Cathedral of Saint John the Divine

A little over a week ago I attended another church, this one in New York City! A one-day vacation from the religious services of Los Angeles, Ben, Kebra, and I headed out one Saturday morning from New Haven. After just barely finding parking, we walked to the cathedral. This cathedral was much more a real cathedral than last week, the Cathedral of Our Lady of our Lady of Angels. And while last week was the real Catholic cathedral, St. John was Episcopal! ...let's just say those religious designations would not have been anyone's first guess after seeing either building--inside or out.

Another "house of prayer for all people," the Cathedral of St. John the Divine was imposing but in a very different way--more Catholic than a catholic cathedral (what a contrast to the last entry!), it was dark, with buttresses and stained glass windows. But unlike most Catholic churches, St. John had an AIDS memorial, an FDNY memorial, a sweet art exhibition, and some rather surprisingly modern stained glass.

 (and there are Ben and Kebra in this picture of the sanctuary!)

Ben got me to this cathedral with a promise of an AIDS memorial, and I was not disappointed. Within the humongous sanctuary, on the right and past the tribute to American Literature, was a rainbow flag and a book of names of people lost to AIDS. I felt acutely aware of being in New York City--the initial epicenter of the epidemic and where Professor Chauncey lost many friends. Some religions are great, especially the kind that don't call AIDS the "gay disease" and shun hiv positive people.

So nice. Also nice, the awesome wood spike FDNY memorial:

This church had a long long empty stone-floored area leading up to the pews and the various altars. There were entirely separate altars around the stone middle-area. One especially neat place had a guestbook at the entrance, leading into a black tent set up behind the altar area, shielded by huge ornamental stone gargoyles. It was an awesome art exhibit! They had filmed the dinner table of various cultures for a while and set up a holograph-type thing to project, in a sped-up way, those meals. Here is a picture I took at the table we were sitting at, to give you an idea:

It was totally awesome! How cool! And then it turned into a slightly creepy table full of arms!

Kinda creepy, when you think about it. The other coolnesses of the church consisted of some awesome statues, like of Shakespeare, Ghandi, Lincoln,etc.

Neat, right? Note the four people all squished together on the left. The right I think was George Washington, though Hamilton was there somewhere too I think.

Last neat part: The stained glass windows! Ben kept coming up and showing me how they would have a basketball player in stained glass or a hockey player! What fun! Other modern stuff as well, like field hockey and tennis and things not even related to sports!

Sadly, I attended this church before the lovely new iPhone update that allows iPhone zooming! Get ready for even better pictures taken by smart phone!

Apologies for being a bit brief, but as there was no actual service, there were fewer epiphanies, other than that cathedrals don't need to be Catholic! They can be Episcopalian too. Yay New York City.

Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels

The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, on 555 West Temple St in downtown Los Angeles, California, is unlike any cathedral I have ever seen. The first word I wrote in my notebook was "wow," the second, "austere." I went two Mondays ago for the weekday mass with a friend of mine from high school, Nedah. From the outside, it is very Californian, made of solemn tan/yellowish-dyed cement, ala California missions. The main entrance is rather inconspicuous, compared to the rest of the massive building. We learned when we took the tour that it was the Virgin Mary encapsulated in sculpture above the door, the namesake of our lady of the angels, and she was 8ft tall, made of bronze, and not recognizable at first like any Mary I'd seen before. She was in plain garb, which according to our old whizened tour guide meant that it was meant to seem like she had just been surprised from the kitchen and was here to welcome us in. (thanks, traditional gender roles for women) A pleasant surprise about her sculpture was that apparently the artist (Robert Graham) made her face by incorporating a facial characteristic of every race of woman in the world. Not sure exactly how that was possible, but a distinctive face it was nonetheless.

