Eglise de la Sainte Trinité. This was a planned stop along my way to the park, and while the architecture wasn’t my favorite (not nearly gothic enough), it offered an extraordinary moment of beauty that became the highlight of the whole day. Even as someone who claims to appreciate church architecture, I admit I take stained glass for granted too often. Luckily on this day my “heavenly” timing caught me pleasantly off-guard with some gorgeous color patterns filtering into the interior. I enjoyed the momentary obsession of trying to capture small abstract designs on the floor.

Just outside this church is a huge intersection with bustling, noisy traffic. It started to boggle my mind how things could be so crazy out there, while a few feet away something so gentle and beautiful was quietly unfolding at my feet. These little moments are happening everywhere every day, tucked away in little corners while these Parisians trouble and toil outside. Do they know how lucky they are? More importantly, do I?

Funny how these churches were built specifically to promote Christianity, and then an uninterested non-believer like me hundreds of years later can manage, in a roundabout kind of way, to find his own sort of religious experience.

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