THE CATHEDRAL OF SAINT JOHN THE DIVINE is one of my favorite places. I used to stop by every few months, and I always intended to walk around, then leave, and I always wound up sitting for hours. Worship would simply well up in me.

It was built as “a house of prayer for all peoples.” Construction began in 1892. It’s still unfinished. This is partly because of an existing commitment not to use modern building techniques. Everything is done in traditional style. Originally, the diocese hired unskilled workers and taught them trades: stonecutting, glassmaking, carving, bricklaying. That was the point. It was 1892 in New York City. The immigrants were desperately poor and unemployed. The house of prayer for all peoples would also provide economic stability.

The Statue of Liberty, if she were willing to lower her torch, could stand at full height inside the cathedral. Or she could recline along the floor and enjoy the sunlight, which streams in through the stained-glass windows, which are decorated with apostles, radios, and football players. The chiseled stones around the front doors include images of school buses and taxicabs and—though no one knew at the time how important this would someday be—the World Trade Center twin towers.

EVEN THE CAMEL IS WELCOME 

One must climb steps to enter the front doors of the cathedral. There is a small door for wheelchair access around the corner, but there’s also an extra-wide door on the south side that is opened twice each year: once at Easter (because the crowds are unmanageable through just the front doors) and once for the Blessing of the Animals in October. The dogs and cats can navigate the steps, and even the giant sea turtle in his little red wagon is carried up, but no one can carry a camel. And camels don’t do stairs.

I haven’t been there in a very long time. Possibly not since I lived full-time in New York. So I was excited to stop by a few weeks ago. The security guard at the metal detector began my visit with pastoral care. He praised my shoes and started a long conversation with me about them. He did something similar with the woman in front of me, asking how to say “cathedral” in Portuguese, and I suspect this is how he spends his days. Then, when the woman at the front desk saw my backpack, she offered a student discount. I told her I wasn’t a student; she gave it to me anyway. Just because she wanted to be welcoming.

My favorite favorite part of the cathedral is the seven chapels behind where the choir sits, arranged like seven clover leaves, each big enough to hold a few dozen people. They are made in the styles of different countries. One is French, one German, one Scandinavian, one Celtic. And so on. Again, a “house of prayer for all peoples.” The styles were chosen so that each of the largest groups of immigrants coming in at Ellis Island would have a chapel that felt like home.

By the way, the altar of the cathedral proper also includes two large menorahs and some vases that were a gift from a Hindu organization. On the whole, it’s an obviously Christian place of worship, but they tried very hard when they said “all” to mean it.

ANCESTORS & UNCONDITIONAL LOVE 

I arrived at 11:30, and it so happened that the Italian chapel had a mass scheduled for 12:15. I went. There were fourteen of us. Judging by the voices I heard reading from the prayer books around me, one was African and two were Eastern European. The priest spoke with a New Yorker’s accent, but his face reflected Asian descent. Nobody looked askance at the Quaker who didn’t take communion.

I had tears in my eyes because, of course, the chapel thrummed with the presence of the ancestors. And—though it hadn’t occurred to me ahead of time—I’d joined this worship on All Saints’ Day.

The priest’s homily reflected that. He was an interesting man. He seemed to be speaking from a place of vulnerability, not openly distressed exactly but deeply honest and, I strongly suspected, speaking from the heart in the moment, like the Quakers do. He spoke about relationships.

“Our relationships,” he said, “are shallow, surface, until they are tested by conflict. And then we make a choice. We can separate and walk away, or we can work through it. We can choose to express unconditional love. I think about how to build community here. I think about coffee hour, that sort of thing. But more important is the presence of unconditional love. Without that love, we cannot have community.

NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS

“And that unconditional love is not just among us here. Today is All Saints’ Day. We remember the cloud of witnesses that came before us, and we, through baptism, are part of that cloud of witnesses. We are part of an eternal community of unconditional love. And no matter what happens, we can always, always return to it. It will always be there for us.”

I think my mouth was open the whole time. It was so exactly the message I needed to hear and so exactly the articulation of what I’d always felt in that place.

On the way out, we each shook hands with the priest. I was second-to-last. “Thank you,” I said. “Your message was what I needed today.”

He blinked. “Thank you. Your telling me that is what I needed today. What’s your name?”

“Emily.”

“I’m Steven.”

Well, of course he was. I didn’t say it—someone else was waiting behind me—but of course he was Steven, or Stephen, like the apostle, the one who used his dying breaths to retell the story of how God had loved God’s people through all the generations.

RELEARNING LOVE

On the way out, I stopped by Poets’ Corner, where writers are memorialized with quotes cut in stone. Tennessee Williams. Sylvia Plath. John Greenleaf Whittier. Edith Wharton. On this day, I liked best the quote from Katherine Anne Porter:

Love must be learned,
and learned
again and again;
there is no end to it