The power of memory through buildings

Robb Elementary School, the Uvalde, Texas school that was the site of a horrific shooting, will meet the wrecking ball. 

Uvalde’s mayor, Don McLaughlin, said, “You can never ask a child to go back or a teacher to go back in that school ever.” 

Years earlier, Sandy Hook Elementary, the scene of another horrific massacre, was also demolished.

I can understand why. Who can walk into a building where you witnessed wholesale slaughter and act like everything is back to normal? 

You can’t.

I’ve never been a victim of a shooting, nor have I witnessed one. 

I can, however, tell you of my experience with a building where I experienced abuse.

It was a church building in Tallahassee, Florida. I was baptized in their baptistry on November 11, 1981, at age 18. For five years, from the ages of 18 to 23, I attended church in that building at least three to four times a week, excluding vacations from school.

To this day, I can still visualize the place as it looked in the 1980’s: the front door, which I didn’t use very often because it faced the street but not a parking lot, the side door that did lead to the sanctuary; the back door that led to the fellowship hall and to a staircase that would take you to the sanctuary. I can wander through that building in my mind and picture events that went on there, times we sang, the folding chairs we sat on in the fellowship hall — or the times we sat on the floor during our Friday night devotionals. 

I can remember the downstairs hallway where the nursery was on one side and the classrooms for the older kids were on the other. I’ve been in those classrooms, holding babies or trying to corral kids during children’s church.

Upstairs, I sat through sermon after sermon; Sunday School lesson after Sunday School lesson; special speakers, retreats, weddings, and other events. 

I was never raped in that building, nor did anyone physically assault me there. 

But I was subject to spiritual abuse there: listened to sermons and classes where we were pushed to do more, where “the spiritual” were defined as those who converted the most people, those who worked full-time for the church, and/or those that chose to give up everything for missions. If you did not have the numbers, you were second-class. 

We took away lessons from that building that said, go invite total strangers to church; go knock on people’s doors and invite them to a church service or a Bible study; submit to your leaders, do not question why they are doing what they are doing and do not argue with them. You must have a discipleship partner and confess everything to them. You must have a “quiet time” daily where you study the Bible and pray and you need to be ready to tell your discipleship partner what you were studying. If you’re not doing it every day, the partner is allowed to “speak the truth in love” with a loud, harsh voice asking you if you really love God, because if you did, you would be inviting people and having your daily “quiet times”. 

I left Tallahassee for good in 1986, and I went back to that building at least once. 

The last time I visited that building was 1994. I was 30 years old. 

I didn’t enter the building; it was during a weekday and I’m sure the doors were locked. But I walked around the building, in the back parking lot where I climbed out of the car of whoever was giving me a ride that day, past the windows that let light into the sanctuary, past the back door that led to the fellowship all, past the parking area near the Red Cross building next door.

And then I got to the front of the building . . . and my legs started to shake. I could not move them. I was close to the church office, and part of my fear was wondering, is there anyone there that knew me when I was a member here? And if there is, would they recognize me? 

I tried to make myself walk in front of the building.

I could not.

In order to walk in front of that church building, I had to cross the street. And even then, my legs still shook. My body remembered what had happened to me as the result of attending that church — the demands to share your faith, to attend every event, including baby and bridal showers and weddings of people you didn’t know, being rebuked for not being “out of yourself”, the constant probing for sin, the dating rules which included mandatory double dating and, I suspect, being told who you should and shouldn’t date. And if you were a woman, you were “encouraged” to accept a date, even if you weren’t too crazy about the guy who was asking you out.

All of this was done in the name of God. 

Spiritual abuse is very hard to describe. Everything I listed above — quiet times, dating, relationships, sharing your faith — are good things. Pursuing a relationship with God is a good thing. Getting to know Jesus is a very good thing. 

But infuse it with the demands to perform in a certain way, with the expectation to become someone’s idea of what a Christian should be, and these very good things then become weaponized. 

I finally walked in front of the church, even though I had to cross the street to do it, said my good-byes to it, and caught a city bus back to the hotel I was staying at. 

I had this reaction to a building where I was never physically assaulted, never raped, never shot or shot at, and never saw anyone assaulted or shot. 

Can you imagine the reaction that the people present at Robb Elementary on May 24, 2022 would have if they went back to the building where their classmates and their teachers were shot and killed? Where a student smeared herself with blood and played dead to keep from being shot? Where police waited for nearly an hour before going in? 

If I had to cross a street with shaking legs to pass a building where I was not physically assaulted but only subject to spiritual abuse, I can only imagine the reaction that anyone present at Robb Elementary on that horrible day would have. 

The power of a building to evoke memory is palpable.

I don’t blame Uvalde for wanting to get rid of Robb Elementary.

Just my. 04, adjusted for inflation.