10/04/2025
If you’ve come in contact with me in the past 3 weeks I’m sure I mentioned the little old church I was painting in Dillsburg. I’m happy to report that last night around 7:30 I finished up.
This was by far one of the most meaningful, enjoyable and down right awesome jobs I’ve ever done. I walked around the exterior of the Historic Monaghan Presbyterian Church 2 years ago with Jay Young, president of the Dillsburg Arts Council, in what should’ve been an hour-long estimate. Instead, he dropped tons of history bombs on me and took me inside the church to show off the gorgeous, original stained glass windows.
After he received the grant this year to do the exterior painting, the wheels began moving on this project. A local businessman, the owner of ECI, donated the lift for the entirety of the project. When he showed up to help troubleshoot a beeping noise one day I thanked him for the lift and expressed how his generosity hit me.
“It’s my community and this place is a part of it,” he said.
I put in some long hours. I scraped and sanded and patched and caulked and primed and painted. I arrived most days before sunset and rose to the top of the steeple to greet the sun. I walked through the church in darkness and, in all honesty, got a little frightened. But then the light hit the stained glass and I felt safe in the absolute silence. I walked the graveyard where people from the 1800s were buried.
“Do you know why some of the gravestones are flat and others stand vertically?” Jay, a former teacher and principal asked me one day. “Because the Scotch-Irish believed that you knelt when you met your maker.”
I met some really amazing folks. I worked my ass off with a smile on my face. I put just the tiniest bit of myself into something that’s been around for centuries. And now I feel more connected with history than ever before.
It was one of those rare occasions with my job where watching paint dry was not boring. It was beautiful.
