No Stones Unturned
6/27/2008
Our marketing department, for an upcoming magazine story, asked me to comment on a quote about the work of the great Ralph Adams Cram (architect of Lewis and Mazzuchelli halls on our campus). The quote, by contemporary architect Ethan Anthony, a recent speaker on our campus, said this: “Beauty exists not only for its own sake, or for our sensual pleasure, but for a greater purpose: to remind us of the presence of God in all things. Beauty is the manifestation of the Divine in art and in man, ‘like a stream…it courses through the life of man.’”
Here’s what it made me think:
If God is allegedly “in all things,” why do we designate some as beautiful and others as ordinary or mundane? I think it’s because some things manage, while remaining ordinary, to evoke simultaneously an experience of more -- of depth and ultimacy. They manifest what we come to call the divine, precisely in and through the very stone and glass of our wonderful Lewis Hall, through the forms and tones of our beloved Mazzuchelli.
This is not idolatry or superstition, as these halls remain literally just stone and glass, but neither is this a capitulation to secularity, since here, now, while remaining what they literally are, the structures simultaneously stop me in my tracks and show me -- more. Sacramental not ornamental, they represent an occasion for the possibility of experiencing infinity precisely through their finitude.
They also remind us that the sacred is adjacent, even ubiquitous, soliciting our recognition within a world we tend to inhabit superficially -- or even desecrate. These campus stones point beyond themselves and invite us to perceive and receive their kindred spirits, those other and incipient manifestations of depth and divinity available all around us.
The buildings also remind us of, and bind us to, those other persons who have learned and laughed and loved inside the walls of their embrace.
Finally, these beautiful structures are connected to the living vines and to the earth -- and remind us that we are as well. They manifest the sacred, and remind us that so does everything else, and we are grateful to teach and learn, to study and contemplate, to love and laugh and pursue truth in such a generous and sacred space as this.
If you don’t believe, me come and see for yourself!
Our marketing department, for an upcoming magazine story, asked me to comment on a quote about the work of the great Ralph Adams Cram (architect of Lewis and Mazzuchelli halls on our campus). The quote, by contemporary architect Ethan Anthony, a recent speaker on our campus, said this: “Beauty exists not only for its own sake, or for our sensual pleasure, but for a greater purpose: to remind us of the presence of God in all things. Beauty is the manifestation of the Divine in art and in man, ‘like a stream…it courses through the life of man.’”
Here’s what it made me think:
If God is allegedly “in all things,” why do we designate some as beautiful and others as ordinary or mundane? I think it’s because some things manage, while remaining ordinary, to evoke simultaneously an experience of more -- of depth and ultimacy. They manifest what we come to call the divine, precisely in and through the very stone and glass of our wonderful Lewis Hall, through the forms and tones of our beloved Mazzuchelli.
This is not idolatry or superstition, as these halls remain literally just stone and glass, but neither is this a capitulation to secularity, since here, now, while remaining what they literally are, the structures simultaneously stop me in my tracks and show me -- more. Sacramental not ornamental, they represent an occasion for the possibility of experiencing infinity precisely through their finitude.
They also remind us that the sacred is adjacent, even ubiquitous, soliciting our recognition within a world we tend to inhabit superficially -- or even desecrate. These campus stones point beyond themselves and invite us to perceive and receive their kindred spirits, those other and incipient manifestations of depth and divinity available all around us.
The buildings also remind us of, and bind us to, those other persons who have learned and laughed and loved inside the walls of their embrace.
Finally, these beautiful structures are connected to the living vines and to the earth -- and remind us that we are as well. They manifest the sacred, and remind us that so does everything else, and we are grateful to teach and learn, to study and contemplate, to love and laugh and pursue truth in such a generous and sacred space as this.
If you don’t believe, me come and see for yourself!
Then
Now
Now
