Let This Sink In

6-5-2018

Yesterday we went castle hopping.  Let that sink in first.  To be honest, what we did was immerse our selves in my favorite period of Art History, The Dark Ages, Medieval, Early Christian Byzantine.  Most of my knowledge, study and learning were developed on the study of the mainland across much of ancient France, Spain, and Italy but Ireland is a microenvironment of the same period.  What makes it my favorite is the entire period is made up of people who had nothing but God, no hope but Him and yet they produced the most amazing body of Art and architecture all of which was done to connect them to The Almighty.  God Himself had the same problem; how to connect Himself to humans and He did the same thing, He designed and had built great Art and Architecture named the Tabernacle (Read Exodus 30-35) Building is everyone’s mode of making much of their most sincere sense of themselves including Medieval man and God as well (see the cosmos).  So that’s what we did yesterday.  Some background.  When the Roman Empire fell it left the entire western world with no provider of the essentials of civilization, safety and sustenance.  Two things developed during this nearly 1000-year period of history, the feudal system of government and the Christian Church.  The feudal system was basically a strong man able to build a castle on a hill and all the farmers (serfs) living around it hoeing corn or in this case potatoes.  When the barbarians would ride over the hill to attack, the farmers would all run to the castle for protection.  But humans have souls, (regardless of what modern man hides behind; wealth and self) and those souls are what are most important so simultaneously to the growth of the feudal system was the growth of the Church.  To make this clear you only have to look at your own church to see the effects of this ancient system.  What is the highest point on your church? Steeple. Correct.  And what is on top of the steeple?  A cross.  Correct.  That steeple was invented in this time period for one reason.  These people had nothing, starving, dying by the hundreds of thousand by diseases, plaque and war but this was not their eternal lot.   God, by the church (will not debate that in this blog) offered them eternal security in paradise.  That steeple was invented to place The Cross high enough so that while you lived in poverty you could always see the reminder of your salvation.  And so with every major castle came a major Church and today the Church is often all that remains of that system.  Let that sink in. 

This system offered some form of stability to millions of Europeans and is why we did what we did yesterday, castle…or Church hopped.  We stood in these ancient ruins and I wondered as I often do, why does America not build our houses of worship like these people did?  They literally couldn’t rub two pennies together but they were able to build the most beautiful church most of which survive in some part today.  Let that sink in…because “when I was sinking deep in sin…Love lifted me” and that is why I make sculpture and why we church hopped yesterday.   

What's a church without and angel.

Old castle down a pasture path.

Ireland Angor Wat.