The Lens:
I am a teacher in a Catholic elementary school and recently attended an in-service. Because of the size of the in-service, the venue had to accommodate a couple hundred teachers. Not that many schools in our diocese can accommodate that many people.
My old Catholic elementary school is one of those schools that can. It was a double grade school in my day, so had a good-sized school building. But, the church – it is huge. We had our in-service in the hall below the church. Then, as is always the case, we end the in-service with mass in church.
Doing an Internet search, I can only find the capacity of my old church to be 750. I believe it to be much more than that today – maybe up to 1200.
I spent a lot of years there as a child and teen. Going to masses, novenas. It is where I made my First Communion and was Confirmed. It was where I graduated from 8th grade.
Once I moved away from home, though, I rarely went back to that church. (Truth be told, I didn’t go to church much at all.) Each time I would walk into my childhood church after years of absence, what I was filled with was a slew of memories. And, this last visit was no different.
A walk down memory lane in that church isn’t always pleasant. In my younger years, the paster was, let’s just say, mean (he is another story). But memories are what they are. You can’t change them. All you can do is live with them. As the years go on, the memories become more tempered.
And, this visit happened to occur on the 14th anniversary of my mom’s passing. Being there made me think of her as it was so much a part of her life for about of 40 years. I became teary thinking of Mom.
I felt an odd sense of comfort being in this church on that day.
The Refraction:
The above is a picture of the interior of my childhood church. As you can see, in addition to being huge, it is also quite ornate. (This picture shows only the nave and not the grandeur of the transept.) Growing up, this church was just my parish church. I didn’t think anything about its size or its architecture. I would notice details, like on the columns, as a means of occupying myself during services, not as an appreciation of their aesthetics.
The only thing that seemed remarkable to me was its many stained-glass windows. I was always in awe of them.
I don’t know how old I was when I started to realize the many beautiful churches we have in San Francisco. But, even as I gained this realization, I never thought of my childhood church as particularly pretty. To this day, while I can see it has a certain beauty, especially in the stained-glass windows, I still don’t find it awe-inspiring.
This last visit as part of our in-service gave me the opportunity to see my old church through the eyes of a first time observer. As all of the teachers made their way up to church from the hall, I happened to enter the church at the same time one of the out-of-town presenters entered.
He stepped in from the grand vestibule. His eyes went wide and his face lit up. He mouthed the word “Wow!” as his eyes gazed about the church. In that moment, I realized my old church really is a sight to behold.
I am a digital packrat. I see articles or quotes and save them for later use. I am not sure how much space they would take up if they were I paper version. But, I am sure most of them would be covered in dust if not for being saved on my computer. Still, every now and then, one sparks interest and gets pulled out of the pile
I came across this saved snippet form the NYTimes Morning Newsletter 8/4/21:
World Through a Lens: North Korean defectors speak about how fashion helped them transition to their new life: “I never had the freedom to wear what I wanted, but I never questioned it because I didn’t know this freedom existed.”*
What do these things have in common – my old church and the freedom of fashion? In each instance, our point of views were shaped by what was normal to us.
For me, my church was nothing special because it was just a simple part of my existence. Everybody went to church. It hadn’t occurred to me that our church might not look like all of the others.
In the case of the North Korean defectors, the idea of fashion didn’t exist because it wasn’t something that was available to them.
The day of the in-service, I was walking up to the church with another teacher. We were talking about the church and I asked if she had ever been in it. She hadn’t. My remark was, “It is a barn,” referring to its size. Honestly, that is what sticks with me the most – its size.
We go about our lives with these perceptions without stopping to think that they are intrinsically tied to our environment, our experiences, our knowledge base. We likely don’t consider that our perceptions may be completely different than someone else’s because they are completely real to us.
I wonder what the out-of-town presenter would have thought of my characterization of this church – as a barn – when he saw something amazing.
Our brains have great capacity. Still, with every aspect of our lives subject to our perceptions, I think the challenge of always considering the way we see things and how differently someone else might see that same thing would not be possible.
That does not mean we can’t be aware, we can’t carry with us the understanding that we may look at the very same thing as someone else and see something so very different.
What would our world be like, if we could consider, even just once in a while, what other points of view people might have as compared to ours? Would it help us to get along a little better?
NYT articles 8/4/21:
The Morning Newsletter: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/04/briefing/booster-shots-pfizer-covid-vaccine.html
Tracing Freedom to a Pair of Jeans: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/04/style/north-korean-defector-fashion.html