Some good places to sit in silence

It does little good to lambast an earlier generation's aesthetic values. Time shapes us, makes us pull on penny loafers instead of Nikes, jeans instead of hoop skirts, Beadle haircuts instead of military cuts. Once upon a time--I hardly dare say it--the good Catholics of Sioux Falls decided to whitewash the interior of this magnificent cathedral, The Cathedral of St. John, assuming that rubbing out all the magnificent color would draw more attention to the front of the sanctuary, to the glory of the Host. 

So it took years and some kind of investment, I'm sure, to re-colorize those magnificent columns to make their marble shine so that the whole cathedral sings. Here's a couple of stations of the cross, repainted to repair something of their original look. And, yes, that's Mary, the Mary far back there dressed as she almost always is, in blue, arms raised petitioning the Father. Here Jesus takes up his cross." Imagine it whitewashed.

Or, the agony of His being nailed to the cross.

So here it is today--or, yesterday, I suppose, when we visited.

For years I've loved cathedrals--the big ones in Netherlands, as well as other places I've been in Europe, including Italy, of course. And I understand--or I believe I do--their idea--to create a wondrous sanctuary for the Jesus here regularly served up, body and blood, for the redemption of man and woman and child; to create awe in the believer, the kind of stunned silence of all great cathedrals. 

To honor this singular man, both God and man.

For Protestants like me, there are lots of reasons to visit cathedrals, be they as spacious and awesome as Cathedral of St. Joseph in Sioux Falls, SD, or as tiny as the grief chapel way out beside an old cemetery on the eastern plains of Nebraska.

Or this one in Remsen, Iowa.

  

or St. Donatus, Iowa

or this one in Pawhuska, OK.

Places to sit in silence.