VII.
“Welcome. I am Father Mason,” an old white-haired man said as he
approached.
Luke had never been inside a church before. With preachers everywhere
blessing everything, there had never been a real need to go. Churches were
mostly for citizens who had fallen on hard times.
“Hello, Father,” the puppet replied. “I’m Jesus. The guy I’m attached to
is Luke.”
“Hello,” Luke said, still gazing at the church’s interior. The colorful
stained-glass windows caught his attention. He had never seen anything
like them before. Each one depicted a scene from the Bible.
“Come in, Jesus. Luke,” the priest said as he led them past the pews
toward the altar. “What brings you in today?”
“We were searching for something,” the puppet told him. “But then I sensed
this place. It felt right when everything else felt wrong.”
“Ah, yes,” the priest replied. “We take our commitment to the community
seriously here. The preachers out there are more performative than
anything else. They do the work but don’t understand why.”
“Yeah, those guys seem like bozos,” the puppet said.
“They may mean well, but they’re just following orders,” Father Mason
said. “We don’t judge them though. That’s above our station here.”