Greetings, Friends, from Central Europe.
I spent yesterday in Bratislava, Slovakia, and it was a glorious day of discovery in a tremendous city. I enjoyed it very much.
While meandering about, I walked toward a gothic spire in the city until it revealed the larger structure of a church. I walked inside, and when I did, I discovered the Franciscan Church of the Annunciation, built in 1297. It’s stunning to sit inside a space so old.
I sat down in a pew, and others had done the same. Interspersed throughout the building, all sat in silence, reflective. This is a space where it makes sense to pray, and I might have done that in a traditional way, except as I sat there, I found myself reflecting on prayers of people who built this church building. I don’t know if they could have imagined the year 2024, but I do assume that they thought, imagined, and prayed for a future beyond their own lives when this nave would hold space for people they would never know. I thought about how more than 700 years later, we are some of those people.
And then I thought — and was this also a prayer? —
How expansive can our hopes become, and how might they hold others well beyond our own time?
— Renee Roederer
Smuggling Grace 