The Missions of California

I'm not Catholic, so why would I want to visit a Catholic mission?

I'm intentionally going to avoid talking about theology in this post as much as possible, because I count people of many beliefs among my friends.

What I can say is that I've noticed that some places make it easier for me to feel stillness and peace than others. The first few times I happened upon a place whose stillness interrupted whatever was going on with me, I was surprised. Then I started to seek out that kind of experience, and look for it in certain places. The Missions of California are that sort of place.

They each have a church, and because they were constructed to be like a fort to make them easier to defend (they tended to do some things that provoked a less than peaceful co-existence with their neighbors), they have a courtyard. In some cases the courtyard is intact, and in some cases it's no longer completely enclosed.

The churches often contain beautiful art and architecture, but it is typically the courtyards that I seek out to sit a while.



I haven't mentioned it before, but I hope you know that you can see a larger version of any of the pictures in my blog posts with more detail by clicking on them.

I recorded a bit of the sights and sounds of the Mission Santa Ines when I was in Solvang. I apologize for the shakiness near the beginning -- I wanted to share the opening of the door and its sounds, which meant that I had to take my attention away from the camera to close the door.

https://youtu.be/Lo0aZ1c9gVs

If you would like to read more about the history of the missions in California:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_missions_in_California

Someday I hope to visit them all.

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