An English village without a parish church is inconceivable, unimaginable. It is as if small town Georgia had no Dominos or Subways or high school football stadiums more grand than county courthouses. Google informs me that there are 16,000 English churches, approximately 9,000 from the medieval period. Yikes!

Entering a small church, my nose picks up that same centuries old damp, musty smell. It isn’t as though you can open all the windows in the morning and let in fresh air! I let my eyes get used to the low light, especially on cloudy days. I love rubbing my hands over old wooden pews. Never as old as the church itself since pews became a fixture due to the new sermonizing during Elizabethan, post-Reformation England. Or rubbing the stone pillars. Like cathedrals built over centuries, some of these small churches have an entrance archway which is Norman, the enlarged nave is English perpendicular. Some naves, on one side, have rounded arches; on one side, thirty feet away, there are pointed arches. Interesting.

Yes, these old churches are like museums which don’t charge a dollar. One doesn’t have to be a genius, just an ordinary village person, to know that everybody has a deep desire for a place, a place that captures a sense of Time not Unraveling, Time not Threatening.

Differing from the cathedrals with their bishops, their great saints, their mighty kings and blue-blood aristocrats, these parish churches compel me to think about the village folks. The Alfreds and the Edmunds, the Marys and the Ruths. I wonder how many have gazed at the massive wood ceiling beams. From where did wood that size come? I pause before the painted murals which date to the 12th-13th century. How many wondered about the story behind these murals, or how those murals survived so many centuries? How many infants have felt the water from this stone baptismal font? How many folks have heard both Gabriel blowing his trumpet and the swells of the organ? How many folks dropped coins in the old, old alms-box? How many received coins from that box? How many people have lit small candles and formed words of prayer? I’ve lit more than a few.

I smile at the anomalies. Only one large space in this church. You have to put the children somewhere. So there are the small, plastic chairs. You have to put modern Books of Common Prayer and hymnals somewhere. Oh, there they are in the back on IKEA shelving.

You want to acknowledge the 18-year old who tragically died? There, the modern stain glass windows where I have to look intently to see the abstract figures blending into the explosion of color.

The Big One Upstairs must surely have likes and dislikes. While we never know what gets in the Big One’s Head, surely there is a soft spot for places like this. Not in a nostalgic way. Not in a “Gee, I wish I could go back to Then” way. Not in “Your Face” way. Not in “You Better Listen to Me or Else” way. More in that mode of an Unassuming, Shy, Bestowed Spirit whose Soundless Voice speaks over there behind the third pillar on the left, over there next to that wood cross on the nave wall, over there next to the embroidered kneeling cushion. More in the mode of Steel Kindness whose Unnormal Voice spoke centuries ago yet still speaks over there by the organ bench, over there by the decades old church banner, over there by the poster declaring “We are an Inclusive Church.”

Maybe that is why everybody whispers or talks in hushed tones in these spaces. Either they really, really want to hear that Big One’s Whispering, or they really do catch bits and pieces of that Whispering. Maybe that is why strangers to these places want to visit these spaces.