Sundays in the City #5
“Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art”
- Leonard DaVinci
My friend Ching is an architect who grew up in New York and attended the Parsons School of Design. Those facts might hold some bearing when I tell you she is the most wildly creative pragmatic I’ve ever known. One of my favorite things to do with her is to stand under the beginnings of a construction project on some random part of Sunset Boulevard and watch her face light up. An avid marathon runner, she has generally been eyeing the progress on her training days and at some point, she will say, “Let’s go for a walk in Hollywood, you have to see this!” Now I’m always up for a walk and there’s seriously no shortage of eye-popping vistas in LA, particularly along Sunset; but I always learn something new with Ching as my docent.
“Look over there!” she’ll whisper reverently pointing at what looks to me like nothing more than a haphazard arrangement of concrete blocks and steel rods. And just like that she’ll start to sketch out in words the dimensions and design of a not-yet-visible building. While I am stepping back in fear amongst the “Hard Hats Required” signs and nails the size of small hammers, Ching begins to lean in, marveling at the wonder of precision that marks a sure foundation. Her hands eventually begin to move in that dancing sort of way that artists have of hypnotizing time so that the mind’s eye can begin to see what will be, long before it ever takes shape. She has often told me that while she enjoys interior design, she has never ceased to be awestruck by the hidden framework that undergirds it. “So few people will ever see the beams and joints” she said one day as we walked on, “but they will cover and surround every single person who ever enters this building”.
Week after week as I crossed the thresholds of churches in Los Angeles, Ching’s words began to take on a spiritual symbolism.
It may be prudent here to divulge the fact that I am writing these entries post-process. By that I mean to say, I took copious notes at each church with the original intent of blogging every Monday as a sort of touristic diary of religious adventure. My impulse to press “publish” after each visit was quelled by more than one moment of clarity, not the least of which was an unfolding awareness of the depth of my bias. Perhaps little surprised me more than the persisting, raging weekly battle for objectivity that was present from the beginning.
But what did surprise me more from the very first Sunday was that my mistrust of a fallible institution would be far outweighed by the mysteries of a faithful Spirit. Among the shifting interior spaces and theological persuasions, a familiar covering persisted. Amidst the darkness and chaos and void of my own heart and the world at large: the Spirit who remains undeterred by a present state of formlessness, hovers. And that, to coin the words of Faulkner, “has made all the difference. “
