T A B L E_T A L K Bad trips: Discuss your most miserable travel experience in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk ___________________ Browse barnesandnoble.com for books about Rome ___________________   R E C E N T L Y An innocent abroad, Part Two By Bill Barich A young writer in Florence encounters enduring lessons in art and love (12/22/98) An innocent abroad: Part One By Bill Barich A semester in Florence shapes a young writer's life (12/20/98) If you film it, they will come By Steve Rushin A passionate sports fan begins his cross-country pilgrimage with a visit to Iowa's Field of Dreams (12/18/98) Christmas in Germany By Deanna Hodgin A family visit to Nuremberg's Christkindlesmarkt turns into a lesson for adults and children alike (12/17/98) Brahmaputra: Tales From the River By Tiziana and Gianni Baldizzone Extraordinary photographs portray a mighty river's journey through Tibet, India and Bangladesh (12/16/98)   Browse the Wanderlust Feature archives     Wanderlust's Official Travel Book Partner		NOT FINDING GOD IN ROME | PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - And so I started to wander through the city, from church to church, Mass to Mass. A cup of espresso at the pensione near my hotel, and then into the frigid day. It was cold for Rome, even in December, with temperatures below freezing. I expected the ancient metropolis to be like a more intense version of New York or Washington at Christmas, with people buzzing happily about and the sound of holiday music trickling through the air. But Rome was oddly subdued. Few people roamed the streets, and those who did were clearly heading in a very specific direction. Christmas Day was not a time for idle strolling. The Romans had a purpose: to get to church and then get home. The first church, in an alley off the Piazza Navona, was a somber place, with a sparse choir of anemic-looking singers and hundreds of worshipers huddled as if under some oppressive weight. The priest intoned his sermon with nary an inflection. I had no idea what he was saying, though it was impossible not to catch the occasional reference to Christ and Mary. But I knew that he was as distant from the spirit of his words as we were from the day 2,000 years ago that we were purportedly celebrating. This time, though I had never been baptized, though I could feel the nascent hostility of the congregation to the notion that someone like me would take communion, I walked forward to receive the wafer and the wine from a dour-looking priest. I kept my eyes down and my thoughts quiet as I exited the church. Next it was on to the Pantheon. There were no services there at that time, and so I made my way in the direction of haunting guitar music that emanated from a nearby building. I stepped through a partially open door and into another church, but this one was at best a distant cousin of the first. Red warmth suffused the space; candles were everywhere; the crowd was young and the light danced over faces dappled with ease and joy. The priest was charismatic and exuded an unspoken, almost feline religiosity. He was at peace with God, and he felt Him there. No choir, but a young boy sang accompanied by a classical guitar, a sound of purity and beauty. And this time, when I took communion, I stared the priest in the eye, and we smiled. I was beginning to feel lightheaded as I meandered to the next Mass. It may have been low blood sugar, but I was convinced that I was having a reaction to the wafers and the wine. As I stopped on the street and leaned against a house, I could feel a radiance pulsing through me. I didn't know it at the time, but many people have confessed to feeling different after communion, confessed to a certain buzz, to a feeling of fullness. At the same time, I felt uncomfortable, unsure about just how much I was violating the sanctity of Mass. I believed that I was entering into communion in good faith, literally. I was honestly seeking, and though I had not confessed and received absolution, I was less concerned about how I might look in the eyes of a church to which I did not belong than about how I would appear in the eyes of a God whose presence I yearned to feel. As I walked north to the Piazza del Popolo, I managed to grab a small sandwich at some cafe that was mysteriously open and completely empty. I ate quickly, even efficiently, for by this point I was very much on my journey, and this was only a rest stop. I wanted to get to Santa Maria del Popolo, a small chapel adorned with two magnificent Caravaggios and some work by Bernini. I arrived a good hour before the Mass, and stared for what seemed like an hour at the Caravaggios, with their rich patina of dark and light. The tiny church was cold, and deserted. I sat in a pew near the front, and an old lady walked in and knelt behind me. And then I closed my eyes. To this day, I'm not sure whether I had a vision. Whatever one calls it, it was wordless and transporting. I had come to Rome drawn by some need. I had come because I had read about the lives of hermits and mendicants and monks, and I wanted to know if that should be my path. Anachronistic, yes, but real. That search for the divine, for connectedness to the Other, resonated. The lives of St. Francis, of Buddhist monks high in the Himalayas, of the Essenes out in the Negev Desert, haunted me. And in that moment, it seemed that I was told not to pursue that path. It seemed that I was told to stay in the world and not flee to a life of solitary contemplation. It seemed that I was told that there were other paths, other ways, ones that I had not thought of and had not tried, ones that few had written about and that I had not read. And then it was over, and I opened my eyes, and the woman was still praying behind me and the church was filling up and Mass began, and once more and for the last time, I stood and went to the altar and took the wafer under my tongue and felt it disintegrate slowly. To this day, I cannot with any certainty say what happened. I do not know if I was spoken to. I do not know if I experienced anything other than my own wishes amplified by too little food and too many communion wafers. I do know that I have never gone to Mass since. I do know that I left Santa Maria del Popolo and returned to Paris, where I spent a week with the woman I would eventually marry and divorce. I do know that I made my way back to New York, back to a modern world where God is rarely spoken of, where Christmas is a time of family and presents and food, where the spirit is muffled by the endless flow of noise and movement, and where people seek meaning in many serious and silly ways. I do know that I kept trying for some years to find God in a place where He was, trying to experience the ineffable in a temple or a trance, in the ecstasy of drugs, in the struggle of a marriage. And I do know that as I emerged, past the Caravaggios, into the twilight of Rome on Christmas, I had found what I wasn't looking for. I had found where God wasn't, and that was the first step. SALON | Dec. 23, 1998 Zachary Karabell has previously written for Salon Wanderlust about cruising the Aegean as a guest lecturer.