Apparently she was surrounded by the sun and atop the moon. (didn't notice the crescent until he said that)

The huge bronze doors cost $3 million to make and the artist's mother's rosary was embedded into the metal, low enough that you could touch it:

We sped ahead into the service. Our Monday 12:10pm service was attended by a decent crowd, including a large group of 2nd graders from Manhattan Beach, who had just taken their first communion that morning. The priest wore green and the reader (a woman, which is apparently a relatively new development for Catholicism, or at least some of Catholicism) wore bright pink. The sermon was brief, intended to be shorter than a lunch break, it seemed. The message, as best as I remember: God chose the ravens to feed Elijah. Not some pretty birds, but ravens. Symbolism, folks. I was terribly distracted during the service by the gorgeous yet simple decorations. The whole cathedral inside, most noticeably the floor, was slanted towards the gorgeous red marble altar (six tons!) at the front:

And I just can't resist showing you the close-up of what held up this altar:

Whew. We sat in the 50K each pews (thanks wikipedia) and marveled at the windows and the tapestries. The windows were made of alabaster stone, so they let in light without any of the glare. Instead of stained glass windows, there were huge tapestries on the walls, depicting people looking towards the altar as well, along with the slanted floor. Most noticeable was that the people were not just saints and holy people, but normal people as well! Here's a pew:

One of the tapestries even had a little white boy in sneakers!

Notice! He's even wearing shorts. (it's the second tapestry from the left and he's standing next to a black boy wearing tan pants.) Also appreciate the chandeliers, with the three lamps clearly representing the trinity--what might be less noticeable is that the center metal thing was actually a speaker! Because the acoustics were so bizarre, they just decided to rig up a huge speaker system out of every chandelier in the whole place.

The sermon continued. One thing that surprised me was that when the donation plates were passed around, when other churches would usually let newcomers pass it by, this priest instead said: "Especially if it's your first time, please give generously." Not sure how to interpret what that meant for us and stereotypes of Catholicism, Nedah and I let it pass us by.

It was then that I perhaps did something... bad. The time came to take communion and I did not know what to do. I had been told by a Catholic friend many years ago that if I was not baptized, I was not allowed to take communion. However, no one mentioned this at this fine noon service at Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels that morning. The ritual began, with bread and wine given to each congregant who came up to the priest and several female attendants. And I decided, both in the interest of research and experimentation, to go along with it. Now, I can't lie. Those were not the only reasons I did it. It was actually in that moment that I had a kind of epiphany. Maybe it was the grandeur of the place, the very underscored cross at the front, but I felt confident. And I decided to not give in to the shame and guilt inherent in being in a Catholic cathedral and not having been baptized. Being excluded from such a ritual because I had not taken part in another ritual... thinking that I was not allowed to participate gave me an overwhelming sense of guilt. I had heard of Catholic guilt before, but guilt for not being Catholic seemed to be another thing entirely, and what I was experiencing in that moment. And so I did it. I took full communion. No, I did not become Catholic in that moment. And I was not smitten by lightning either. I took the little chewy cracker and sipped the tasty red wine that even the 2nd graders got to sup, and I refused to feel guilty. I participated in a time-honored ritual, paying tribute to a god, perhaps. I did not feel that my not being baptized made my tribute any less worthy. And I decided that I would not be cowed. There was no one to stop me and no one even looked at me twice when I was up there, in line, in front of the priest, or in front of the attendant. Nedah was my only witness, and she stayed back in our pew, unwilling to participate in something so foreign to her beliefs. But I decided that I was practicing openness in doing this project, and that I was going to go along with everything that happened at these services to the fullest of my potential. I don't want to be solely window shopping, but trying things on as well. With no intention to buy, still similar to window shopping, but more like at least pretending for a second that I owned that article of clothing, that thing I was trying on that I saw in the window, in this case Catholicism, and trying to see what it would feel like. Metaphors aside, I felt the guilt wash away from me, then come back a bit, like a wave tends to do in a Catholic cathedral, and then I decided that what was done was done, and refused to listen to it again.

After the service, Nedah and I went and joined the 1pm tour of the cathedral. I have never felt so educated about a building. The tour was long, but when I say long, I mean LONG. It was TWO HOURS LONG. That is one LONG tour of a cathedral. And while at the end I felt like I was going to start chewing the soles of my shoes I was so hungry, I did learn a lot about this cathedral, and even cathedrals in general. For instance! We learned that whenever a cathedral is founded, the constellations of the night it is dedicated are recorded somewhere on the grounds. We learned that the Hearst Castle donated the biggest bell of the cathedral, and that a small bell in the corner never rings and is a memorial to the man who built the wall. We learned that there are 42 languages of the Los Angeles archdiocese covered by this cathedral, the biggest archdiocese in the country. The cathedral's mantra "a house of prayer for all people" was taken far more seriously than I had imagined. On the plaza was a Jerusalem fountain, in honor of the Jewish community. The twelve palm trees of the plaza, which could hold 5,000 people for dinner, represented the twelve apostles.

