First, the church shuns outsiders. Anyone who could redeem the church are rejected through through indifference or hostility. Old believers die. New believers find more engaging places to worship.
Second, the church creates memorials to long-dead Fathers and Mothers of the church. Plaques on benches, altar rails, and random pews appear like bandages on wounds that won't heal. The church imitates The Good Days with gold-plated metal ghosts.
I am a dying church.
Slowly perfecting the inside of my home by obsessive cleaning of baseboards and painting of clean white walls, I create a sanctuary that anyone could enter and marvel at my tastes, my industrialism, my housekeeping skills.
Except no one would enter as no one ever visits. Like an unwelcoming church, I discourage newcomers from marveling at any good days by a show of hostility and indifference to new people, motivated by fear of the unknown.
It is far easier to never wonder if they would like a second visit if they never have a first visit.
A practiced diet of manual, focused labor combined with sole, lonely, insulated thoughts has left me lost in my own mind. What would I even say to seem interesting to a new face?
Day after day, I live steadily with myself, who need no strenuous engagement to keep my attention. I simple am, and continue on, until sleep takes me away.
Is my mind dying? What is the cure? Or am I already under the sheets of my death bed, counting each final breath, until the last one?