Light On Dark Water

My parish church, St. Lawrence in Fairhope, Alabama, is a fairly typical middle-class American one. (There’s a link to the parish web site at the end of this post, where you can see some pictures.) As a building it is not the sort of church I like most, but it’s not bad for a contemporary suburban church. It was built around the time we moved to Fairhope in 1992.

Behind the altar is a sort of curved partition. Behind the partition there’s a huge, wall-filling stained glass window depicting the Risen Christ. For a long time I didn’t like it very much, and I still don’t think it’s really good, but it’s grown on me. I’ve gotten used to it and developed an affection for it, and am able to think about what it signifies without criticizing it.

Originally there was no crucifix in the sanctuary. I think this is against the rules; anyway, there were complaints about the lack, and a crucifix was added, atop that curved partition. If you stand in the right place in the center aisle, the crucified figure is aligned with the resurrected one. Unfortunately I don’t have a good picture showing this, but you can get the general idea from this one, which I extracted from a screen capture of the video tour (see parish web site link below)—I suppose I should have edited out the word “stopped,” but it’s late now.

This is a good juxtaposition. Death comes first, then resurrection. We have to get past death, it’s between us and resurrection, but life is the last word.

I’m not going to post anything else between now and Sunday, but I’ll be checking in to see if there’s any conversation going on. If past holidays are an indicator, there probably won’t be nearly as much traffic here as usual. In general I’m going to curb my online activities somewhat for the next three days, as I’ve become too distracted and thinned out, if you know what I mean, and need a bit of recollection. I’d like to spend a week alone in the desert with nothing but a few books and maybe pen and paper. Maybe someday…

Here is the St. Lawrence web site; there’s a rather washed-out picture like the one above on the front page. Go to the Parish Information page for the video tour from which I got the image above.

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