Bethel Lutheran Church

Strolling along Wisconsin Avenue toward the Mansion Hill District I passed one of the rear exit doors of Bethel church, overgrown with ivy. Decorative trees framed either side of the exit and grew in a small garden to one side. If there had been a bench, I could have taken a seat and contemplated my shoe laces for an hour. Or not. If there had been a bench, a hobo would almost certainly have been sleeping on it.

The building is a contemporary construction and the ivy probably hasn't been growing there more than a season or two, but this feels like an age-old sanctuary. Even with the traffic roaring past on Johnson Street less than fifty feet away, the sheltered exit was a tranquil pocket of solitude.