I’m writing this from the public library, a grand 19th century French Renaissance-styled building in the middle of the city. As I walked in, I snapped the above photograph – fitting words for a library, I thought, though for a secular civic building perhaps a bit archaic. My chair sits in the narrow space between two tall shelves in a rounded armchair. Someone has pulled it here and turned it away from the rest of the room, so that it can instead face a small window where the sun so prodigally shines in. Books tower above me on each side and a whole city of windows is lined up in front of me, like other books on other shelves.
Why do windows always make us think about the stories of the people we can’t see?
But it’s not storytime. I should be thinking about words. I was given an interesting challenge recently, and that’s what made me notice the words above the library door. I was due to meet with a minister and a local artist to discuss the possibility of commissioning a portrait of Christ for the Nitekirk community, but I was running a little late. When I arrived at the church, I found the two of them standing in the lobby, chatting and looking around at the white walls. The lobby had been renovated a couple of years ago, and it now has large windows looking out to the graveyard. And empty white walls. The minister said that the congregation had wanted to live with the renovation for a while before deciding what to do with the walls. But perhaps the time had come to fill in the blanks. He imagined that words might do the trick. Simply stencilled on the walls. But what words? And there was the challenge.
Something welcoming, something surprising, perhaps. Something with a connection to the local situation. Something inspiring.
Scripture would be fitting for the church entry, of course. There in a revolving glass door to St Paul’s Cathedral in London which is etched with these words from Genesis: This is none other than the house of God. This is the gate of heaven. Jacob spoke these words when he woke from his dream of angels – and maybe these are good words to remember as we walk into a sanctuary, a place set aside, a place for prayer.
Above the door to the sanctuary of my home congregation in Ottawa, there are words carved in stone, this time from Revelations. I am the Alpha and the Omega. Which strike me as another good reminder. Christ is the beginning and the end. I first walked under those words as a toddler, and then a big sister, dragging my little brother behind me. Under those words, I proudly wore my pale blue junior choir gown and was so careful not to drop my hymn book because it made such a crash when you did. Later, wearing horrible bridesmaids dresses, I led each of my sisters under those words and up the aisle towards my grinning just-about-brothers-in-law. When it was my turn, I wore my own beautiful wedding dress, made by those patient sisters, and walked up the aisle with my dad. My brand-new handsome hubby and I practically danced back under those words on our way out the church and, four years later, we carried our first perfect baby under those words, wrapped up in a silk baptism gown made from her auntie’s wedding dress. So many beginnings. So many endings. Sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which, but the words above our heads reminded us that Christ is every beginning, and every ending is in Him.
The walls are wide and blank, so perhaps there is space for poetry, too.
I love this prayer poem by Alistair Maclean, a Gaelic-speaking minister from Inverness. I found it in his 1937 book Hebridean Altars.
“As the hand is made for holding and the eye for seeing,
thou hast fashioned me for joy.
Share with me the vision that shall find it everywhere.”
Or perhaps we might find space for these words we sometimes sing from the Breastplate of St Patrick.
“Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me.
Christ is quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in heard of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend or stranger.”
This poem sounds like a gloriously intertwined Celtic knot, doesn’t it? Christ in all things, encompassing, including, protecting, providing. Perhaps, after all, that is exactly what we seek when we enter through the door and gather as the church.
