Seems Chartres Cathedral is getting a lot of attention these days. Stumbled across an interesting article about Prince Charles’ new book, which focuses on the sacred geometry of spaces like Chartres Cathedral.
The article—combined with the great poem I encountered the other day—are making me want to pay a visit. Anyone up for a trip to France?
Having become aware of the inadequacy of much of our language about God this semester, I have been making a conscious effort not to speak about God in gendered pronouns. I’ve never liked using neuter pronouns, but the author of one of our textbooks (Stephen Bevans) used the construction “Godself” in place of “himself” or “itself.” It has grown on me over the semester, but as I wrote my final this weekend and intentionally tried to avoid gendered language, I came up with several real gems:
“God in God’s essence is unknowable, but God reveals Godself through God’s energies.”
“In revealing Godself, God invites people into relationship with Godself.”
“God revealed Godself in powerful ways to the nation of Israel, and God continues to reveal Godself regularly when Christians gather together to break bread and read the Scriptures.”
I hope Godself grants me some sleep soon…
There among the aisles and chapels
it still goes on, the old life,
amidst the medieval racket
of post cards and sacred crockery,
the gabbled cloud of foreign tongues
and people peering at dark corners;
the old life persists, mostly among the old;
the woman leaning to kiss the Virgin’s brocaded hem;
the murmur of the devout; white candles
and the clink of francs in the mission box.
A boy of eighteen knelt before the altar,
his face hid in his hands, the muddle
of the life outside pursuing him here as well.
For gems, the painted glass, and for choirs
the figures carved in stone;
Chartres stood their sketch of Paradise,
the place where, as best it could on earth,
time stopped. It was to be,
as an arch gives stone the power of flight,
the place where faith would give
the clay of flesh its flight, a semblance
whose stones would tug the heart towards prayer,
build in it the desiring of heaven.
I saw the boy again. At the west door,
beneath the rose of the Judgment,
he met a friend and took him to the font.
He put his fingertips in the holy water
and with them dripping made the sign of the cross
on the body of his friend:
touched his forehead first, the flat of his chest,
the left shoulder, then the right, and last
the slight swell of his belly.
The other in turn, fingers wetted,
touched the forehead of his friend, the chest,
left shoulder and right shoulder
and belly. They turned to go,
the bead mark of water on their brows.
And when I knelt before the altar,
I prayed: abject as any man is
in the weight of his faults, scanted
of hope, but who had seen at least the image
of what he desired: another like himself,
whose flesh he might inscribe
with the water of blessing.
I’m super excited to be involved with the new “State of Formation” project. The project:
…is a forum for emerging religious and ethical leaders. Founded by the Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue, it is run in partnership with Hebrew College and Andover Newton and in collaboration with the Parliament of the World’s Religions.
There are somewhere in the neighborhood of sixty master’s and doctoral students contributing to this important conversation. Check out my first post (link above) and join the conversation!
The Baltimore Catechism… yikes…
“In imagining possibilities, human beings act as the prophets of their own existence.” — Paul Ricouer
This is so me…
Once when I was there where I was, some foreign missionary came and said to me, “You may be a good woman, but you’re not a good Christian.”
I said, “Why?”
“Because you have been here so long and you only go about speaking English. What local languages have you learned?”
I said to him, “I haven’t managed to learn any of the local languages, because I travel a great deal from place to place. As soon as I learn one dialect, they start speaking another. I’ve only learned ‘Good morning’ and ‘Good evening.’ Nothing else.”
“Bah, you’re no Christian. How can you evangelize? All the Catholics and Protestants learn all the local dialects in order to . . .”
Then I said, “Lord, give me an answer for him.” I asked it with all my heart, and then I said, “Ah. I forgot to tell you. I know five languages.”
“Really? What are these five?”
“The first is the smile; the second is tears. The third is to touch. The fourth is prayer, and the fifth is love. With these five languages I go all around the world.”
Then he stopped and said, “Just a minute. Say that again so I can write it down.”
With these five languages you can travel the whole earth, and all the world is yours. Love everyone as your own—without concern for religion or race, without concern for anything.
Everywhere are people of God. You never know if the one you see today might tomorrow be a saint.
—Mother Gavrilia
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