By Marianne Wood

In the summer of 2002, my husband, our two teenage children and I traveled to France. Our daughter, Laurie, had expressed great interest in improving her language skills, so it seemed fitting to spend some time there the summer before her high school graduation. Among the many wonderful experiences we enjoyed were visits to several important sacred sites: Mont-Saint-Michel, Notre-Dame, Sainte-Chappelle, Chartres, and Sacré-Cœur. 

Of the five churches, only the Cathedrale Notre-Dame de Paris was familiar to me. My postcard of it from a trip with students from across America in 1972 shows a man creating an outdoor painting of it. We must not have ventured inside because the church made little impression. But seeing it many years later (and everything else on our self-guided tour) through my children’s lenses intensified my satisfaction with most things French.

I had dreamed of visiting the abbey of Mont-Saint-Michel since taking French classes in high school and college. I’d even created a painting of it. Our visit there did not disappoint me. I found it mesmerizing. As my diary reports, this “evolutionary tale of medieval architecture has parts that are clearly Romanesque. The Gothic additions were made in careful transitions. Thick walls with little windows give way to thinner and larger ones. Barrel vaults give way to ribbed ones. The tiny passageway (leading through the site) was junked up with souvenir shops. But I could imagine it with Benedictine monks on their way to prayer or prisoners after the Revolution on their grim journeys to execution.” We had come there from Normandy. Both places carry rich histories and evoke mysteries, reflection, and worship. 

Notre Dame, now being restored after the fire in 2019, is nearing completion. It, Sainte-Chappelle (Notre-Dame’s neighbor on the Île de la Cité), and Chartres Cathedral enriched us, but a walk through the Basilica of Sacré Coeur caused our hearts to burn. Again, I quote from my diary. “(It was) a great place to end our visit…This NEW basilica (opened in 1910) is the product of gratitude to God. We were pleased to pray in such a place. Laurie voiced a reaction similar to mine: ‘If I were a French Catholic, this is where I’d come to worship.’ The grand mosaic with Christ at the center was magnificent to behold. The windows are aglow, and the ones describing Louis IX building Sainte-Chappelle, giving justice, and more gave me a sense of coming full circle on our journey.”

I learned many years later that the presence of the Spirit we felt has a backstory. “From Tuesday to Sunday, the Benedictine Sisters of the Sacré-Cœur of Montmartre pray the Divine Office in the basilica,” the website tells us. And, of course, it is “dedicated to the goodness and tenderness of Christ’s heart.”

I feel it in churches in America, too.

In 2016, after a nine-mile hike in Washington, D.C., it felt good to sit in a chair and soak up the reverent atmosphere amid the stone arches and glorious rose windows of our National Cathedral. The Spirit of God seemed present there, too.

Not long ago, I regularly scheduled annual tours at the Episcopal Church of the Heavenly Rest for my AP Art History students. I never tired of hearing the story of the church’s connection to Washington National Cathedral and our docent’s description of the elements of Gothic architecture so precisely integrated into the structure. I timed our visits so the sun would stream through the beautiful stained glass windows, refracting rainbows on the stone columns. But the church’s extraordinary ceiling, combined with memories from my long-ago kindergarten class filing in for chapel, charms me the most. The wooden ceiling reminds worshippers that early in the rise of our faith, people like us would often take shelter from persecution under boats.

My home church has a very different aesthetic from these churches but also has a shelter story. 

The WELL Church occupies a former grocery warehouse. Some may remember when the building served as a Timex plant. My notes on the building via friend Sue Wood include this fascinating fact: “The building had a flat concrete roof—a method of construction pioneered in Chicago around the 1930s. The concept was that the roof would be flooded in summer, act as a massive water tank, and serve as insulation. This was not a successful experiment!” Today, foam insulation covers that cooling feature, but the sense that we worship under a protective layer symbolizes another covering–grace. 

But wait, there’s more. 

As a child, my church family gathered in a basement room under the sanctuary of our Presbyterian church at 5th and Grape Streets for many meals together. We called this room “the undercroft.” I fondly recall the smell of delicious yeast rolls as my friends and I romped loudly down the stairs to another feast. This memory warms me with the assurance of earthly and heavenly care. 

While thoughtful architecture, able cooks, and praying people enhance life and often soften the rough edges of this world, the most sacred place, our hearts, rely on the most trustworthy shelter. 

Psalm 91, verses 1 and 2, NIV

Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High

    will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.

I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress,

    my God, in whom I trust.”

Marianne Wood works as an editorial assistant and researcher for Bill Wright