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I live in the country where there is no scarcity of churches. Of every shape, size, and age. From the small church in an semi abandoned village in the Alps, to the great historical cathedrals. And why not, the modern architectural show pieces.
I am not a believer, nor am I a practitioner. I might be called an interested atheist. This is just to qualify the statements that follow.
For me, and for the large majority of the Italians with whom I shared this subject, a church is a place to go, sit and find a moment of spiritual peace. A safe place where to let a balmy and healing void fill the mind and the spirit.
It is what I imagine a Zen feeling, to feel one with the impressions that permeate the place. This is more so in the small, modest more ancient churches, devoid of signs of temporal power, with no architectural value, just that for almost 2000 years, people put there their fears, their hopes, their pains and their joys.
Lately I found a real marvelous church. It is not in Italy, but in France, in Sainte-Maxime (in provençal: Santa Maxima). Not far from where August 15, 1944, the Allied landed. There is a building and the absyd (apse?) opens completely on a small sloping amphitheater in the open, shaded by mighty Mediterranean oaks and with simple stone terraces. People sit there and take part in the celebration of the mess. Some time I go there and sit in the shadow and breath in the spicy mixture of Druidism and Catholicism.
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