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.
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 effects are magical. I can easily imagine spending a whole day there with my camera, tracking the changes.
OH MY!! I wanted to rush home & get to work!!
That's it for now.
Those windows are gorgeous--I can see why you love them. It feels miraculous to me when such balance of repetition and variation is achieved. Do you know if those occasional diagonals are structurally necessary, or..?
ReplyDeleteI can't wait to see the butterfly wings show up at your house!
xoxo
JRT