Reverence

In her highly acclaimed book An Altar in the World: finding the sacred beneath our feet, Barbara Brown Taylor writes about twelve practices that help us do just that. Among them is reverence, or the practice of paying attention. I have been paying attention to the artwork currently installed in the Minster, in the belief that even though it is not an explicitly Christian vehicle for contemplation, nonetheless I might encounter God as I do so.

Below are details of each of the letters from the central pillar, I AM YHWH – I am struck by how deeply they resonate with my having been in the Judean wilderness, to wadis carved into the rock face, and the very many biblical stories to which that landscape forms the backdrop for experiencing God as our refuge...

And the work interacted creatively for me with these verses from the reading from Hebrews chapter 12 at Morning Prayer yesterday:

“But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.”