A Spiritual Experience

In my creative writing class I'm doing an essay on "spirituality".  As I was thinking of what it means to me to be spiritual and was searching my memories of spiritual experiences in my life I realized that my first "recognized" spiritual experience happened in 1973 in France when I lived in the northern city of Reims during my junior year in college.  I expressed in my essay that I believe our idea of spirituality changes with our life experiences - or maybe "expands" would be a better way to say it.  Defining spirituality is a personal thing.  How can I tell you whether  or not you've had a spiritual experience?  And does one have to be religious to have a spiritual experience?  How would you define spirituality? (Or religion, for that matter?)  While I was thinking about all of these things to write the essay I recounted the following experience.  My first recognized spiritual experience happened during the semester that I spent in France during my junior year in college.  I lived with a family in an apartment in the northern city of Reims.  This city is the site of the largest of the gothic cathedrals in France.  It’s ornate beauty is unsurpassed.  While I am not Catholic (and that’s probably why I was worried about sharing this experience with anyone at home), I never passed up the opportunity to enter this imposing edifice.  Every time I walked to town, I would go up the steps where millions of feet had made indentations in the stone slabs, looking up at the smiling face on the archangel, as I opened the small wooden door which had been cut into one of the giant double doors on the front of the cathedral.  I remember feeling so small.  The statues were twice as tall as I am.  Once inside I would sit in the back row.  I was usually the only person in there in this huge vaulted room of stone and glass.  I can still remember how the sunshine filtered through the stained glass windows and fell in patterns on the golden stone floor.  If I was lucky, I would hear the priests practicing their chants for mass somewhere in a back room - or the organist practicing his hymns.  The music would resonate off the stone walls and columns and I could feel the vibrations start in my feet and work their way up into my heart. Always I would see the old lady sweeping the floor and wonder how many years she had done that.  Did she think of it as just a job?  Did she realize how lucky she was to spend part of her day in this building that was over 800 years old, she now being a part of its history? As I mentioned already, I’m not Catholic, but it’s hard not to have a visceral reaction when I enter a gothic cathedral anywhere in Europe.  Such faith to build a structure of this magnitude long before there was any kind of technology to plan or construct it.  Everything was done by the hand of  now unknown craftsmen or artists.  There is such wonderful beauty in these churches that have outlived numerous generations.  I love spending time in them and letting the visual Bible soak into my mind and heart. So now, years later, having spent a lot of time in ancient cathedrals and churches around Europe,  I can look back on that first time I was in France and realize why I was so enthralled with that experience and I can label it as a “spiritual experience.”  I have not been back to that city since and it is on my list of places to visit soon.  I hope that my heart, with that “pressed memory”, will remember how special that first time was.  Want to share a spiritual experience?  I'd love to hear about it.  A bientôt!