Windows on Faith

Feeling my heart pump and tears filling my eyes, as I watched the spire fall into the flames at Notre Dame this week, I could only go inward and send prayers for the world of faith.  For each of us may see the same thing and interpret it quite differently, while in our hearts we experience the moment personally. 

As a young child of five I attended a Catholic school and services regularly during that one year. My only feeling of recall of that experience is that I continually had to look up.  I looked up at the nuns, the buildings, the adults, the alter, the trees, the sky, and the colorful stained glass windows. Then I was told to look down when praying. This made no sense to a child of tiny stature. I began to question religion quite early in life. Why not look up to the heavens when talking to God or Jesus or Mary? 

As long as no one watched me in church, I looked up to and through the stained glass windows sending my short prayers to heaven. I knew as a child that needed all the help I could get. 


Decades later and a life filled with sorrow, loss, bliss and love I still need help from above. In our sanctuary, at First Christian Church, I found peace and radiant colors of life and love in these traditional stained glass windows, and I discovered a new way of looking at faith through another set of windows to be found in our chapel. 







Our chapel glows with the colors from these windows on faith.  The six panels share a perspective on faith beginning with the first Window of the Beginning (not shown below)  Window of the Nativity, Window of Christ the King, Window of the Disciples, Window of the Trinity, and Window of Christ in the World (not shown below). Often I sat in Sunday school lost in the visuals surrounding me. 

Window of Nativity, of Christ the Kind, of the Disciples, of the Trinity 

The ribbons running through of blues and purple became my path for connecting the symbols. At last I asked a church member how the windows came to be and what some of the symbols represented. She explained that it was the church's intent that the windows be read and understood from any perspective (top to bottom, bottom to top, side to side in either direction) and singly or in any combination.  

Window of Beginning 

With the information in hand, I told myself to jump into the deeper meanings. Journeys take us in so many directions but always my eyes search for colors first. The blues in the panels represent water, sky, hope, truth, spiritual love, or God the Father. The purple ribbons that flow across the panels tell the story of endurance, sorrow, royalty, penitence, Advent, Lent, and God the Father. Green, the color of spring, represents nature, hope, faith, triumph of life over death, growth, victory, and the Trinity Season. A rainbow in the heavens can say so much.

In the first window, the Window of the Beginning the symbols are the Star of David, Alpha Omega, the Rainbow and the Ark, the Tablets of the Ten Commandments. The text words are; Covenant, Prophecy, Logos, Truth, and Lord.

The various crosses then came to life for me. They are: Celtic, the early Christian symbol taken from Ireland to Iona by Columba in the 6th C. The circle through the cross symbolizes eternity;  Tau, the first letter of the Greek word for God, theos, OT cross and Cross of prophecy;  Anchor, used by early Christians in the catacombs, less obvious than the Latin or Greek shapes stands for the Christians' hope in Christ as a sure anchor;  Greek, one of the two traditional forms of all arms equal or the vertical arm longer. It is also the ancient symbol of the four directions and four winds;  Crux Ansate, hieroglyphic symbol of life and regeneration, later adapted by Christians as symbol of eternal life. These are still picture stories to be seen, felt, and pulled into. 

In the last panel I felt our heritage expand and grow, but I have many windows to go to learn about faith. This is not intended to be a story of labels, instead I think it is another way to look at our world through the lenses of these symbols and the history of our faith world.

Window of Christ in the World (6) 

Here is where I found the keeping of the love of God in my heart as the Dove, the symbol of peace and the Holy Spirit descends upon us

  

and sits outside my writing window to open my heart and mind, reminding me to look upward and say, "Thank You."





*Thank you Lynne Levy for sharing history and meaning of these Stained Glass Windows.