Easter Sunday, April 4, 2010. Washington National Cathedral.
The majesty of the National Cathedral is apparent from the moment we step foot out of the underground parking structure's darkness into the daylight of a sunny DC afternoon. The form and structure of the cathedral is stately and dignified, and beautiful. It's not ornate, or gaudy, or overdone as other catholic churches I have seen before. And that makes sense because it is a cathedral for the nation, so its purpose is to have no particular sect affiliations. (Although it is technically Episcopal.) Standing next to it, looking up, it's dizzying to the point of vertigo to watch the earth rotate slowly past the towers and spires that reach toward white puffs in blue sky, seeming to almost touch the vast expanse.
We make our way inside and take our seats. We sit on wooden chairs that line up in near military formation across the stone foundation. There are brass plates with names tacked to the backs of the chairs, dedications in memory of lost loved ones or to honor people I don't know but somehow feel a certain reverence for as I read their names. It is very late afternoon, and the light from outside peaks slightly into the stained glass windows. I wish to come back when it is full blazing noon another day to see it passionately break through the dramatic prism of rich colors rather than weakly touch the shards of glass as it does today.
The colossal walls hold up vaulted ceilings that are ribbed with lines protruding like bone or vein as they scrawl across the canvas of the limestone and concrete. It's almost as if this place is more tomb than altar, and invisible cobwebs adorn each corner. There is a sullen grayness overwhelming the immense space that exists inside this church. I sit and wonder why people erect monuments to a God who, if He is God, is too big to be contained within walls anyway. Can God be housed? Certainly this cathedral is large enough to house many people, but God? Unless the purpose of the overwhelming size of the sanctuary is to make you feel inferior, make you worship with your head low and your eyes averted so that you are recognizing how unworthy you are to dare speak to holiness when you are bathed in sin, then the enormous scale of the building seems to me to be a waste of money. And I'm not sure God would want us to have an inferiority complex when approaching Him. I imagine God to want a relationship with His creation, the special part of His creation that He declares to have made in His own image. The crowning achievement of His creation that he redeemed with His own son. I think He would appreciate joy springing from our worshipful hearts rather than sorrow, despair, or passiveness...or worse, fear grounded in guilt rather than awe.
I also can't help but think the God who stretched out the universe would not feel comfortable in the stone structure of a man-made attempt to inspire holiness among His children, when His presence already encompasses the grandeur of nature into which He intimately breathed life.
The organist begins to play, and suddenly the tomb I was encased in is alive. With each tone that bellows out of the organ pipes, the walls reverberate and the floor vibrates beneath my feet. The organ is like a heart that just started beating, and the notes of the music pumps life into the stone, almost as if ribs of the ceiling truly are veins and the organ notes are the lifeblood coursing through them now. I open my eyes, and it's as if the walls are moving, rising and falling as if in respiration. The imaginary cobwebs are stripped away, and the choking silence of rigid devoutness I felt before is shattered like plates of china on marble floors. Just as God kissed dust to give flesh and spirit to man, so this music resurrects the halls of this temple and fills it with a soul.
I know this is an organ recital, and I know each song is printed on the program and there will be no deviation. But if the organist were to take requests, I would boldly grab the man by his suit coat and beg him to play Beethoven's 9th Sympony. If there were ever a song that should be played in a cathedral such as this, if there were ever notes of music that longed to be married to a place of worship, it is truly that song with Henry Van Dyke's words echoing out:
Joyful, Joyful, we adore Thee,
God of glory, Lord of love;
hearts unfold like flowers before Thee,
opening to the sun above.
Melt the clouds of sin and sadness,
drive the dark of doubt away.
Giver of immortal gladness,
fill us with the light of day!
I have never felt the presence of God in a sermon being uttered from the lips of a man, but having heard this organ I have glimpsed the stairway my soul will take to heaven when I die. It is not made of brick and mortar, wood and nail, or particles of any mass of anything we can see or touch. It is with notes of music that I hope my soul will be pushed above this earth into the waiting arms of my God.
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