The Reals on Christianity

Once upon a time, not very long ago, in one of the larger cities in Sweden, Malmö, there was a man of great need. It was the time of winter, the chilling frost stung his face and fingers, the creaping damp of the wind crawled under his sweater and leaf-thin summerjacket and the clingy wet flakes of snow slipped between the collor of his jacket and sweater and his knitted cap to melt in the back of his neck.
The night above sang of mercy and forgiveness, the stars so bright so that they resembled little lighthouses seen from above standing vigil in a dark and tempestous ocean.
The warmth from the windows in the apartment complexes around echoed with the faint sounds of christmas specials and the smell of reheated glögg.
He was old, he was freezing, he was alone. And he knew he needed somewhere to sleep.

Stumbling, because even though poverty was his, as it is so many others signum he had spent a few crowns on a bottle a few hours back and now the shelters wouldn't touch him. "Its full" they had said. And one after another had given him the same old addresses to the other shelters in town. He had gone pass them all. None was left. He was old, he was freezing, he was alone. And he knew he had to get inside.
He found himself infront of the St Pauli church, a small round builing in central Malmö made of yellow pressed brick and with a designpattern of gothic modernism.
The Church was closing up and he was desperate. He knocked on the door until the priest and a functionary inside opened to ask him what he wanted. All he needed was a place to sleep, somewhere to hide from the cold but time and again the priest reiterated "You can't sleep here".

I'm old and alone and have no where else to sleep, he said.

-You can't sleep here

The wind is cold and the snow is unmerciful please, let me in, he asked a second time
-You can't sleep here

But I will die on my own in this weather, please have mercy.
-You can't sleep here

And with those words, the priest locked the great wooden doors, barring the church from him. Taking away his last chance for light and warmth. Robbing him of his life. And what a life it was.
He though of a story his mother had told him as a child about a girl who sold thindersticks who froze to death, lighting one after another until none of her wares was left and she died. He was no little girl. He was a grown man.
He thought of his children, the little ones he once had kissed and their mother, whom he had beaten. He was no saint, no bulwark against sin. He had been cruel and unjust.
He thought of the years after the break down when alcohol had been his friend and confidant, when all the little worries had melted away after a shot of vodka. He had started drinking more and more and forgot more and more of the problems he had. One day he found himself sleeping in hallways and under bridges, in shelters and hideaways. He had been weak.
He used to ask for money in Stortorget during the summers. Sometimes he would get some, sometimes with the suggestion that he would buy food and not beer with it. He always said the same thing "Thats a promise I can't give".

People walked by, scarcely seeing the man sitting huddled for warmth in the doorway to church, leaning against its great wooden doors. They couldn't know that here was a man who was, in the truest sense of the word, paying for his sins. No Hail Mary's sung, no coins in the collect-box, only memories flashing past and regretted. As always they looked but didn't see. He could be lying in the middle of the street for all they cared, they would still step right by him.

And so he sat, alone in his filthy summer jacket and pulled down knitted cap. In his soiled pants and worn down shoes. Asking forgiveness in an earnesty unknown for modern christians. Not to save his eternal soul, but to keep his dying flesh alive. We won't know if he prayed, if he begged, if he pleaded. Or if he was answered. We can't even know how it happened. We only know the result of that night and that it, in some resemblance of this, happened.

For in the morning, when the priest came to upon his church early to open it for his kindly and christian flock, there sat the man he had thrice rejected. Infront of the great wooden doors that hid the altar paintings, the fitted glass likenesses of saints, the words of charity, modesty and forgiveness spoken by his lord Jesus and hacked into the stone of the church. There he sat looking back at the priest. Eyes like chards of glass hiding the great cathedral of the invisible mans mind.

A true cathedral sitting dead and in ruins on the porch of a wordly church.