I have sat in plenty of church pews;
  heard many a priest or deacon lecture
From plain altars in farm town parishes
  to urban cathedrals dripping with statuary.
The Catholicism of my college was not
  a conscious choice, but delivered unto me
Music theory with Sister Margaret,
  Aristotle’s ethics with Father David.
I kept the Easter vigil at St. Procopius
  and read from the Rule of St. Benedict
Embracing their moderation and community
  and, oh yes: ora et labora

I trekked with Father Michael
  to the churches of France and England
In and out of Chartres and Canterbury
  up and down Westminster Abbey
I heard mass at a church in Rheims
  half in English, half in French
Crossed at low tide to Mont Saint-Michel
  more than enough to stir the soul

But I find more of God
  in a few verses of song
Than in all the official holiness
  of stained glass and censers
And I hear more of God
  in the guitars of modern troubadours
In the strings and ivories of Mozart
  and the chorus of Beethoven’s Ninth 
In a cello keening Dvorak
  and the pulse, pulse, pulse of Glass

And I see more of God
  in the ever-changing lake
In the blue wink of the warning beacon
  amidst the invisible blackness of night
In the silver fire of early morning water
  dancing spots before my eyes
In the sun’s wide beam sweeping
  east to west – a heavenly searchlight

I even imagine a chord or two
  in the clatter and rumble
  of those eternal trains