Sitting in Churches

Living gratefully today, I appreciate time with family, safe travels for all, walks in familiar places and on some new terrain too, laughter, old memories, and fresh ones too. I give thanks for the opportunities that reveal themselves when we keep living life.

Last Friday, I joined four of my sisters and my nephew on an excursion to two different churches in northeast Iowa. Churches are interesting places to begin with, made more interesting when going in to look and learn rather than only sit and mostly listen, which describes most of my time in churches. The two churches we visited were Sts. Peter and Paul in Petersburg, Iowa and the Basilica of St. Francis Xavier in Dyersville, Iowa.

I had been to the former last fall, and it was my first visit to the latter. They are both majestic, ornate, solemn, loaded with colors, designs, images. Each draws in the observer, draws in anyone who steps in and gives pause. We wandered, wondered, read, looked, asked questions; each taking in the experience in our own ways.

In each church, I took a few minutes to sit down and just absorb the grace-filled energy. It is a different experience, and one I fully appreciated, to just sit in a mostly empty church and listen to quiet, look at images, let my eyes go where they wish. I also took a moment to kneel and pray in each church, on my time in my own way. It was spiritually enlivening to me to be in each space. I know my travel companions would agree that it was a worthwhile adventure.

On Sunday, we also attended a church service in our home parish, St. Francis DeSales in Ossian, Iowa, along with several other siblings and family members, and a full church of parishioners and visitors. It was a special mass for several reasons, including marking the 25th anniversary of the building we were sitting in.

The church building we all literally grew up in and with had been torn down because of structural concerns. It was hard to watch the disassembling of that building, but this new building carries some of the old within. For myself and several of my siblings, the first occasion that brought us to that new building twenty-five years ago was our dad’s funeral in October of 1998.

Three churches, two empty and one full, added to my sense of mindfulness and place. Each added an energy to my heart and soul that I still feel in this moment. Sitting in churches with an open mind, I opened more.