NEW SCIENCE, NEW URBANISM, NEW ARCHITECTURE, SPIRITUALITY?

An area of interest for me (as a non-architect) is the place of physical space, scale, boundaries, symmetries, contrast, ambiguity, shape, gradients, texture, simplicity, connectedness…etc and our encountering of God. What kinds of architecture create “thin spaces” – holy places, spaces that serve as doorways into the transcendent, spaces that draw us into the Trinitarian union, spaces that silence and still us in the presence of God?

I often wonder what we are saying about God, ourselves, and Christianity more generally as I reflect on the architecture of church buildings, particularly the more recent trend toward using warehouses, bland, boring, textureless, functional structures. I wonder about the relationship between architecture, colour, artistry etc. and faith development; between architecture and narrow, black and white views of Christianity, and those which are wider, deeper, and oftentimes richer…It strikes me as interesting to think about it.

Architect Christopher Alexander believes that structure (i.e. architecture and construction) can work against human wholeness and spirituality. Angus Stocking writing about this notion (in relation to Alexander) says “…After all, how many people leave nature to get ‘back to the city’ when seeking peace and enlightenment? There are, of course, exceptions. Beautiful gardens or soaring cathedrals can become engines of transcendence. But these are exceptions that prove the rule; generally speaking

With those kinds of thoughts in mind, and a great appreciation for the work of Philip Sheldrake, I was drawn into Father Tom McElligott’s paper, An Architectural Reflection on Sandra Schneiders and Philip Sheldrake’s Understanding of Christian Spirituality –

“…Attention to reality and the built environment has as a consequence to make one conscious of the presence of God in all things, to use the Ignatian phrase of awareness of the divine. Wherever one is at any one time in any particular space one’s awareness of the divine-human encounter and its consequence can increase, if [Christopher] Alexander is correct, by paying attention to the “life”, the “wholeness” present where we are, by continually asking of any place, or any space, or any object, “does it have more life or less life; how is it a picture of my deepest self? The architecture around us, architecture in the broad sense of the space in which a building or other object is to be constructed, and architecture in the sense of a building and how it comes to “life” provides the place for both transformative Christian experience…”

Further, in his lecture McElligott, commenting on Alexander’s architectural concept of wholeness, says “…We notice the degree of life present anywhere by continually asking what degree of life is present here as opposed to there. How can I make this place more reflect the wholeness, or enhance the wholeness, the reality already present?”

Good question. What he’s getting at is being present to what is before us, being open and attentive to life; to what is and to what is becoming – to what is both whole and I’d suggest what is becoming whole. Now, imagine with me: If that already “wholeness” is our being created in the image of God (imago dei) then in that sense we are all “whole” at a fundamental level. Now we know from experience that we aren’t whole, but in Jesus Christ, we are becoming whole; becoming what we were created to be (imago dei).

So, what we are looking for in our encounters with others (for example in spiritual direction) is the signs of God at work; of God bringing wholeness, of God restoring and rennovating. As McElligott suggests, we are “noticing,” we are accompanying what is actually here and now, i.e. we are present to where a person actually is, not where we want them to be. We’re always asking “to what degree is life present; to what degree is God the creator, sustainer, and re-newer of life present and active…?

Two interesting articles, Christopher Alexander, Genius of Space and Life, the Nature of Order, and Everything can be found here and here respectively. Alexander has some very significant things to say. 

Comments

[philjohnson]

This is important, and as you rightly ponder what kind of use of space and shape of space do we construct our lives around. It is precisely here where new spiritualities have emerged and said things about making sacred spaces or seeking to resacralise the earth.

Thus out of Chinese folk religion has come the commodification of feng shui (means "water and wind"). Thus neo-pagans seek countercultural lifestyles, alternate energy sources, eco-friendly buildings: but all as a reflection of how they value the creation.

I feel that apart from the influence of industrialisation on space (which we are enmeshed in), the problem you raise here reflects:

a). A poor theology of the creation in the western church. We have so focussed on Jesus came to rescue me that we unwittingly sound proto-gnostic -- we want to "escape" the earth and head off to heaven.

b). A poor pneumatology - we are strong on God's transcendence, and weak on God's immanence through the Spirit being present everywhere. Our pneumatology is so governed by Acts 2 (tongue speaking ceased/or it is in perpetuity; the Spirit seals me in Christ), that we are deficient in our OT theology of the Spirit of God.

c). A poor eschatology - at least pop eschatology prevails in the LaHaye-Jenkins "Left Behind" novels, which reinforces the discarding of the earth -- the earth is going to hell in Armageddon so why worry? When in reality eschatology is about the fullness of Christ and the glory of God fully realised in a new heaven and new earth.

If we undervalue the creation, only think of God's Spirit as "in my heart", and expect the world to be destroyed, then proto-gnosticism will emerge as a "comfort" -- we are to escape here, we are only passing through. Then we are going to also not worry too much about sacred spaces in the here and now.

Thus in our absence, the church leaves behind "unpaid bills", to which alternate non-Christian earth-based spiritualities have filled the void.

So in neo-pagans and in feng shui we see the mirror image reflected back at us of what we have neglected.

In Scripture Tower of Babel is iconic for making structures to shut God out. Our Leviathan like monster cities become similar edifices. Pentecost though is eschatological as the Spirit breaks down the tongue barriers and builds a new community. The ancient church architecture symbolicaly expressed eternal realities.

Today's bland structures for churches links in directly to our paltry theology on creation, eschatology and pneumatology. We are interested in commodities and creating spiritual emporiums, but not seemingly interested in our role as stewards of the creation, and with it the sense of the numinous wherever we go. And yes we do objectify bush land, and we do not feel at ease inside it. Instead we live and breathe as people displaced from the natural world and consider it normative to inhabit idolatrous and humanistic icons that shuts out the Spirit all in the name of productivity, efficiency, calculability and control. This is the inversion of Eden.

[fernando]

And here I was thinking it was some form of enculturation that contemporary churches looked so much like hardware stores and industrial storage complexes...

I think you have some great ideas going there on how spaces in buildings can function to facilitate real "encounter."

[si]

Paul, thanks for this. I did a seminar on this stuff at Greenbelt last year and wish that I had had some of this material for it!

[Angus Stocking]

Thanks for the citation, I'm so glad you enjoyed the articles. I can't resist plugging my book, "Everything is Somewhere" which is available from Berntsen International (www.berntsen.com) or my website, www.everythingissomewhere.com. The above essays and other material on Alexander are included, and if you like them, you'll probably like the rest of the book as well.

How did you come across the articles, just out of curiousity?

cheers,
Angus