Centering

I'm reading a book about architecture (yeah, I know) called Brunelleschi's Dome. It's about the guy who basically reinvented everything folks knew about architecture in the middle ages and completely baffled everyone in the process. The thing is, he wasn't even an architect, he was a goldsmith. The Dome the title is referring to is the dome of a church in Florence, Italy called Santa Maria del Fiore, or, as it is most commonly referred to as the Doumo, or THE DOME. I have seen this wondrous piece of history up close, and it is impressive to understate that quite a bit.

Of course, being a word person and an English teacher, I am almost required to see more than meets the eye and to look deeper into the metaphors of things. Being mathematically challenged, I have had some difficulty understanding all the ins and outs of the explanations about the building of this dome. But, I do have the basic gist of the extraordinary feat of having built this dome (still the largest of its kind in the world) without using wooden structures known as "centering". These wooden structures would have seemed to be necessary to hold the stone, bricks, mortar, and plaster together while the dome was being built (which took a couple of decades) so that it would not come tumbling down in the center. The only other method of holding domes in place really used much at the time was flying buttresses (it's just fun to say those words together), like those used on Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Filippo Brunelleschi found a way of using chains of stone and wood and bricks to hold the dome (actually two, with an inner and outer shell) together without falling into itself.

So, where's the metaphor? Hold your horses, it's coming. At times, I feel like that dome, or at least like those who worked on the dome that thought it was all just a matter of time before it all comes crashing down on me because there is no support, no centering. As Yeats so aptly said, “the center cannot hold”. There was nothing visibly holding it up there in the air! How scary that must have been. Basically there was just this giant hole in middle with curved walls being built slowly with some amazing, but certainly sketchy-looking, platforms holding the stonemasons up in the midst of it all. No centering. Sometimes it’s like that, life that is. It feels like there’s no middle, no structure, no safety, no security blanket to hold on to. 70 million pounds of stone and bricks and such and nothing much holding it in place. But, there’s always a but, Filippo knew something no one else knew. He knew that within the complex structure (sorry, that’s all you’re going to get on the engineering from this source) there actually was a centering. Somehow all the stone “chains” and funky masonry created circles that worked with and against the forces of gravity that should have brought the dome crashing down. Filippo was the only one though who knew for sure the foundation was there. The others who worked on and funded the project had to take it on faith that they weren’t depending on the word of a crazy man.

The Christian walk is much like that dome. It all revolves around a “center” that we cannot see with our human eyes. Jesus wasn’t crazy, and we can still take him at his word, even though we can’t see exactly what he’s talking about. He is the centering for this world and for each individual. The wood of the cross has long since deteriorated, but it is still holding up for us the mighty spectacle of faith, grace, and mercy that can only be found in its invisible and expansive shadow.