We learned about the baptism pool inside, in explaining it our tour guide said: "we limit it to 20 babies every Sunday. We could do 30 babies, but you can only do so much." (tell me about it! what a large congregation!)

I think this was the world's tallest tapestry. But that's the baptism pool down at the bottom, full of holy water.

Continuing the tour, we learned that a cathedral is called such because inside it is a "cathedra," which is a chair of authority where the bishop sits:

Plus pretty organ pipes!

You can't see from that picture and I felt too weird to take a picture (yes, I'll admit it, I'm kind of afraid of crosses) but between the cathedra and the organ was Jesus on the cross, but the story of that particular art/ornament/talisman/object was really bizarre. The brass statue of Jesus himself was really creepily accurate of what a body would look like having been nailed to a cross for three days. Our tour guide explained in detail about how all the organs move down to the legs and how the pancreas ruptured and how the skin would look after being whipped, etc. It was sculpted by a Jewish sculptor, apparently, and get this: Not only did he try to make it look like a Jewish man on the verge of death. He actually ended up going kind of mad, attempted to put nails through his own hands he got so into this project... and then converted to Catholicism. Creepy, no?

At the ceiling of this huge cathedral there were two red hats that looked like Chinese New Year hats (if such exists). Apparently, those hats are given to a new cardinal by the pope. When the cardinal dies, the hat is hung up in the church and it stays up there--and the cardinal's soul does too--until the hat rots and falls down.

The last 30 minutes of the tour was of the mausoleum in the basement. Very similar to the cemeteries-in-the-walls that I saw in Hong Kong, just way emptier and newer. On our way out, I saw a sweet old Asian man crying by a picture, presumably of his late wife. Silenced, we moved away.

Overall, I've got to say: the Los Angeles Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels is an incredible cathedral. Post-modern in the neatest way, with miniature art galleries inside but surrounding the main indoor room, with tasty wine, remarkable tolerance of Jews (lots of rabbis participated in the dedication and sometimes used the building itself for their own services) and many great stories. Definitely worth the visit.

Stay tuned for a brief respite from Los Angeles-specific places of worship: New York City's Cathedral of St. John the Divine! Exciting stained glass but not Catholic! What is this world coming to!

Saddleback Church - Lake Forest

Sunday June 6, 2010, Saddleback.
What a church. Saddleback Church, of Rick Warren-Obama fame, was quick to join my list of must-see churches in SoCal. And I was not disappointed. The campus would put some small liberal arts colleges to shame--it's a behemoth. To begin our day, Mom and I raced down the 5 South this morning to get there with some semblance of timeliness and were only about five minutes late. We buzzed into a parking lot with a sign about visitors and jumped on a shuttle to the worship center.

The first discussion I heard on the shuttle was between a father and his teenage daughter. I overheard starting at about the time the father was explaining "You can't be Christian in China because it is Communist." His daughter: "what happens to them?" The father paused a moment... "They go to jail." She then replied that she was glad to be in America, where we can believe whatever we want. So while that is not, persay, true (to my knowledge yes the Chinese government regulates religious institutions and possibly also believers who do not toe the government's line, but jailtime is a bit much. From what I found online, a fine is the worst of it.), it did encourage my new exploration of religious faiths, for better or for worse.

Jogging off the shuttle, we noticed people lounging on lawn chairs directly outside the building, while (Christian) rock music blasted. That was, as we learned later, where you could "worship from the suntan area." Oh California. Entering the Worship Hall, the drum set was overpowering. Ricardo Sanchez on vocals and rhythm guitar, plus his band of drums, bass, lead guitar, and backup singers were rocking out hardcore. Awesome. I love it already. We make our way up into stadium seating and appreciate the view, trying to calculate how many people were in that hall (we guessed about 2,000).

And I could have picked a slightly better picture, but this one shows the drums on the big screens and I'm a sucker for drums.

