In the early morning hours you can often find me in church. When people ask me why I go to mass during the week, I usually give some generic answer. ” It’s  a discipline” Discipline is good. “It makes me feel peaceful?”  God knows I need some peace.   “It centers me.”  They must be thinking, ten years of daily mass and this is what centered looks like?

 

This past Thanksgiving I woke early before the rest of the household and  took a walk. The neighborhood was still sleeping! I had no destination in mind. So without a plan each cross street becomes a new decision. Each decision a new crossroad. I felt drawn to something. I kept going, trusting each decision that pulls me around the next corner.  And there it is. I come down the hill and see the steeple beckoning me from a distance.

I have been to this church many times. In our early years of marriage, it was often the last outpost to relieve the guilt that my husband and I had managed to avoid mass the whole weekend. I entered and asked myself something very important. That thing that draws me near, what is it? I wondered to myself if Protestant churches are open for services this morning? Why do I come here? While the rest of the nation sleeps in on Thanksgiving Day, here I am at church! And there it is, as I repeat the same prayers and as we all stumble over the new words, we are the same. That is what everyone wants, isn’t it? To feel sameness with others.  We all are grinning at each other as we fumble over the words. We are all in the same boat. I was 450 miles from home, but I felt sameness with everyone around me.  And that keeps drawing me near. Sameness connects me with total strangers.