Lintels, Keystones, and Archways

When did you last pass through a doorway, under a lintel, beneath an arch?  What keystone sustained an arch over you, marking your passage from one place in life to another?  These are not just literal stone, wood, brick, or metal portals.  Can we say (or imagine for a moment) that they create a passage for us through a figurative wall, a veil dividing stations in life, a curtain dividing our times, and an arch marking our travels through life?

Once upon many times ago in Scotland, my ancestors walked beneath this archway in Whithorn.

Entry to Whithorn Priory  (photo mine)

How old is it?  The Romanesque arch gives a clue.  But see where the wooden porch beams (long since gone) wore into the very stones of the arch through the centuries?  How many Christmases, Easters, weddings, baptisms, funerals, how many Eucharists did my ancestors observe here, coming up from their homes in Isle of Whithorn?

What does it mean to walk under such an arch and dwell for a time within a space that has housed the hopes and fears within millennia of hearts -- and share that space not only with one's ancestry but with each individual who gathered there throughout the long ages?  As T. S. Eliot put it, "you are here to kneel/Where prayer has been valid."

There are other arches we pass through, some "costing no less than everything," as Eliot also said of faith itself.

The Arc de Triumph, with the Inconnu (the unknown solider) from the First World War, lying beneath:  this unknown soldier has not passed through the arch, but remains in situ at its center.  It is an arch of victory for which they died, giving others free passage into another room within their lives, and indeed -- on both sides of the passage. Freedom. No one there can dictate how life must be lived--unless, that is, we fail to maintain our freedoms.

Arc de Triomphe, Paris. [Source: Paris Digest]

 

 

 

 

 

The Grave of the Unknown (Inconnu) in Paris [Source]

 Another, special portal exists in Santa Fe, New Mexico -- in the basilica.  The story? It involves a successful Jewish businessman, Mr. Abraham Staab:

When money had become scarce in the hard times then prevailing, the merchant had become banker and loaned large sums to the Archbishop to prevent stoppage of the work. "How is the work on the Cathedral progressing?," inquired Staab. "Times are hard," answered the Archbishop, "but the Cathedral will be finished. All I ask is an extension of time on my notes." Staab went to a large iron safe, took out all the notes that the Archbishop had signed and said to him: "Archbishop, let me have a say in the building of that new Cathedral and I will tear up all these notes." Cautiously the man of God measured the eyes of the man of Commerce and Business and inquired: "To what extent, how, Mr. Staab?" Staab replied: "Let me put one word above the entrance of the Cathedral, chiselled in stone." "And what is that word?," parried the Archbishop. "You must trust me, Archbishop,' replied Staab. Archbishop Lamy agreed to Abraham Staab's proposal. Staab tore up the notes in the presence of the Archbishop, tossed the fragments of paper into a fire in the stove in the office. When the Cathedral was finished, there for all the world to see, was the part that Staab had taken in its building, The Hebraic initials J V H [Y H W H] symbolic of the word "God" of the Christian faith, "Jehovah" of the faith of Israel (Reeve and Walter, 311 [Link]).  

That "Tetragrammaton" (the letters making the name of God) is carved over the side entrance of the Santa Fe Basilica today.

The Tetragrammaton Source: Williams

Santa Fe's Arch Source: Williams

Here one man, between faiths and through significant personal sacrifice, assisted in making a passage towards God, God having already made a way for humans toward Himself.

There are other, perhaps more personal, arches.

When I was a wee lad, I walked under this very keystone almost every day for what seemed an eternity.  It was the keystone to my primary (elementary) school.  Once I passed inward, beneath this stone, I found a world of heavy, dark, wood hand rails along stairways, creaking blonde wood floors, smoothed by generations of shoes of children as they bumbled along in lines to their classrooms.  There were books -- some musty and some new.  We went outside, again passing beneath this keystone, to make heroic chase on the playground, then in once more for yawning lessons, then outside one final time -- to freedom at the day's end. 

The Keystone Gleaming above the East Door

Chipped but Recovered from Demolition: the East Keystone

Without those days spent passing in and out beneath that keystone, I would not have had the opportunity to learn to live, to see, to awaken in intellect and spirit. That awakening came later -- assisted through other teachers official and unofficial (but who can tell which are which?).  The days under this keystone meant the beginning of thinking for myself by thinking in the light of others -- by reading and understanding the ideas of those who have articulated to us what they saw, imagined, learned....

Without those days after (tedious) days beneath the keystone, I would not later have been able to feed on the ideas of others and inform my own paradigms and faith.  I recall some fairly grim days my poor teachers spent, sacrificing their lives to drag me through some unwanted lessons.  It was years before I hungered to know for myself, years until I thrived to see what existed beyond other passages, through other doors.  Without this keystone which they and others raised and maintained, I would only have found a mentally claustrophobic and stultifying existence awaiting generations of souls.

This school's keystone is not, for me, least among the others.  By this one, as well as by the others, I have learned that all portals, doorways, keystones, and lintels are not solely for one's own self. The best ones are created to make us useful in this world: the French soldier sacrificed the dreams he had for his own life by going (either of own will or his country's compulsion) to war.  And it was something he read, something he learned, some art that he saw, that made him do so.  And Mr. Staab? The same: he could read the name of God and gave of himself so others could know that name.

If it is true, what an old text says (I believe it is and have seen someone do it) -- that "no greater love has a man than to lay down his life for his friends" -- then to raise an arch, to set a keystone, to make portal, to create a way into life for others is what we are here to do.  Ironically, I am only brought to see this by going through the arches that others have made for me.  That's the other side -- or both sides -- of the arch.