knowing structure and space

not such an odd proposal
i needn't consider the seemingly evident
strangeness of two protestants
escorting a catholic to a place of worship
taking the pains to go to the city and see there
an edifice conceived as a means of stating
a very involved sequence of meanings

you can do things to prepare for such a journey
you can leave even the departure sort of ambiguous
you can hinge the possibilities on factors
no one seems to be able to control

but then one finds oneself on a train
rolling down the track to a bigger city

we came to the station called union
i was in a strange place
even though i'd been there before
i did not know this place
it seemed to me that i had been someone else
at a different time with people who appeared
in my mind more like angels than anything else

it takes a meal to make people friends
to share food and thoughts is the only thing
worth doing socially everything else is just talk
and a meal amid the commercial joy of
hispanic innocence and the flow of people
walking through the market with summery outdoor
intentions is one way of locating ones status
in the universal pilgrimage

whenever i walk out onto busy streets that i do not know
i have the feeling of dreaming like somehow
this is not taking place in real time with real people
it is all somehow the development of a state of mind
which is more like dreaming
this is enhanced by the fact that all of a sudden
i see thousands of people whom i will never know

but i will deem to walk through their streets
i will deem to eat at their restaurants
i will walk up a steep hill
like a pilgrim urging himself onward

there i stood in the generous welcome space
the plaza outside the immense stylized steel re-enforced
concrete structure dedicated to what?

the name should be more disturbing than it is
to presume that there is such a thing as a lady
who is a queen and reigns above an immense consort of
winged insubstantial but somehow intelligent beings

but since los angeles is a city that is successful to some degree
it has managed to stay there and grow
for well over 200 years and that it was initially
consecrated as a place where angels could have some sway
who will mind if i insert my being into the ethereal presence of the city

big cities have a catholic presence
big cities more or less ask for
cathedral presence

how do catholics arrange places of worship?

well if you want to say something with a building
you build something big and spacious
you permit an architect to use methods that while
betraying something of modern engineering technique
suggest at the same time a primitive encounter
a place where a memory of human tumult comes into play
and the resolution that somehow the playing out of a series
of events which impinge upon everyone takes on some sort
of visual expression

at the door of the cathedral of our lady of the angels
the sign welcomes the pilgrim
-welcome to your cathedral- it says
that's the only claim it makes
there is nothing to suggest that because of your
ethnic religious or intellectual background you may not
be welcome here
all are welcome

this is sort of difficult to arrange isn't it
i mean to say this is a house of god
and we ask only that you recognize it as such
is a matter which requires some attention
deliberation strategy and implementation skills

to walk through the door is to actualize the welcome
you are in and there is nothing to suggest
that it is not alright to be there
you can be there no matter who you are

you can walk in walk up some stairs and walk into an immense
open hallway that leads somewhat mysteriously
to some internal entry ways which pull the observor
into an even larger space that can be misconstrued for nothing else
this is a place of worship
even the sanctuary stands in open invitation
in a way that would not be quite so evident
were actual liturgies taking place at the time

one enters such a place in a cloud of quiet
one does not presume to make noise
the walls are lined with elegant tapestries
the faces of catholic heroes made from the actual photographed faces of local catholic men and women and children
faithful people or perhaps if possible a likeness from a previous representation
of a saint
all of these visages face the altar in the sanctuary and
thus
so i should too
and the pews sit there with humble receptivity
for you to sit
for you to kneel for you to bend in prayer
if you desire
if you must

perhaps because the concrete forms
are tinted with the color of soil
found in southern california
one feels like one is destined somehow
to be this color or one could even hold ones arm to the
cool concrete wall and see a closeness
this earthtone is a sort of fleshtone

i walked around i glided slowly from front to back i sat for long moments
i gazed into side spaces where elegant and interesting artwork stood
some of it beyond the scope of moneyed value
some of it innocent and worthless but a testimony to
innocent religious motivation

can i make a claim for being at home in such a place
i who live more than 1000 miles from such a place
how is it that one upon entering into such a place
desires then to participate in the liturgy of such a place
and to make oneself at home

there is a place amid the mayhem of a rather crass urban layout
a vast demeaning of the local geography that is a city
a place where one can escape into the necessary all important
escapes of momentary recognition of power in the world
heaped up and spread out liberally from the image
of a man impaled on a cross

amber light
and shards of white peer through
windows near the high ceiling
the natural light is always muted
but always sufficient

love wisdom
walk humbly with your god

that is imperative the message conveyed
by the rectangular and formed edifice
the presumption of the cathedral
and all it entails speaking confidently
in a land of ethereal considerations
(for who believes in angels anyway)
a place set apart for honest acknowledgement
a place of prayerful security in a world of
continual disenfranchisement

a protestant couple walks up the big hill
in the middle of a big city on a pretty hot
southern california day
and they even open the door for a straggling catholic to go in

as i walked away i was conscious of an architectural insult
as i looked back against the sky and saw the cathedral
poised there above the mayhem of the city
i noticed (as i had upon ascending the hill)
a way of some other thinking set of principles
to offer a gesture of dismissal and even one might say
deliberate hatred for the earthtone place of sober inebriation
an edifice built for no purpose
a big involved piece of tinkertoyed effort
which offers nothing more than a remark of resistance and doubt
from across the busy highway 101 below
a sort of middle finger of selfabsorbed intractable social conduct
an architectural deviation from an older way of knowing
a piece that offers a counter to the tower with the cross
a piece that says no
we can build a circular walkway but it is nothing
and we can encase a web of steel angles in a glass
and concrete structure and claim nothing whatsoever
in terms of necessity or natural curiosity
a building that claims its existence is enough
and what it proposes to contrast is doubtful in
whatever merit it might claim for itself

be that as it may
i can say
the thought and care and manual effort
that went into
our lady of the angels cathedral
touched me very deeply

and being accompanied there by
my noncatholic friends
makes it ever more memorable

it is always more than just the geography
or the technology

later that night i was awash in humility
afflicted somehow
but eventually cleansed
and it may have had more to do with sitting
in the blessed sacrament chapel
than the mexican food of the afternoon

go there yourself
don't trust my word

ask yourself upon walking into the cathedral
is this for me?

amen