This past Saturday while Gary and I were in New York City, we went for the first time to the Cloisters.
Located in Manhattan’s Fort Tryon Park, the Cloisters is home to the Metropolitan Museum’s collection of Medieval art. In my usual perverse fashion, though, I walked the Cloisters this past weekend with an eye not so much for the art it houses but for the space it contains, the particular assortment of angle, light and shadow created by stairwell, doorway, and colonnade.
Medieval European sculptures, stained glass, and paintings, like the icons of the Eastern Orthodox tradition, are designed to serve as doorways between the mundane world of stone, glass, and pigment into a spiritual realm that transcends time and space. Through the act of looking, a spiritually minded observer can travel through light, angle, and perspective into a nether realm that defies temporal limitation.
Whether inside a museum or not, I love the look of abandoned doorways and forgotten windows, their particular slants of light beckoning with an irresistible allure. What lies behind and beyond? What souls have passed here in the past; what feet will tread here in the future?
In one of my favorite of her short essays, Annie Dillard describes a childhood memory of hiding from Santa Claus as he “stood in the doorway monstrous and bright” with “night over his shoulder, letting in all the cold air of the sky.” As a child, I too was terrified of Santa Claus and perhaps too of God, craving like all humans to be noticed but fearing to be seen, caught in my unavoidable imperfections.
Now more than ever, with Christmas looming like God’s eye over our shoulder, we grow mindful of what lies behind and beyond: after the hectic chaos of shopping and cooking and merrymaking, toward what end do we wend our days? Dillard concludes her musings about “God in the Doorway” by noting that “once in Israel love came to us incarnate, stood in the doorway between two worlds, and we were all afraid.”
These days when Love appears unannounced on our doorstep, will we be aware enough to heed or even flee? These days oblivion runs deep; these days, I fear we’ve shut our windows and barred our doors, leaving God to grow tired from knocking, his knuckles bruised and battered from our abundance of blind disbelief.
Dec 23, 2004 at 6:41 pm
Lorianne, this essay with associated photoes is nothing less than poetry. And I am not easy to please. How could I have left the Cloisters off the list I gave Gary?
In the end, New York is a drug, I think. I had to leave due to addiction.
LikeLike
Dec 23, 2004 at 7:48 pm
Have you ever visited The Little Church on the Corner? I happened upon it during my one-day north-south walk of the island of Manhattan back in 1984. It’s small but a little gem. New York has lots of gems like that. That walk opened my eyes to what New York is all about.
LikeLike
Dec 23, 2004 at 8:55 pm
Thank you for this beautiful post, and for your beautiful blog. The last lines reminded me of a paragraph by Barth: “He is most near. He wishes to enter; already quite near and yet outside, still before the door, and already we within may hear Him and be expectant of His entry.”
LikeLike
Dec 24, 2004 at 4:38 am
merry christmas!
LikeLike
Dec 29, 2004 at 12:37 am
The Cloisters
As a medieval history buff, I usually have to be content with seeing a bit of sculpture here, a painting or two there, and occasionally…
LikeLike
Dec 30, 2004 at 12:56 pm
Karen, NYC is a drug I take only in small doses: a treat to be savored. As much as I love visiting New York, I think I’d “overdose” if I lived there. But yes, the Cloisters were a gift…I’m so glad to have finally gotten to see them.
Butuki, I’ve never been to the Little Church on the Corner…in fact, I’d never even heard of it! But since I heard another entirely unrelated reference to it after getting your comment, I guess the Universe is nudging me in that direction. I’ll look it up the next time I’m in New York, whenever that happens to be.
Caleb, what a wonderful quote! I’d never heard that paragraph before, but it reminds me of a college acquaintance who once countered an evangelizing Christian by claiming that Christ wasn’t standing outside the doors of our hearts knocking to get in: Christ is already inside us, trying to get *out*. I think there’s a lot of wisdom in that alternate view of God & doorways!
Jax, I hope you had a great holiday!
LikeLike