Chapel of St. Ignatius - Seattle University

A church is not a building, or a sacramental space.  A church, or the church, is community being formed and shaped by Jesus Christ for transformation and witness.

Such were some of my thoughts this past week of vacation ~ when I finally got around to thinking about anything at all.

Nevertheless, I am passionately interested in sacred architecture.  And I wondered why I like this version so very much.  We all know that, to my way of thinking, Chartres Cathedral is the pinnacle of  church design and artistry.  But out here, here in north-central Ohio where I pastor, there are a number of nondenominational and semi-megachurches that might best be described, from an outdoor vantage point anyway, as verging on barn-like in design.  And so I have been required to give some thought to  a certain form of church architecture which I can most charitably describe as entirely without promise.

So why do I like this little hodge-podge of a chapel so much?  It possesses its own barn-like elements, along with a flavor of Zen and an intentionality toward the light and dark of spiritual consolation and desolation, none of which entirely converge. Although all things that rise must, according to Flannery O'Connor.

I suppose the pleasure I took in our visit there goes back to the matter of community.  I took one look at the IHS window and knew immediately that I was at home in a community shaped by Jesus Christ, a community whose 450-plus year old spiritual tradition has played a big part in the shaping of me.  I am apparently intrigued by and willing to accept almost any creative expression emerging threfrom,  because I feel the embrace of God when I stand in a space of its making.  It's the community and its prayer which endow the building with meaning, rather than the other way around.

(And yes, Ignatius of Antioch was a different Ignatius.  In case you were wondering.)

Daily Photo 35: The Oil Can Church

. . .  more formally known as University Circle United Methodist Church.   

The sanctuary of this church ~ yes, the ceiling is way up there 

in the oil can ~ is spectacular.

Churches en Route

These are the churches that I pass en route to and from the Little Lakes:

Presbyterian

Episcopalian

Catholic

Daily Photo 35

 

Good Samaritan Window

Presbyterian Church of Coshocton, Ohio

Daily Photo 34

Presbyterian Church of Coshocton, Ohio

Daily Photo - 31

My last post doesn't seem to have shown up anywhere so, since I'm home recuperating, I thought I'd do something I haven't done in awhile and post a daily photo.  Actually, I haven't been taking many photos lately.

My new call involves a lot of driving to towns and cities in east-central Ohio, as my congregants seem to have a tendency to land in various hospitals and nursing facilities scattered far and wide.  I've started to make sure that my camera is in the car, and one day last week that effort paid off.

The photo is of St. Peter's Catholic Church in Mansfield, Ohio. 

Look at this Sanctuary !!!!!

Vank Cathedral (Armenian Apostolic Church) in Esfahan, Iran

HT to The City and the World, where you can find more information.

Wernersville Chapel

I just want to post this because, as we all know, I am a sucker for church architecture and artistry of pretty much any kind at all.  This is the main chapel at Wernersville ~ seldom used for worship, but always available for prayer. I've lightened the photo considerably because it is usually VERY DARK IN THERE, and I want you to see its beauty.  My own camera is inadequate to the task. Enjoy!

Villa Maria Retreat Center (PA): Chapel Tour

I spent the first two days of this week at a workshop for spiritual directors held on the richly diverse 700+ acre home of the Sisters of the Humility of Mary in western Pennsylvania. A brief tour of the Magnificat Chapel:

The woodcarving of Mary, made by Cleveland sculptors, stands in the narthex, facing the chapel.

Fiber wall hangings behind the gathering space were made by one of the Sisters.

The cross looks like a jewel, with its silver, gold, and red enamel, and twelve bells symbolizing, according to a guidebook, the noise and celebrational sound of apostles.

Three sacramental oils are displayed on a side wall; green is the oil of catechumens.

The windows create amazing patterns of light across the chapel early and late in the day.

I had mixed feelings about the workshop itself, but I love the Sisters' chapel.  Later: photos of their very different (!) Zen prayer room .

Hope (Daily Photo 3)

This one, too, is from Church of the Saviour.

Thanks to the focused attentiveness brought on by my picture taking, I checked out the words over one of the side doors.  I don't think that I had any idea that there were any words there at all, which only goes to show how completely oblivious one can be ~  walking in and out of a door over a period of 25 years and having NO IDEA that its designers or builders wanted you to understand its significance in a particular way.

Which, today, is twofold.  First, the verse itself (and I had to go home and look  it up, because I'm not one of those people who knows those kinds of things), from Isaiah 56:7:

"My house shall be called a house of prayer for all people."

As a spiritual director and future pastor, I'm thinking that that's a very nice sense of mission for a church indeed.

And second:  As I was trying to work my way around the steps and railing, to take the picture the words that came into focus are those above, from the very center.  Now we in the PC(USA) today struggle to understand what we mean by "all."  Or we struggle to be in a church that doesn't mean the same thing by "all" that we do.

So when I saw those words over the very center of the door, I thought:

Hope.

Doors

Wow ~  thank you all for all the ideas!

Already I am looking more attentively and contemplatively.  I took this photo this morning en route home from the gym.  It's the front entryway to my previous church, Church of the Saviour (United Methodist).

A couple of years ago in my spiritual direction  class, we were sitting around talking one night about the burning bushes in our lives ~ the ways in which God has sought to capture our attention.  I was listening to a variety of comments and suddenly I realized ~ Church of the Saviour!  It's located on a main street in our city, in a residential area up from a retail section which hosts some of our favorite stores and restaurants, the theater where you can see all the films which never make it to the mainstream mall movies, and the bakery where we all hang out all the time. Our first house was a few blocks away, within walking distance (on Canterbury, Mumpastor), and I must have driven by Church of the Saviour hundreds of times before I suddenly announced to my husband one morning that I thought we should go to church.

My husband was the one who chose the church in question.  It's Methodist, which we had both been (he for real and me in the vaguest sort of way); it's designed on the model of a medieval French Cathedral (always helpful, from my point of view); and the services were televised on local Cable, so we could check it out before setting foot inside!  Having not been church attenders since high school, we were extremely leery of what we might be getting into more than a decade later.

We spent many happy years there, our children were all baptized there, and most of our closest friendships were formed there.  We've all taken various journeys since, but those doors definitely represent a burning bush in my life.

(Michelle suggested Doors as a subject.  Stratoz suggested Door, which is for another day.  I notice that there were a lot of suggestions of Hope!)

Church: Norway

I've been interested in church architecture and design for a long time. We've discussed it a bit at seminary; I wish it were the subject of an entire course. One of my (many, many) plans for this post-seminary summer is to begin work on a series of photos of churches.

In the meantime, in order to satisfy that particular urge, I thought I'd take a look at some churches which are, at least at present, outside my geographic range.


Image here.

From wikipedia:

<<A stave church is a medieval wooden church with a post and beam construction related to timber framing. The wall frames are filled with vertical planks. The load-bearing posts (stafr in Old Norse, stav in Norwegian) have lent their name to the building technique. Related church types are post churches and churches with palisade walls.All of the surviving stave churches except one are or were in Norway, but related church types were once common all over northwestern Europe.>>