A childhood memory from Sunday school randomly pops into my head every now and then—a lesson about the Jewish temple of the Old Testament, what it looked like, and how it was used. The teacher even had a blueprint-type diagram of the temple to show us the outer and inner chambers. She placed special emphasis on the innermost chamber of the temple, the room where the ark of the covenant was kept. The holy of holies.

This room was described as the place where God sat. This is where my little eight-year-old brain combined Sunday school lessons and the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark. I imagined the ark from the movie to be what was kept in the holy of holies. I pictured God using it as a chair and thought about how uncomfortable that seemed. According to the teacher, the entrance to the room was covered with a thick curtain, which I imagined to be heavy red velvet with gold fringe. This curtain was very important. I didn’t know why, but it was.

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