Trip to Mission

I did poke around this morning to find out about the amazing cathedral in Mission, BC.
Both its architect and the stain glass artists are European, but live in B.C. There is 7000 square feet of stain glass. The glass patches are made by a cast method & then set in fiber-reinforced concrete. I think the big windows are 24 feet high & 4 feet wide.

The footprint of the building is a coptic cross, so other overall feel of the building is round. Four great pillars support the roof/dome weight, but I hardly even saw them!

The exterior of the building gives no hint of the inner color glory! The colors for the four corners of the building are earth/brown, air/purple-grey, fire/red & water/blue -- wonderfully pagan idea for a religion that thinks of itself as decidedly not pagan!
The church was built in 1984, though the seminary goes back to the 1910's, I think.

The monks who live there have a herd of cows, flock of chickens & beef cattle & pigs. So all meat & dairy

eaten there are raised by the monks. They do all the work also on the maintenance of the 73 acres of land & the buildings. All that's very Benedictine.We were going into the Fraser Valley today to meet some friends for and Indian supper. Occasionally graduates from the school George went to in Kodai Kanal in the mountains of southern India. He was there for grade 8 & 9 and says it was his favorite school experience. It was a Christian school, but it was also a school using love rather than the cane for discipline. It was co-ed.

So it seemed appropriate that I finally take George to see the church at the Benedictine monastery in Mission. It is set on the head of a hill that looks out onto the flood plain below and the mountains beyond that. There is a wonderful church there. That's what I wanted to show George. It's my favorite church in BC.

We got out there around 3 and first saw some nuns & a priest.

The young sister caught my eye. Actually there were two young ones. Well, nuns in any form catch my eye, as I think of them as being quite rare these days.

This church called is called Westminster Abbey. Very far cry from the other one!

To me these windows are so close to some of the feel of my loose patchwork. I am very attracted to the look and color choices.

Then we went for a walk. These are from the lookout.

Going back into the church later the sun was lower and there were some wonderful effects. In this church there is very little representational art.  No crucifixes with a dead or dying Jesus. Calm. I didn't  like the stone bas relief sculptures, so I didn't photograph them.

To me these effects are magical. I can easily imagine spending a whole day there with my camera, tracking the changes.

Butterfly wings!!

OH MY!! I wanted to rush home & get to work!!
That's it for now.

4 years here

In June George & I will have been living here for 4 years. A few days ago I crossed the Granville Street Bridge. It was a great a trip & I walked back too. Two days later we did it together, with my camera.  I knew George would like a view of our False Creek geography & the sense of flying the walk gives.

We walked up the Seymore Street exit ramp off the bridge. The Mark, a new high-rise, is going in there. I've been really fascinated by this building, & have a totally new respect for the skills of the workers and the complexity of the whole endeavor. Though I am sorry that the site had been a community garden surrounded with rosebushes-- all gone, of course. 

I love the man with the staircase cut & then close-by graffiti.

  

Old Bud has my vote, though I wish he [or his buddy] had put something I could actually read!!  I love the ghostly interior of the letters.  

Then came the view of the bridge from the off ramp. What a jungle of bridge structure!!

The cement factory, across from us was pretty fun to see from above. There are three barges that I couldn't figure out. Only two here. Pretty chaotic.

These are perhaps cement truck drivers. The trucks were being filled and leaving the yard.

At 7th & Hemlock we went to a coffee shop for lattes for our walk back.

I picked some cottonwood branches from a tree on the Hemlock Street ramp on our trip back. I am smelling them now as I write.  Wonderful aroma! Walking back I saw the Granville Island Brewery getting ready for a pick-up. Multiples!!

There was a sublime moment crossing the bridge going back....

These shots really show most of King's Landing, the (pretentious) name of our complex. (When did a King land here? Bah humbug!) The building on the left is a different condo.

And finally some very ordinary things: crack patterns very much like a ceramic glaze. And some numbers for that collection. So urban!

                                                            That's it for today.

spring, newness & majik & random!

Three weeks back from Maui. The sun has started to shine. I don't think we'll have such a delayed spring as last year. I'm thankful for that! Today our little garden pavement was pressure-washed and I am beginning to think of getting some new plants for the pots with brown dirt in them.

Last week I went on a bit of a spree to find a carpet for the kitchen. I just hear all of you saying how unpractical, etc., etc. Kitchen? But you know... This was something I just wanted to do & I'm not up for Any Scolding! I did live in a house with a kitchen carpet!

When I met first George he had an awesome collection of carpets from Turkey mostly, & two from Iran. I had a very modest collection of my own, but a large historical connection to 'The Look'. This was 'The Look' of many of the Boston Homes I grew up with.

I wish I had taken photos of the carpets I brought home on a trial basis, because they were delicious, truly. But I can share images of stuff from our house. 

 

So, TA-DA, the new kitchen one.  Do I see scraps of food on it? TUT TUT! I DO!!  But those can be completely carpet-swept away, which is one of the methods for care.

                                            So moving on...time for tulips.

And 0rdinary things with majik about them.

                                                        That's plenty for today!