Sky architecture

Sky architecture

By Isabel Rosas

The domes of the sky emerge from the horizon of the center of each ancient city. They are the helmets of the soldiers of the void who guard the altars of the most high Lord of the heavens. Below each dome the stone ribs show the lordship of his non-earthly command. Each dome emerges from the surface to show its stately shell adorned with serpentine tiles. Your structural entrails are perfect symmetry, as if they were demigods invoking the omnipotent God of all creation.

On your pendentives rests the gallery of whispers that captures the heavenly sound of each sacred homily. Meanwhile, your obedient dome lets light and sound enter through its cracks like messages from limbo. It is the architecture of heaven that of each temple; the archaic, the medieval, the Moorish, the Renaissance, the eclectic or the neoclassical where faith, hope and charity are the divine messengers who embrace each other within the sacred apse to sing the spiritual allegories of the ritual that promises eternal life .

Above the mystique of your sanctified place passes your physical beauty; Sky architecture. Your altarpiece of gold or wood or stucco is the sanctuary of the mourner, the believer or the one who comes on their knees to pray on the surface of your sacred echoes. Your domes trap an ethereal celestial vault of peace; a cosmic space for the sacrifice placed on your altar to unite heaven and earth and make us feel the omnipresence of the one who will never be seen.

Architecture of heaven is that of Christians, Catholics, Muslims or Orthodox, it is their expression of spiritual joy; It is his answer to the mystery of what has never been understood. Your spaces are silence, they are light, they are music, they are tears, they are joy, they are forgiveness imprinted on every wall, every column, every rib, every mullion, every rosette, every stained glass window. Each nave, side or central, is inhabited by faithful who sing or remain silent to receive communion. The resonance of your organ reverberates dancingly between the columns of the presbytery, the tabernacle, the portico; to raise the joint prayers of the devotees. Your baptismal font is water that makes sins transparent to forgive them in one dip.

Architecture of heaven, your central path opens between the benches with the smell of cedar to allow you to see the greatness and beauty of a God who is worshiped. Your celestial symbols and figures look without looking while the flames of each candle deform the faces. Your lofty domes are the ideal refuge, your height is the perfect distance meant to force one’s gaze upward toward the divine mystery of greatness that is in the heavens.