The pastor this morning was (tragically) not the infamous Rick Warren, but the still excellent Teaching Pastor Tom Holladay. His sermon began with a discussion of financial situations and how they can tough. He moved on then to "Five Secrets To Contentment," the topic of the day. We learned that contentment must be learned and is not settling for less. "Give up or gear up." He quickly endeared himself to the audience by discussing his wife and kids. The message of perseverance was a good one, as well as the idea that comparison is the "#1 enemy of contentment." He showed, on the huge screens above his head, pictures of cars and ice cream to illustrate his point. Throughout the sermon, the ushers for the stadium... I mean worship hall, had their heads constantly on pivot, standing and surveying the audience, for what? I do not know. Holladay continued, encouraging us to "keep our lives free from the love of money." His use of technology continued with an adorable video of a dog chasing an ATV. At one point, the dog laid down to wait for the ATV to come back, and mom plus approximately 1,200 people in the audience went AWWW. The moral of the video was that we need to be careful of what we are chasing. Whether the dog caught the ATV of not, both options were not great for him (apparently "he should be chasing a female dog!" -Holladay). We should not pursue things that we don't want because we compare ourselves to others. He encouraged an often re-evaluation of our goals and to find what is really worthwhile in our lives. After a long discussion of such excellent morals and things to strive for, he then veered into how Christ will give us strength to do these things. Sitting there watching the masses, I felt that at that point, it wasn't Christ who gave me faith and strength to do things, but, well, to quote my dear friend Ben Simon, mass movements. Seeing two thousand people inspired to change their lives for the better and do things to make themselves content and to help others... is inspiring. Inspiring of faith. Perhaps that is what humanism is after all. Taking responsibility as humans to do right by ourselves and others. But enough of my own personal revelations.

The sermon ended with a prayer, during which all of the ushers left to man doors and the rock band re-emerged. One last song, as gorgeous as all the ones at the beginning (I forgot to mention the service technically began at 11:15am, but the pastor didn't show up till 11:35am--20 minutes of standing and clapping to great music!), this time Ricardo sang the last verse and chorus in Spanish! How terrible that my year of Spanish only allowed me to pick out "fuimos" and "grace a su amor." Regardless, it was a great touch, and surprised me a bit in that I often imagine conservative Christian ideals to coincide with the english-only movement. But I now know better than to presume.

The end of the service brought on stage the only female to speak into the main mic, a woman who told us that all of our needs could be filled, right there at Saddleback--something along the lines of "want to pray--we have a prayer table, want to be inspired--we have an inspiration table, want to be baptized--we have clothes for you and a beautiful heated pool: we are a full service church." Yes, like jiffy lube. And little did I know, she was not kidding! The campus includes: info booths, 2 ministry offices, 3 huge tents for "smaller" services (but still huge), a grill, a deli, a "refinery" which included a basketball court, more theaters, and a large eating/meeting area, a cafe, two baptism pools including waterfalls, a skateboarding park (I kid you not), and a huge children's center. I was utterly blown away by the vast amount of resources, especially for kids. Things like free tutoring and games after school were totally the norm. I saw why thousands of people were members of this incredible institution.

The baptism pool right outside the entrance to the worship center. The much larger pool was a couple blocks away.

You thought I was kidding. The skatepark.

On our way out of the worship center, I grabbed a "Saddleback Church Cares!" brochure, which listed the support groups. While some looked awesome and so necessary (Hepatitis C, Grief Support, Early Retired with MS, and Breast Cancer), the open share groups made me a little dubious. Yes, there was one for Anger (men and women), and one for Sexual Addiction (men and women). But why was Love & Relationship Addiction (women)? And Financial Issues (men)? Of course only men deal with finances. Just like women are the only ones with love and relationship addiction! Oh, gender stereotypes, how you pain me.

Overall, I was highly impressed by Saddleback. Spit n' polished, the campus was gorgeous. Palm trees, waterfalls, the feeling of being on a tropical island was unavoidable. Ushers kept worship highly ordered, with half a dozen wheelchairs lined up by the aisles, and a decently diverse worshiping community (not all white and fewer old people than some might expect of Orange County--though again this was the 11:15am service, not the 9am). Even the decor of the building was perfect, with the pastor seemingly speaking before where a fireplace might go in a ski lodge, with indoor wintergreen foliage. With good messages of how to achieve contentment and a rocking live band; the sexism and attention-to-detail on such a massive scale (think Disneyland) were the only things that I found slightly unsettling. But I got to witness my second (and third) baptism in just a month! Perhaps I will return someday to try to catch Pastor Rick speaking. But for now, I've had my fill of megachurches. This pic was from inside the refinery, to the upper level where we couldn't go cuz we aren't high schoolers: