Matter and Energy

Most churches have had their share of easing  life’s  journeys. From the time an individual is introduced into the community, accepts its rules and rites, marriage, confession and death. Often, we remember when the weather reflects the emotions being experienced.  Tears pour down as it rains at a funeral or a moment of hope appears as light streams through the window during a wedding service. Churches are often built to remove or extol the grandeur of the unknown supreme presence(s).

Some churches, like the Sagrada Familia  are built as a living piece of art, a legacy that the future must preserve. In 1882, Antonio Gaudi, took over the project of building this church in Barcelona, from Francisco de Paula del Villar, the architect who resigned a year after being commissioned to recreate the Italian Basilica della Santa Casa of Loreto. Gaudi, a visionary Catalan architect and a pioneer of the Modern movement transformed the streets of Barcelona with his fantastical, colorful, and structurally groundbreaking masterpieces.

The first time I visited Sagrada Familia, the unfinished nature of the construction caught me off guard. The building apparently was built on a song and a prayer, with insufficient funds to complete the massive project whose cost continued to escalate over more than 100 years.  I later learned that Duomo di Milano, Cologne cathedral and St.Vitus in Prague took about 600 years to build.

I was immersed in the experience. It felt like I was traveling along an unfamiliar winding road, where even twenty minutes seems like a long time because there is no stopping or refocusing attention of a totally different landscape. It was beyond me to ever imagine being able to return, so I had to take in every detail my brain could handle.

I felt the building whisper secrets of nature. The interior pillar’s structure shift from polygonal to circular, forming stone trees. This stone forest embodies mystical symbolism. The architectural genius captivates the senses creating the impression of being inside a sponge that holds and transports those in the church along the hero’s journey. I drank in the sculptured details of each of the exterior doorways,  going from the nativity, through to glory and passion. I recall walking  into the church, awakened to my spiritual quest. Walking through  the belly of the whale was impressive.

The crypt where Gaudi was buried held a dank, eerie feeling. The rose-flowered designs on the stained-glass windows caught my attention.  When I left the church, I was humbled by Gaudi’s genius.

As good fortune has it, I was able to visit again in February several years later. We arrived just before noon. Upon entering the church, music was playing. The echoing vibrations embraced me. I took time to define the feeling.  I felt the sacredness of a dream, made into reality.  As I looked up, up and up I observed the white light streaming in through the alcoves, perched atop the tree like support structures, that stretched like tendons on my neck to hold a heavy head up high.

 The day was not particularly hot or sunny, but pleasant.  A fog began to permeate the atmosphere within the church. Gaudi used no colouring or inscriptions on the upper windows, so the sun could illuminate the vaults decorated with mosaics and highlight their great height.

 I felt like I was at the bottom of a steep mountain, but felt that being here, at the Temple, felt closer to Heaven than I had ever been.

Gaudí put the most intensely coloured stained-glass windows, decorated with the names of saints and sanctuaries, in the lowest windows, to make them easier to read. As I was looking at them, came the moment I was unprepared for.

Because the winter sun sits at a lower angle, dramatic light beams filtered spectacularly through the stained glass. From the East, the Nativity façade , blue, green, and turquoise light streams moved beautifully through onto the  walls and ceiling.  Then they hit the trees that became alive. Matter disappeared into energy.  The effect was mesmerizing.

We were part of an underwater scene with waves of light bathing us. We stood there photographing the living, moving space where nature became alive in the moments light. As my friend and I wandered around I was focussed on the intense, warm, and fiery oranges and yellows that made me feel a divine light.

Remembering the intensity of being bathed in that light now reminds me of the poverty of the usual human experience. At this particular moment, I recall my humanity connecting to  the forces of nature between heaven and Earth.

Gaudi said, "Sunshine is the best painter."

 Gaudi used his imagination to allow nature to change the traditional Gothic-Revival design of the church. In doing so he captured the space that is the energy.

His work embodies the genius of a man who understands that space mimics the energy of nature and is part of  nature itself. I more deeply understood the famous equation of Einstein, the one rock. Energy equals the mass times the energy squared. The light of the sun combined with the transmission of light through the windows created an energy that shifted thoughts into things of matter that flow with the energy of the Universe.