting, or a transformation worth rejoicing about. In the singing of the words with her lackluster voice, just about as powerless as her prayer, the teenager recedes from her transient state of grace to sitting on her red plastic chair, with gum underneath, in the makeshift house of God.

The teenager partakes in small talk with the congregation for a few minutes following the service, munching on oatmeal cookies one of the reverend’s wives brought to share. They share with the teenager how great the sermon was, how they could feel the presence of the God they share during the service, and how there’s nothing like a good sermon to revitalize ones spirits, speaking directly to her as if they were imparting some imperative wisdom upon her. The darting reverend comes by to lay a hand on the teenager’s shoulder, telling her how fine the tables look and reminding her how much he appreciates her; the others echo his appreciation before the reverend continues on.

The teenager puts on an oversized winter coat, one that promises to both keep her warm and save her from prospective avalanches, before beginning her walk home. As she leaves, she closes the doors of the makeshift house of the Lord behind her. Some bid farewell and watch as she leaves, leaning on their canes and walkers; they are envious of her, and anxious to venture from the makeshift house of the Lord into the frigid out-of-doors themselves. Her hood up over her face, the strong wind to her back and the warm sun high in the sky above her, the teenager walks through crisp snow, as ready as she figures she will ever be to meet her Maker.