broken angels and garland-bearing boys
I was a stranger, and I wasn't taken in.
I step into the cathedral and stop just beyond the threshold, still holding the door open. Everything feels wrong.
Footsteps shuffle behind me and I look back. A woman shifts uncertainly in the inswing of the doorway. With her black leather jacket, jeans, painted nails, and rings on most fingers, she’s clearly dressed for the Iron Maiden concert later that evening. I step out of her way, and she breezes past me like she belongs.
“Thank you.” She mutters something else uncertainly in Finnish as if second-guessing her initial assumption that I’m American. Her voice is raspy, and the smell of tobacco wafts in her wake.
She strides across the red-carpeted aisle toward the altar and the thought of what a cool photo it would be flashes through me. Her in all-black (except for her sneakers), gliding down a scarlet path cut through the woody gold of the capacious sanctuary. Organ music lofts from somewhere above us.
A line of naked boys stretches a leafy garland around the sanctuary. The garland is laced with thorns and roses, and it doesn’t always cover their private bits.
Spanning the wall behind the plain altar is a massive fresco. A procession of people in white—at least those who are clothed are in white. One man has a fox skin hanging from his neck for no apparent reason. I can’t tell where the people in the painting are coming from or where they are going. It seems vaguely cultish.
I spy another painting up in the balcony—a broken angel carried by two farmers in a cart (or on a stretcher—I can’t see it very well). Unfortunately, the loft is closed, and I can’t get a closer look.
Now I notice the strangest thing yet. Centered in the vault, the highest point in the ceiling, is a scarlet serpent, its head lifted high and curled to strike. Its venomous mouth gapes and the legendary apple bulges from its fangs.
Something in my gut turns over at the sight. The place doesn’t feel like a church. Sure, there are pews in patient rows and a pulpit, although it takes a few glances toward the altar to find it. Flickering candles. A substantial Last Supper-esque table. Organ pipes. The placement of these familiar items among unfamiliar artistry—not the least of which is the rose vine twining across the ceiling—cast them in a shadow of unfamiliarity. The space keeps its secrets—I’m a stranger here. I am inside, yet not within.
I come across another oddity in this sanctuary. A garden tended by three skeletons clad in black robes. One waters pink flowers. The other caresses cobalt dandelions in its skeletal hands, its cavernous eye sockets black as twelve midnights. The other’s back is turned, but it, too, is bent over a row of greenery.
My fellow tourist, having taken a circuitous route about the sanctuary, sits in a pew halfway back from the altar. I hesitate and then sit beside her. We commiserate over the loft being closed; we’d both like to go up there.
“Do you worship?” I ask.
“No. I’m actually atheist.”
“What brings you here?”
She’s a newspaper publisher and loves old architecture and visiting historic churches across Finland. “I like the stories behind the art.”
“Me too.”
I wonder if she’s wondering as much as I am about the story behind the garland-bearing boys, or the procession of people in white, or the farmers carrying a broken angel. As we sit and talk about the cathedrals we’ve been to and which ones we’d like to visit next, an odd thing happens. She describes places she’s never been with awe and a dreamy, far-away glint in her eyes, but blanks when it comes to naming them. I recognize the places she’s describing and supply the names—Notre Dame, La Sagrada Familia, Westminster Abbey. She speaks of soaring spires by which she has yet to fly. Of art she longs to see.
In that moment, a question burns out of my soul: what does it mean that I can name the place, but she can describe how, having never been, it makes her feel?
The art is mysterious. Even I don’t understand it, I say. And I’m supposed to get religious art.
God’s ways are unknown, she says. And I don’t point out the incongruity.
To know that God’s ways are unknown is to know something of God.
But I am comfortable with the mystery. And with the incongruity.
So we sit and stare, eyes open.