Musings about those Pew Things

Ah, the humble church pew. A fixture of church furniture for centuries, the classic wooden bench style church pew is both a seat of worship and an unintentional source of mild suffering. Truly a marvel of 14th-century engineering, built to withstand the medieval force of rotund friars, a toddler's tantrum, or a particularly long-winded sermon. Church pews are as unyielding as the Law itself, as heavy as a US Army M1 tank, and about as comfortable as a visit to your lower GI doc (that's gastrointestinal humor for the uninitiated). I suspect the craftsmen who designed these wooden behemoths thought, "If we can't keep them awake with the latin, maybe a numb backside will do the trick."

And let’s not overlook the built-in pocket shelves — those mysterious little ledges where hymnals, Bibles, and the occasional forgotten bulletin live out their days. It’s like a tiny library for the pious, with a collection that hasn’t been updated since the Nixon administration. If you’ve ever reached into one of those shelves looking for a hymnal, only to come up with a crumbling church directory from 1982 and a rogue crayon, you know the thrill of archaeological discovery.

Of course, no pew is complete without the iconic little round holder things that serve one purpose -- holding the empty communion cups. These tiny, perfectly sized circles are like the cupholders of the Christian world, carefully designed to cradle those tiny, plastic remnants of sacred reflection. I sometimes wonder if the inventor of these cupholders imagined their creation would one day become the final resting place for countless unclaimed Cheerios and half-melted peppermints.

And don’t get me started on the logistics of moving a pew. These things are so heavy they make a grand piano seem like a folding chair. I once saw a team of deacons attempt to move a pew for a church renovation, and it was like watching a group of ants try to relocate a fallen sequoia. Never fully recovered from their injuries, I believe those deacons changed deonimations in search of healing. They now attend the church up the street that we aren't allowed to talk about.

Yet, despite their questionable comfort and unmovable mass, there’s something charmingly nostalgic about these wooden wonders. They creak like a haunted house in a windstorm, they pinch like an irritated aunt at a family reunion, and they force even the most unrepentant sloucher into a posture of forced reverence. And maybe that’s part of their genius — they keep us alert, they keep us awake, and they keep us just uncomfortable enough to remember why we’re there in the first place.

So, the next time you find yourself settling into one of these hallowed, hardwood harbingers of a bygone era, take a moment to appreciate the strange, stubborn beauty of the church pew. It’s not just a place to sit — it’s a tradition, a testament to endurance, and a subtle reminder that the journey to our heavenly home, like the back row on a Sunday morning, is often a little more uncomfortable than we’d like.