As some of you may know, I grew up in a small country church in the northern Shenandoah Valley, with a view of the Blue Ridge mountains, at the edge of a cemetery where I’ll be buried one day. It is a United Church of Christ parish, and it shaped my early faith and sense of community; I’ve written a lot over the years about that church and the land and people surrounding it. My sister and I played in that cemetery, among the graves of our grandparents and great-grandparents. We sat in the pew in the back – on the right-hand side – and my mother played the organ there for 40 years. When the leaves have fallen off the trees in winter, we can see the church from the fields behind my uncle’s house, a few hills away. Generations of families have worshipped there, many of them from the farmland surrounding the church.
