Their Churches and My Prayers

Their voices danced around my head, creating a cocoon of wordless noise, a soft hum, a pressure swirling around my head, arms, hands, and feet.

I exhaled the tension within my stomach, breathed it onto the statue of the Virgin.  Mother of All, are you within these stone walls?  Can you hear me through the marble, the concrete, the smoke - the voices?  Mother, can you hear me?

The tears were, in reality, superfluous, but like most gestures of that nature, felt so right, and so needed.  I felt so Catholic - which I am not - but their cathedrals offer a vessel of warmth and a field of prayers in which I can add my own.

Maybe their priests will lift these prayers off the floor and raise them to the heavens.  Perhaps I can carry some with me and release them when I step onto the cold stone stairs and feel the rain of the earth and sky pour onto my hair, my bare arms, my naked feet. 

I dipped my finger in their Holy Water and put it to my lips, my heart; "may I speak only your light and feel only your light."  Don't they have a prayer like that?  Christ on the mouth of all those who speak of me?

I left that cathedral a little lighter.  I left my pain in there for the priests to deal with, the tour guide to explain, for the little girl to feel and not understand.  I left my prayers in there for the Mother to hear, consider, and combine with all prayers offered to her. 

There is no grand conclusion, no great eloquence.  This is my experience.