GOD / ARCHITECTURE

The word intimacy is, perplexingly, attributed by some to Man’s relationship with God. Christians often say it is important to form ‘an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ’. But what does it even mean to be intimate with God? Is it even possible? To be close to that which is said to be infinitely beyond our comprehension? Some describe their relationship as akin to a son and father: of trust, fellowship and joy. The reality of this relationship can manifest itself emotionally in many ways. As a sense of wonder, awe, guilt, joy, peace.

Let us explore this relationship, let us recall our experience in religious architecture, let us take the cathedral.

Whatdoyoufeelwhenyouareinacathedral? Itscolumnstoweroverus,ourheadsnoteven reachingone-tenthofthebuilding’sheight.Do youfeelpeace?Fear?Reverence? Personally, I am touched by the sublime. I do feel a deep reverence for its history and an awe for its scale. The aesthetic of its proportions and the meticulous stained-glass churn in me joy, and the vulnerability of the sculptures and tombs’ subject matter make me afraid to touch them so that I might ruin their beauty. The cathedral harnesses all the feelings associated with the sense of the beautiful.

Both the sublime and the beautiful should be associated with the experiences one has of nature, yet here I feel these feelings within a human-made structure, and the grander it is, the more sublime, the more detailed and sculptural, the more I feel its beauty. Within a cathedral, these feelings of the sublime and the beautiful can become religious experience.

People have contributed these feelings to different sources; some exclusively to the material, and some to the transcendent. Whether any one is wrong I am unsure, however, if it is not the transcendent that evokes such emotion, then I would suggest that these feelings are derived from more than just purely aesthetic experiences.