The Power of Place

Recently, I have been trying to convince myself to attend mass at the parish in which I grew up. After fifteen years away from my New Hampshire hometown I am spending the fall right in the middle of it since I’ve moved here to care for my mother. Being back in the spaces and places of my childhood has reminded me of how much I have changed since I left. But most challenging has been my struggle to redefine a relationship with the faith community once at the core of my life.

I have fond memories of my childhood parish, an impressive brick edifice rising over the city. It was here that I was an altar server and it was here that I sang “glory to God in the Highest” at the top of my lungs in the choir. But it was also in this space that I first identified the limits of what I began to call “comfortable Catholicism”. By high school I was frustrated with my fellow congregants. In my mind too many of them were people who faithfully attended mass on Sundays without embracing the radical change which I was beginning to feel my Catholic faith called for.

In the years since I have sought out Catholic churches very different from the one in which I grew up. I Kansas City I worshiped in a dilapidated building with Catholics from all over the world. In Minneapolis I worshiped with radical Catholics in a gymnasium. In Boston my Catholic community included women meeting in living rooms. And yet I can not ignore the call of this suburban church here in my hometown. Each time I drive by I feel a tug in the pit of my stomach. I think that this tug is a longing to make sense of my own faith journey and to reconcile where I am with where I’ve been. While I believe that “the church” is not synonymous with a physical building I am increasingly convinced that for me, the physical spaces of my Catholic identity loom large.

As I think about what it might be like to worship inside my childhood church I am worried. I assume that I will struggle at first to enter a peaceful, reflective place in my own heart. But still, I cannot shake the sense that this place--this very space--might still be important to my Catholicism. After all, this building literally holds segments of my faith journey. These fibers and beams and plaster housed, nurtured, and protected my earliest explorations of Catholicism. Might they be able to nurture my current questions and beliefs? Perhaps I will find out soon.

Elizabeth Duclos-Orsello is a mother, wife, runner, and Catholic living and working in New England where she is a professor of American Studies. She also writes for the blog “The Public Humanist”.