Upon This Rock, A Church Of Cracks.

THE hole in the back of St. Brigid's Roman Catholic Church in the East Village, big enough to walk through, is nailed over with blue plywood now. The tall arched window frames along the side, where construction workers smashed the old painted-glass windows on a day almost two years ago when it seemed the whole building would be razed, are covered in plexiglass. Some of those window coverings are broken, too, so a visitor standing in just the right place on the sidewalk can look up and see the peeling white paint on the ceiling inside, or the birds roosting in the rafters above where the altar used to be. Those birds have been among the only living visitors to the 160-year-old church since the Archdiocese of New York closed it in 2001 for financial and demographic reasons. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]