St. Mary's Basilica, Krakow, Poland

Everyone here sees something I don't.

It's a Thursday afternoon in Krakow and it's pissing rain, as it has been since the day I arrived here from Warsaw. I've made it to Stare Miasto (the old city) and paid 6 zloty (roughly the equivalent of $2 US) to duck into this massive old church, preferring this reverent kind of sightseeing to being wet and cold, although it's no less cold inside than out.

A well-dressed young Polish guy, seeing my camera slung over my back, informs me that it will cost another 5 zloty to be allowed to take pictures. So I don't. Somehow, to interrupt all the prayer and worships around me with a camera flash or its insistent clicking seems intrusive and full of the kind of mouth-open-finger-pointing-posing for snapshots tourism I hate.

Because you are, in fact, still allowed to worship here. Certain areas, lined with smooth, old-wood pews and flanked by plaques and dedications in chiseled stone or bronze are cordoned off, and behind those cordons, in the pews, sit elderly women, heads bowed. Or sometimes a couple, the man in a black peacoat, the woman in her long gloves, leaning against each other quietly. Still fewer are the people seated alone, listening for something. Their pleas are so strong I can feel them, can feel the kinetics of forcible thought. I know what they're asking for, having once spent every waking minute of my life doing so myself.

They are asking the ornate golden figures of Jesus and Mary. They are asking the priest who's just snuck into the sacristy, through its heavy carved door. They are asking God to hear their prayers, but not only that: they are asking someone to answer. Not the prayers themselves, but to answer back. To prove that that amorphous divine entity exists. They're all asking for answers, but more than that, they expect to hear only themselves.

The basilica has a high, high ceiling, covered in intricately painted and carved gold stars, a few comets across a brilliant blue background. There's a towering monument directly behind the altar, depicting the Ascension. Each figure portrayed is at least a foot tall, and along the walls, there are bas-reliefs of former popes and Polish bishops looking on. The candle holders are gold, the chandeliers are brass and crystal, there are alabaster statues and votives between the pews. Velvet seats beside the tabernacle. The entire place seems to suggest that through this decadence of tribute, one might hope to find salvation, or at least some favor from this God, having gone to the trouble of offering up all this stuff. It is unapologetic in its opulence, much as the worshippers it contains are unapologetic in their fervency of belief. And it is this I envy:

Observing these worshippers, I feelt what I have always felt. As a former professed Catholic, I spent hours doing exactly as they are, to no avail. Sitting or kneeling, or lying in bed, reaching out for what I had been to was so certainly there. Sometimes I was convinced the Archangel Michael was responding somehow, leaning down over me from whereever he lived. In time it was clear: I was talking to myself. Or to thin air, or to no one. But, today, since I am here already, and it seems as good time as any to try all over again, I sit in the very last pew, staring first at the giant statues, at the candelabras, at the tourists taking pictures of it all. I can see why people are drawn here, nevertheless, because it is beautiful. Candle light glints off of everything. It all shines, giving the impression of what its architects must have though that their heaven, that salvation and redemption and ressurection were all about-having a place in all this, amongst the riches, up in the sky.

A sky unclouded and full of stars which are eternally bright. A sky forever blue.

Yes, I envy them this, these devout people, waiting to hear that which I've decided will never be uttered, will never come, because they appear never to waver, that they can sit or kneel here without looking up for hours, convinced in their eventual right to be heard, convinced they'll be saved. And so I sit with them, the believers, and I ask for strength to continue my travels. I ask for courage, and I ask what it is that they know, what it is that I don't. What inexplicable drive is it that keeps them coming here, to talk to no one, to talk to themselves? I ask for that same ability.

I ask these things of myself, and of something larger. But I don't genuflect for it, or avert my eyes from it. I don't know how to invoke it, but I'll try, sitting on these pews worn smooth from years of the same kind of trying. I continue to despair that I'll never truly know what it means 'to believe'.

And I stay there, under the blue painted sky, staring into the faces of the statues and likenesses, and I cannot say what or whom it is that comes to me. I don't know how to say it, what I'm asking for. I don't give it a name.