The architecture of life is so similar to that of the stained glass windows posed perfectly still across time, illuminated by lanterns and candles in ancient churches along my drives through old towns. Churches are especially beautiful to me, sermons in brick and mortar, wood and glass.
Most of us are blessed to be born in love and hope, so much like the emotions that surely went into giving birth to the windows staring down at me.
The artisans who pour their time and energy into panels of colored glass are no different than the parents, educators and mentors who mold us into the people we will become as we grow and hopefully share our light with others. Just like the majestic stained glass windows towering above become transparent at different times of the day, so, too, we allow the world to see into us as we stare out — or we don’t. That’s one trait we have that the windows do not. We, not sun and shadow, get to decide when we are opaque.
My favorite time to marvel at this brilliance of color, this intricacy of form, is while seated inside a mighty cathedral or a humble country church during a Christmas concert, perhaps with an old pipe organ leading the melody. It is a holy experience in which God must surely be present. Even the stained glass windows seem to bow in reverence — my imagination, I am sure. The magnitude of the lighted chapels and cathedrals pushes through each painted pane like a beacon of hope in the world, a great comfort to those who need it.
I always wonder who is outside looking in and what his or her story might be.
Sadly, many of these beautiful structures have been forgotten by time, glass cracked, wood rotted along the edges. It should be a reminder to us all that life is about compassion toward the ones grown older. When I hold my 91-year-old friend’s frail, weathered hands and gaze into her sparkling eyes, I see that nothing has changed except the exterior — so many sunsets and sunrises.
Like the beautiful steeples that climb into the blue skies and change into nighttime shadows, day after day, year after year, so do we climb and shadow as life carries on.
I own a small, but charming window pane with a golden fleur-de-lis in the center. It’s my reminder to slow down, pull over for a moment, and truly marvel at the beauty surrounding us. It might be a centuries-old window, a friend’s smile, or the gift of our own existence, but whether it’s new, old, broken, or whole, we must see the light through it and in it.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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