Boy did I get sucked into this one.

This is what caught me:
With smiles and gentle nods, they constantly assure each other, Yes, yes, I hear you.

It is this exquisitely refined quality of listening, of patiently watching one another, upon which I most love to eavesdrop. How much is literally spelled out for them? I wonder. How much is left to intuition? After many Sundays of listening with my own eyes, the language of deaf church has become the source of another kind of fascination. It requires faith, it appears to me, just to communicate. Faith that their thoughts will be understood. Faith in themselves and others. Faith much like that which, week after week, draws them together so wordlessly I watch until the sidewalk empties. At ten-thirty, the church doors close, services begin, and I return to the New York Times, as I do to my own defenses and questioning.

And it just gets better after that.

I don't consider myself a "lapsed Catholic" even though I don't go to church any more. What does the act of going to church have to do with your belief system??

Questions, questions, questions ...