Monday, May 12, 2008

Rebuilding Ely Cathedral

Ely Cathedral is ten miles or so up the road from our home. When it was built in the 14th century, towering among the hovels around it, it stood as a kind of metaphor of the medieval consensus.


In the Church were all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Here was where you found the best art, architecture, technology, music, thought, learning, creativity and skill.


The call on the Church today is not to increase its market share a bit but to have the ambition to build more cathedrals. How about, for starters:

  • art that isn't ugly and nihilistic

  • economics that is fair and compassionate as well as efficient

  • science and technology tamed and embraced as the gifts of a good God.

  • families rebuilt

  • justice flowing

  • fun that is innocent


... and all centred around worshipping communities.



Just conceivably, that's slightly too ambitious. Unless you read the Hebrew prophets, that is, who would tell you you aren't going nearly far enough ...

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