Mary Townsend is an atheist who likes going to empty churches. Her commentary in the New York Times describes her feelings. See this excerpt:
The poet Philip Larkin wrote in his “Church Going” in 1954 that when he stepped inside a church, he did so with the hope of avoiding anything that might be “going on.” This became my goal as well. To find what is left after the services, the people, the Sunday clothes and the pageantry — something big and empty and acoustically live — as Larkin describes it, a “tense, musty, unignorable” silence.
When I was working for the Houston Independent School District’s Property Management Department in the 2000 – 2001 period, I was in over my head. Sometimes I would stop at St. Vincent’s on the way home and sit down is a pew to clear my head. Buddhists say ‘’sitting quietly doing nothing.’’
In October, 2007, I was in St. Joseph’s Church in Edina, Missouri at dusk. It was quiet. I had the idea that I could hear the blood pumping through my body although this was probably my imagination.I offer the entire commentary: