Medievals touched, kissed and asked for the prayers of the saints portrayed in stone, paint and stained glass, who were rendered with such verisimilitude that they seemed alive, like part of the family. Inside the church was a marvelous democracy of beauty that, like heaven, was available to poor and rich alike. By the 19th century, as the church tried to suppress some superstitious practices, the familial relationship of the faithful to their churches began to devolve into a more formal, less lively relationship with the structure itself.

Living in churches

In 1898, centuries after the heyday of the medieval pilgrim, Frederick Evans, a former bookseller, discovered his life’s calling: photography. In time, he built such a reputation as a photographer, particularly of the cathedrals he loved, that when he turned his camera’s eye to Westminster Abbey, custodians moved the pews and furnishings so he would have enough room to work.

Like the pilgrims before him, Evans would live in a cathedral for weeks at a time. He would walk the church, through the nave, down the aisles, around the cloisters and into its far corners from early morning until sunset, observing the subtle changes in light and atmosphere. One can imagine him, lugging his equipment, framing potential images in his mind and waiting until the light descended into the darkness in just the right way before clicking the shutter and capturing a holy world. Evans sought to create “a record of emotion rather than a piece of topography,” as he wrote in 1904. To do that, he had to become thoroughly familiar with the complex play of light and darkness that is the hallmark—beyond stained glass or flying buttresses—of the Gothic cathedral.

An overwhelming, beautiful new book

With a tenacity that would have drawn Evans’s admiration, the German photographer Achim Bednorz logged some 93,000 miles over the past five years to take the 1,000 photographs that grace Ars Sacra, an overwhelming, beautiful new book (h.f.ullmann, 2011). This massive encyclopedic survey covers Christian art and architecture in Europe from its beginnings in the catacombs of third-century Rome to the present day. Bednorz, who has photographed Christian architecture for nearly four decades, illuminates the inherent sanctity of the buildings and works of art he knows well and imbues their images with a sense of awe. His task, like that of Evans and every artist, was to understand how things look in order to re-present them in a way that transcends the material world.

Ars Sacra is organized chronologically, enabling readers to track cultural shifts and structural innovations. Overviews of soaring church interiors are coupled with illustrations of minuscule details that recall the story of the cathedral artisan who, when asked why he would carve a bird high in the rafters where no one could see it, replied, “God can see it.” This God’s-eye view is extended by the decision of the editor, Rolf Tolman, to emphasize the most significant developments of a given period, highlighting, for example, Romanesque sculpture, Gothic structural technology and Renaissance painting.

This is a book for the ultimate armchair traveler, although, since it weighs in at nearly 25 pounds, a table is needed, too. Hauling this tome from study to dining room and back renewed my appreciation of the literal and metaphoric heft of the visual arts, a precious legacy and wellspring of Catholic devotion.

A creature of light

Architecture, like photography, and like faith, is a creature of light. The world as most of us know it would cease to exist without light, which gives form to its visible dimensions. “Even a room which must be dark needs a crack of light to know how dark it is,” noted Louis Kahn, the modernist architect. Time is also shaped by light, its passage apparent in light’s evanescence—shifting, coming and going—a fleeting quality that moves us because it mirrors our brief time on earth. Light cannot be understood apart from darkness; knowledge of one depends on the other.

During the Advent season, as the days shorten, we fill our churches and homes with candles that focus attention on the light in the darkness, while acknowledging just how dark the dark can be. We reflect on the birth of light, the new light—Christ—remembering that Christ came into the world of visible realities to illuminate what cannot be seen. All the beloved symbols that accompany our celebration of Christ’s birth—the star, the crèche, the straw, sheep and camels—remind us that redemption is embodied and takes place in a world, now illuminated, that we can see.

View a slideshow of images from Ars Sacra

Photo courtesy Achim Bednorz
This article was first published in the December 19, 2011 edition of America Magazine

Full of Grace takes the reader inside the Virgin Mary’s world in ancient Palestine while showing how thoroughly she inhabits the 21st century. The book touches on Mary’s Jewish roots, veneration by Muslims, and powerful presence in Hispanic communities. The joys of friendship, nature of surrender, and dignity of work are explored through a Marian lens in 59 illustrated essays.

* 2011 Catholic Press Association awards: Best Book on Spirituality and Best Design.

To win a copy:

“Like” Full of Grace’s Facebook page and share a few lines about the Virgin Mary’s influence on your life.  Or, if you’re not on Facebook, share your comments here.  Send entries by December 11th. Winners announced on December 12th.

Feel free to re-post and forward to friends.

Naturally, with a new book out, I’m thinking about Oprah, about all those people who seem to hold its fate in their hands.  It is humbling, annoying, and incredibly time consuming to get the word out—my efforts feel like a tiny drop in the voracious media tide that roars in daily. Just how much of this should be turned over to God, I wonder, as I write yet another email. My thoughts go back and forth, a mental ping pong game, and somehow Jonathan Franzen’s head is the ball.  Do you think he’s begging friends to forward reviews of his latest “majestic sweep,” or post reviews on Amazon?  I doubt it.

Margaret Atwood, literary goddess, says writers need three things: “a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there’s no free lunch. Writing is work. It’s also gambling. You don’t get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but essentially you’re on your own. Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don’t whine.”

So let me stop whining and instead contemplate, once again, the nature of surrender and patience.  There’s a lot to be said for surrender and opening to the grace that accompanies letting go of those things that are out of our control.  My hope, at least for today, is to celebrate this book, noticed or not, and rest content knowing that writing it has already enriched my life in profound ways.  Once more, I consider the rewards of patience: The gratification it provides may not be immediate, but rather is the ground from which a more rare happiness, like roses in winter, can bloom.

Photo ã Paulio Geordio

This article first appeared on Intent.com.  Follow my blog on Intent.com!

In Austin, I visited the Harry Ransom Center, the magnificent research library and museum at the University of Texas. The collection boasts many firsts—the first book printed in English (William Caxton’s 1474 edition of Lefevre’s Historyes of Troye); the first photograph (Joseph Nicéphore Niépce’s
View from the Window at Le Gras,
ca.1826); and the first major book illustrated with photographs (The Pencil of Nature, 1844-46, by William Henry Fox Talbot).

Best, though, was seeing the Center’s Book Conservation Lab. It’s essentially a book hospital, where damaged volumes are tenderly brought back to life.  A conservator held up a small plastic bag filled with what looked like wood shavings.  They were the remains of an old book cover that had been repaired.  When I asked what she’d do with them, she said, Oh, we’ll keep them. You never know!  It made me happy—as a writer and a reader—to know that there’s a place, many places, where books and even scraps of books are still considered precious.

These days, as every author knows, publishers are scrambling like chickens without their heads, clucking, The book is dead! The book is dead! But just as opera didn’t die with the advent of movies, and movies weren’t killed off by television, books aren’t dead, they just have to share shelf space with other forms of entertainment. Even though the traditional form of the book may be changing, our innate human need for stories will never die.

Back home, inspired, I saw my writing studio with new eyes.  My bookcases were full to bursting and the floor was covered with precariously tall stacks of books that grew like literary stalagmites. Did I really need all of them?  Sure, as a nonfictionist, I could justify the thousands of titles but, increasingly, I’ve been writing about those bigger, intangible truths that can’t be footnoted but are nonetheless true. I was ready to clear the literal and metaphoric decks and welcome something new, like this blog, into my life.

They say, If you want your life to change, move 27 things.  I moved 27 things—and dozens more. It was an unexpected occasion of grace to sort through my books, releasing those that were no longer needed and acknowledging the authors who had been so helpful to me.  I boxed up about 300 books for Amazon’s new EasySell program, which takes the hassle out of packing and mailing books individually.  But the best part was setting up a book-giveaway table outside my house. Over the course of several weekends, I gave away hundreds of books to neighbors and strangers alike. Sending them into the world so that they could continue to bring pleasure and new insights to others filled me with utter joy.

The book is dead?  Not a chance!

This article first appeared on Intent.com.  Follow my blog on Intent.com!

Inspirational speaker Nicole Johnson uses my book, Churches, to deliver a powerful message of hope for everyone who feels invisible and taken for granted. I don’t know Nicole, but what she took away from Churches and how she brought the lessons of the Gothic cathedral builders to bear on today’s problems, blew me away. Watch, and be inspired! For more on Nicole, visit Fresh Brewed Life, hope for the daily grind.

Building a bridge is a monumental undertaking, and there is something inherent in projects of this size and scope that makes people want to participate in their creation. In the case of the sleek, new I-35W crossing over the Mississippi that opened in Minneapolis this week, Twin City residents engaged in a day-long discussion that determined aspects of the bridge’s design, eighteen hundred schoolchildren made mosaic tiles that adorn the bridge, and thousands watched in wonder as this heroic ten-lane highway bridge rose, incredibly, in eleven short months. To celebrate the bridge and spirit of collaboration, FIGG, the bridge’s designer and engineer of record, has published Bridging the Mississippi: The New I-35W Bridge.  Rich with color photos, plans, and graphics, the book provides a step-by-step overview for the general reader of the bridge’s design, planning, and construction. All book proceeds will be donated to two Minneapolis organizations that further the cause of education.  For more information, and to order the book ($20 plus shipping), visit FIGG.

One thrill of the writing life is receiving pictures of one’s “babies” taken in faraway places. Bill Pinkney, the visionary behind the recreation of the Amistad schooner as a floating, living memorial to civil rights, presented a copy of Monuments, which tells Amistad’s story, to Josephine Kargbo of the Monuments and Relics Commission of Sierra Leone during the Amistad’s 2007-2008 Atlantic Freedom Tour. This historic 18-month journey retraced the slave trade route to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in the United Kingdom in 2007, and in the United States in 2008. The Amistad’s arrival in Sierra Leone—the West African homeland of many of the Amistad captives—was a symbolic “homecoming” and the capstone event of the Atlantic Freedom Tour. Amistad’s epic voyage concluded on June 21, 2008 when she returned to New Haven to fanfare and rejoicing.