Transcendence in Empty Church Sanctuary

One other memory, moment of transcendence—though I didn’t have the language to call it that—occurs to me. A time of mystery and innocence—and genuine enthrallment with the unseen, the unknowable, with the Holy.

I was maybe four or five years old. At the Methodist church we attended in Kettering there was a spaghetti supper fundraiser. The whole family went. Afterwards in one of the side rooms was a craft sale. I begged my mother to buy me a bookmarker made out of felt shaped like a mitten that clipped onto the page. I kept that trinket on up through high school in a treasure box. Anyway, the fundraiser was a perfect time to explore the church outside of regular Sunday-service. Remarkably, it was just a regular building now empty of people, the pastor in his robes, the choir, the booming organ (no worship band with its fake rock and roll hipsters). I wandered into the sanctuary, lights out, dimmed, street lamps radiating in through the stained glass windows. There was a holy hush, the carpet muffling the spaghetti supper down in the fellowship hall. Again, I didn’t have the language, but I felt like a trespasser—most assuredly my mother had no idea where I’d gotten off to—as if I was somewhere where I shouldn’t be, but at the same time invited, where I belonged. At home. Welcomed.

I knew that this place was meant for me. My heart. I felt safe.

Maybe I was thinking of communion where I’d slug back grape juice like a cowboy at a bar and pop the papery wafer into my mouth and let it dissolve. There was a moment of connection. In this quiet place away from the gaze of my parents and family, I raised my hands ceiling-ward into what seemed the cathedral depths above. It was a movement without purpose, certainly nothing I’d seen grownups do in our conservative mainline church, but I wanted to be close to God. There was a yearning deep inside of me, hurting my chest, of wanting and needing a relationship with the infinite, with Whoever was behind the Design. In my child’s mind I knew there was something out there, a goodness waiting for me, and I reached for it.

A second later I pulled my arms down. Stupid. Feeling dumb. I returned to the bustling fellowship hall and asked my mom if she missed me. Of course not; she hadn’t even realized I was gone. Perhaps, it had only been minutes and not as long as I thought. Nevertheless, this moment alone in the sanctuary has always stayed with me. In fact years later as a teen when I did pray to receive Christ I felt the remnants of standing there, hands raised, asking for the universe to accept me.

Cathedral in Strasbourg, where I was once again--awestruck