As I take my usual morning walk through the dense trees that border the asylum, I often hear the familiar clang of church bells in the distance.  I've never been to the church that hides beyond the horizon but its song has become an old friend.  I always stop where I am and lift my head to give the melody my full attention.  When the chimes have faded to silence, I return to my stroll through the common grounds.  More times than not, these bells remind me of Charles R., a patient I knew some 21 years ago.

During my daily rounds, it's standard procedure to ask the new patients very simple and basic questions in order to test what subjects they wish to discuss.  Quite often they don't want to talk about anything for months, sometimes years, and in rare cases, ever.  But once you've found that "hot topic," it can open the door to a world of rich dialogues.  With Charles, the "hot topic" wasn't a subject, but rather those distant bells.

Charles had been with us since the spring of 1984, yet by winter he was still reluctant to talk about anything other than courteous small talk.  I'd covered all the basics, including family, profession, and religion.  Nothing seemed to open up a real conversation.  Then, one evening while I was asking Charles about his missing finger, the church bells began to sing that familiar song.  They had been silent for almost a year, I can only assume due to renovations.  Yet the instant those hollow notes crept past his sealed window, Charles straightened his posture and turned to face me.

"Church," he spoke with an air of authority, "is not the house of kindness it advertises to be."  I sat motionless and listened as Charles shared an interesting event from his past.

It seems Charles used to be a religious man, attending the same downtown church every Sunday that his busy schedule allowed.  He wasn't happy when the city's economy grew over the years, since this led to all the inconveniences of larger cities.  Traffic became so congested that the church's congregation was asked to park their vehicles in a nearby commercial parking garage.  Charles and the others respected their wishes and did just that.  One Sunday, Charles sang along with his fellow worshipers as they began to pass around the collection plate, when he suddenly realized he had an embarrassing situation on his hands.  His open wallet only contained a single $20 bill.  He had always given the church $20 a week, so this normally wouldn't have been a problem.  Unfortunately, he now needed an additional $2 to retrieve his car from the parking garage.  As the brass plate came closer toward his pew, he realized he had no choice but to accept the guilt of returning the $20 bill to his wallet.  Then, as if a compromise had been handed to him directly from a higher power, he saw the obvious solution.  When the collection plate reached him, there was a $5 bill sitting right on top.  He quickly took the money back out of his wallet, placed it in the collection plate, and took the $5.  $15, he thought, was better than nothing.

I probably don't even need to tell you what happened next.  The congregation gasped.  The ushers scowled.  And after the service, the minister quietly told Charles that he was no longer welcome.  Even though they saw him put $20 in the plate, all they could think about was that he had taken money out.

"Churches," Charles would often remind us, "are unfortunately attended by people."