I am not a stranger to the silence that was part and parcel of the retreat.  I have loved to sit in silent churches.  I first remember doing this in high school.   I admit that it started in part because I could legitimately walk through the boys’ side of the school to get to the boys’ chapel.  There was a girls’ chapel but going to the chapel was, originally, not the point.   I don’t remember much about the chapel except that it was empty, and quiet, and gave me solace from the angst of the high school years – the insecurity of not being the prettiest/most popular; the anguish of liking a boy who didn’t like me back; the general mental chaos of the high school years – at least for me, the perennial philosopher.   I would love to go sit in there after school and eventually I found myself talking to God – what was I going to do about all my problems?  Help!  The answers weren’t immediately obvious – that only happens infrequently – but I left with a feeling of being loved, of being at peace, that I could carry on until the next time we met.

As a child I lived across the street from St. Mary of the Lake Seminary, the diocesan seminary for the Archdiocese of Chicago.  It is a huge piece of “forest preserve” with a lake smack dab in the middle and a lovely church amongst the many university buildings.  I would visit that church as well as the church on the adjacent grounds of the Benedictine Sisters Monastery.  That church was like home for me, too, because as a child we went there to Holy Hour every Thursday during the summer – an hour that promised a stop at Dairy Queen on the way home.   I’m no expert on church architecture but I can tell you that it was from another time, the frescoes of heaven on the ceiling made it easy to “be good” in order to get that Dairy Queen.  There is something missing in the sterile church architecture today, namely artwork – on the walls and ceilings, in the statuary, in the stained glass windows.  Might as well be going to church in a warehouse  in most of today’s churches.   No wonder kids could not care less – there is very little for the imaginative young mind to focus on while listening to timeless words of the spirit.

My friend, Diana, recently reminded me of going to Gesu Church on the Marquette Campus in Milwaukee.  There, too, within weeks of arriving at Marquette, already confused and homesick, I found myself sitting in there, letting tears fall, letting questions be asked and listening for answers.  Again, I have no idea what the architecture was, but it was old Europe, and the vaulting ceilings and stained glass and the marble were as much food for the soul as the silence.  The last time I was there the upper church was locked – another sign of the times.  My feeling on that is clear and unwavering.  Let the vandals come.  Let them take what they wish.  They cannot steal the spirit of these churches.  Put in security cameras if you must, but unlock the doors.

The list goes on, of course.  It was in an empty church, St. Phillips in San Francisco, where I first “knew” I was pregnant with my first child.  It was there that I knelt and cried before a beautiful stained glass of Jesus in Gethsemane when I felt overwhelmed by marriage and babies – and knew that pain is part of what it means to be fully human.   When I moved to Lafayette, and missed my friends and home in the city more than I ever could have imagined,  I eschewed the locked church in our town and found myself in St. Mary’s of Walnut Creek, the door to main street always open.  It was just a little church, but it was in that church that my ultimate moment of doubt and despair was healed. 

It was also in that parish that I found solace in teaching religious ed to second graders.  One time I took them all into the empty church and taught them the most important lesson I could teach them.  We went in, we all sat down on the altar steps, and I asked them to be quiet and listen.  We did, for a very long time, and then I whispered to them my secret: that you don’t have to come to church just on Sundays with Mom and Dad.  That you can come to church anytime, all by yourself, and just sit in the quiet, and listen for God, and that it is one of my favorite things to do.   Then we were silent again, and I watched as their little faces gained a renewed understanding of “church,” even at that young age.  Some of their eyes got bigger, some eyes darted around the room, looking for that God I spoke of, but all surely understanding on their little 8 year old level that silence is powerful… 

That was easily twenty years ago.  I like to think that maybe one or two of those children, now young  adults and perhaps with children of their own, find themselves drawn to a silent empty church when everything in their lives seems topsy turvy.   There are other places to find solace, and I find it there too – mountaintops, the ocean, the woods.  For me, however, there is something wonderfully cozy, even in a huge church, about being surrounded by the Spirit in an enclosed space, where I am safe and comforted and not at all alone.