Special place

Schoenstatt founder

Yesterday, a fateful day, I drove out to the WI Motor Vehicle Emissions testing site near the Waukesha airport where I learned to fly. The old limo again passed its test with flying colors. Driving home I decided to drive out to Schoenstatt, the spiritual centering spot I've known about for 50 years. In the beginning, when I discovered the little road off Northview near G that the Schoenstatt retreat center and convent was later built at the end of, Schoenstatt didn't exist. It was an out of the way place to go park with a girlfriend.

Eventually the little chapel shrine went up and I devised another purpose for that country lane. Going out there and sitting, trying to contact the the Creator, and thinking - in the very small church, one of eight duplicate Mariane Shrines around the world, has over the years been a significant and private enactment for me. And this time I had a fine camera to use.

I did not take any pictures in the 3-row chapel for there were four nuns praying silently on their knees ahead of me. I was in the back in a row of extra folding chairs, then vacant. I didn't want the sound of the shutter to disturb them.

My son said that the shutter sound may be quietable on this zippy camera, but I like the mechanical sound of the fluttering aperture, audibly slicing snapshots of evermore astonishingly passing life.