Letters from the Bema

Counting the tiles

Men with ladders and clipboards came up the hill this week.

The dome from the lane, with the chalk numbers on the north side.

The turquoise dome is old, put up in 1903–07, and some of its tiles are looking tired. A survey: two engineers from Talas and one man from the Heritage people, climbing slowly in the cold, tapping tile by tile with a little wooden hammer, listening for the hollow ones. They say there are more than four hundred on the north side alone. Each has a number in chalk.

The rector looks at the chalk and says: "God counts them already, but fine."