The vacuum was in the vestibule on Saturday night at the First Church in Ticonderoga. I know because I snuck in the church through the unlocked front door.

Still, I felt I was sneaking up to God when God was supposed to be off-duty. Like a kid, trying to get Dad’s attention when he was reading the newspaper.

“Kid, I’m off duty,” God said.

WHY, oh WHY is God always someone like Fred MacMurray in humorous and artistic representations? A benignly neglectful father? I remember reading and discussing “A God Who Looks Like Me” by Patricia Lynn Reilly when we had that book discussion group at lunchtime at 475 a few years ago. Such a great group of women we were. And it was a powerful idea that God could look like me. Or you. Or someone other than Charlton Heston.

I invited my daughters to join me in the church. Cath was reading/listening to “The Graveyard Book” on the Kindle and Char was braiding a friendship bracelet. They declined.

Somehow I felt like I was trespassing, visiting this church at such an odd hour. I liked this small 1970s-type church. I think one of the best parts of visiting a church a day is embracing the quiet, the stillness regularly.

I have really enjoyed sinking into the quiet of an empty church.

We had stopped in Ti, after dropping my Mom at the airport in Albany and visiting Nancy and Nancy on their porch. The girls got excited by the porch, the hummingbird, the samples of herbs we tasted from the garden. I was glad to see Nancy L. looking well.

To read about Nancy L’s health journey, check out the blog at:  http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/nancyjlaw/journal?jid=5987205

I prayed in the Ti church for everyone who is fighting an illness.

But I found it difficult to pray, distracted by knowing two of my children were waiting for me in the car. I thought, “At least, I’m not running into a bar. It’s just a church.” I wondered if they’d look back at their childhood and say, “Mom left us in the car while she ran into a church to pray.”

I felt benignly neglectful. I knelt at the communion rail for a quick sec.

Then I was out of there. I was driving the car again. I was thinking about dinner.