This afternoon I stood around outside the Trinity Church on East 88th Street between 1st and 2nd Avenues.

Churches terrify me, even cozy, unassuming ones like this. Another church, much nearer to this apartment, is awesome and sky-high and majestic and there is no way I could never feel at peace in there. And I've tried.

In college, I had this idea I'd start going to church again. Didn't want it to be a big deal, and I didn't tell anybody. I was nervous and a little scared in the way I get scared when thinking about getting involved in someone else's organization.

Thinking about it for too long almost made me decide not to go, and a familiar feeling of chapped, costive indecision had me not eating for that whole day.

That afternoon, I tried like hell to sneak into the chapel so that no one would see me, but it was hopeless. The priest, a giant, loving man who hugged absolutely everything, broke out of a conversation he was having and pointed right at me from across the lobby, shouting "I've never seen you before! WELCOME!"

Everybody turned and stared, and this magnanimous preacher stomped over to me and wrapped me in a brutal bear hug. "WELCOME, MY FRIEND!" his voice boomed into the corridors. "WELCOME!" The stares from the others in the lobby could have continued, but I couldn't see or even discern much through the cape of the priest's cloth.

That was Oberlin. Needless to say, nothing like that has ever happened to me in New York City, where faith, like everything else, is a competitive matter.

I almost left the chapel at Oberlin that day, but somehow stayed and became a part of the little Catholic community over the course of that academic year. And spent a lot of time taking advice from that priest, advice and words of support which seemed perfect at the time but which somehow never translated successfully into any other relationships I ever had.

I am, of course, a lapsed Catholic. Does one even need to acknowledge something so obvious? Maybe I did need to do it; it is something I did this afternoon while sitting on a bench inside the front gate Trinity Church. The grass and shrubbery inside the gates were thick as a lion's mane, the pigeons fat as hell, and throughout the 100+ year old building there were sounds and signs of activity and life.

Thinking I'd get thrown out, I didn't sit there too long. A groundskeeper ambled past with a rake and that, it seemed, was a cue to leave. The constipation of life sometimes accumulates all around me, and sends a childish, paranoid fear through my chest. Gotta go. Gotta keep moving. Gotta keep looking. Keep looking for something to do.

As I left the grounds I thought of going into the main chapel and finding the bulletin board to see what kind of community events they had planned, knowing full well that I would never attend any such events. But the two wooden doors leading into the chapel were shut, and opening them seemed like a stupid idea. Panicky scenes of burglar alarms and police cars took over my mind and made me leave the place.

It seems like the doors to churches are almost always closed.