In the airport (Washington DCA) waiting on a flight to take me home to Houston. Home is knowing where the nearest restaurant and store is. During this trip I have come to realize one of the comforts of home is knowing. Knowing where, knowing how far, knowing who.
So during the trip - last couple of days in fact we have walked over the capital city, soaking in what we could. Places we visited National Zoo, National Cathedral, National Portrait Gallery, Library of Congress, ate at Old Ebbitts Grill (oldest resturant in DC).
I was deeply affected by two places we visited, one was the National Cathedral, the other was the Library of Congress.
Walking to the Cathedral was a feat, no close subway connection, to those who are not used to it a two mile hike is not easy. The camera (Nikon D200) is just heavy enough to make lugging it around uncomfortable. The wind in DC kind of snaps at you every now and then. No clothing is quite appropriate. To hot for long sleeves, yet when that cold wind snaps you can’t help but want long sleeves and jackets. Its like walking into a cold room when you’ve been outside sweating.
We made it to the Cathedral and I was overwhelmed. Ten stories high (or something like that). Full of beautiful stain glass, flying buttress ceilings, statutes, carved stone, and scripture, yet the glory has left the place. The Cathedral stands on the highest point and is the highest building in DC. Coincidence? NO! It was built as a point to look to, a place where our leaders could look out and the highest place, the place of prominence would be a place of God.
While we were there we sat through a midday service. An Episcopal priest gave the service. She read scriptures, “if your eye offends you pluck it out...” she read this word of God, and she abruptly disregarded it. “I don’t believe anybody is going to hell, we are all under the grace...” Really? She then proceeded to concentrate on the “salt of the earth” and bring a self help to the message. We should be rich and flavorful to each other. I was prepared for something like that, but still, I sat in silence, angry at the irreverence of her message. If the word of God doesn’t mean what it says why is she teaching it? If she doesn’t like the passage why teach it? In this place that is the spiritual capital of our nation I felt an emptiness. The Cathedral was a museum. To her, and the care takers of that place, the scripture carved in stone (so they couldn’t be changed) were history lessons, simply ancient words of irrelevant nature. I wondered at the audacity of it. The answer to how came the next day when we visited the Library of Congress.
The Library of Congress was established after the Civil War, around 1897 (date maybe somewhat wrong but around there). This is important because at this time the 20th century was dawning, the Enlightenment was happening or had just happened, and the aftershocks of that event are plainly seen in that library. Unlike many of the monuments in the capital the library is relatively new, it s not seeped in the religious, it is a monument to man. The mascot of the library is Minerva, the Roman goddess of knowledge and defense. She is plastered along nearly every wall. Murals of her stood everywhere. I have a hard time explaining the folly I could feel seeping from the symbols plastered along all walls, I remembered Tom Nelson’s series on The Road to this Present Darkness. Pastor Nelson spoke of philosophical ideas launched from Europe, landing in America and spreading like cancer. Here it was, one of the first casualities, and one seeped in the philosophy that has spread. Man, honor and glory to MAN all around. Knowledge is theology, knowledge is god, man harnesses knowledge making himself into god.One set of murals depicted the rise of communication. Man setting stones in patterns to communicate. Man creating scrolls from animal hide, a barely clothed woman looking on admiringly. An Egyptian carving symbols, a bare breasted woman sitting to his side. Monks copying onto a scroll, then finally Guttenburg and his press. Man, creating, woman as a ornament to the man’s side. There sitting in a case, sealed, one of the original Guttenburg bibles. The text is not admired as the word of God, but as a monument to man’s knowledge, his ingenuity. Modern man prefers the abstract god, the symbol without the substance, a mascot. It was this that connected the two things for me, the empty, hollow cathedral and the library. What the priest wanted was a mascot. She read the words of Jesus, the author and founder of our faith, and decided they were not to her liking, much better to have a symbol.
There are other things that connect the two places as well. The library reflects the philosophy under which it was built, man is elevated, it is the one of the first beach heads of modern thought and philosophy into the American mind. Down the street is an institution overcome with the philosophical compromises that were made as a result.
