Blessed with the Best
Last year, I think pretty close to around this time, I wrote a post about how the gorgeous trees in the forest at camp remind me of all of the best parts of my favorite Gothic cathedrals. I have not only continued to find that to be the case, but I have also had the wonderful opportunity to attend a church that seems to embrace the wonderful comparison between nature and faith.
St. Agnes Church in Nashville, Indiana is not a cathedral by any means, but is still one of my favorite churches ever. The church itself is a wonderful complement to the Brown County landscape. Built into a hill, it's a small church made almost entirely of wood and stone, with a tall ceiling and beautiful windows. The windows are my absolute favorite part. The large window facing the parking lot is gorgeous stained glass, which almost looks like a column of fire with hundreds of different colors. The windows behind the altar are different. They're just plain windows. They open out onto a beautiful portion of Brown County woods. The colors of the leaves transform those windows into the best form of stained glass. Every time I attend mass, I can't help but marvel at not just the wonder of the Eucharist, but the wonder of God's creation.
I often think of how the churches that I have attended throughout my life have been such perfect reflections of my life at each point. There's St. Malachy, where I went to grade school and grew up, College Church in St. Louis, with its incredible stained glass and the most marvelous Catholic campus community, the churches and cathedrals and basilicas of Europe which proved my love of history, and now St. Agnes, which does its best to not just blend in with the beautiful natural surroundings, but to make those surroundings the absolute focal point, just like what I'm doing with my job. As I often do at camp, I can't help but feel incredibly lucky.
*small side note* - I just realized that I somehow have over 2,000 page views? WHAT?!? Whether you are a loyal reader of this blog or this is the first post of mine you've ever read, thank you! It may be difficult to tell from the inconsistencies in my posting, but I really do love this little blog, and I hope to keep blogging and continue to bring some small moment of joy and light and thought provocation to whoever reads what I've written.
St. Agnes Church in Nashville, Indiana is not a cathedral by any means, but is still one of my favorite churches ever. The church itself is a wonderful complement to the Brown County landscape. Built into a hill, it's a small church made almost entirely of wood and stone, with a tall ceiling and beautiful windows. The windows are my absolute favorite part. The large window facing the parking lot is gorgeous stained glass, which almost looks like a column of fire with hundreds of different colors. The windows behind the altar are different. They're just plain windows. They open out onto a beautiful portion of Brown County woods. The colors of the leaves transform those windows into the best form of stained glass. Every time I attend mass, I can't help but marvel at not just the wonder of the Eucharist, but the wonder of God's creation.
I often think of how the churches that I have attended throughout my life have been such perfect reflections of my life at each point. There's St. Malachy, where I went to grade school and grew up, College Church in St. Louis, with its incredible stained glass and the most marvelous Catholic campus community, the churches and cathedrals and basilicas of Europe which proved my love of history, and now St. Agnes, which does its best to not just blend in with the beautiful natural surroundings, but to make those surroundings the absolute focal point, just like what I'm doing with my job. As I often do at camp, I can't help but feel incredibly lucky.
*small side note* - I just realized that I somehow have over 2,000 page views? WHAT?!? Whether you are a loyal reader of this blog or this is the first post of mine you've ever read, thank you! It may be difficult to tell from the inconsistencies in my posting, but I really do love this little blog, and I hope to keep blogging and continue to bring some small moment of joy and light and thought provocation to whoever reads what I've written.
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