One section of ramblings here at contemplate this… is titled meaning mining and though I am convinced that the process part, the mining, is a key to my personal evolution and fulfillment, the meaning part can be a bit of a red-herring. (For some background on the practices of inviting unknowing and avoiding declarations, see interview with a conductor. ) This should not have come as a surprise to me as I have long proselytized on the value of process over product but, as has been my experience, the good lessons are so good that I like to learn them over and over again!
It is with this in mind that I have been following the trail of bread-crumbs, that is, sticking to the mining regardless of the apparent absence of clear meaning. For whatever reason, I have been inundated with cathedral experiences of late. A couple months ago I found myself recounting the story line of an oddly inspiring short-story titled cathedral in the eponymous book by Raymond Carver. I call its inspiration odd due to the dark and mildly depressing tone of the character narrating, a man who reluctantly welcomes a blind man, his wife’s former boss, into his home. They are brought together by circumstance and share a transcendent moment of connection during which the narrator comes to draw a cathedral, flying buttresses and all, while allowing the blind man to place a hand on his and so to see the glory and grandeur through the movement of pencil on paper. It’s a beautiful story that I read long ago and I have no memory of why I was describing it recently.
A long-planned family vacation to Spain came and went this last couple weeks and brought me into full contact with beautiful and inspiring cathedrals I’ve not experienced since being a college art-school freshman in Florence. I was so drawn to them I found myself setting off on my own to every cathedral I could find regardless of planned agenda of the rest of my family. There was a surprising amount of variation in color, light, materials, and feel as seen in the photos I took. The most significantly unique is, not surprisingly, Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia, still under construction in Barcelona. The spiritual & historical significance of these structures boggles my mind – structures so ambitious in scale and detail that they required generations to bring into being. Does this kind of creation have any parallels in realms not devoted to glorifying god? I am awe struck.
Visit the photo gallery for cathedral shots from Barcelona, Granada, Toledo, Cordoba, and Seville.
