Envisioning Joan Osborne's Cathedrals

Envisioning Joan Osborne’s Cathedrals

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            Every once in a while you discover for yourself an artist (whether singer, songwriter, painter, writer, etc.) who moves you and you decide to take time to contemplate their works.  Lately I have discovered Joan Osborne.  Many people have heard her song “One of Us” done in the mid 1990’s.  That is almost twenty years ago.  Wow.  Sadly, I think, Joan Osborne might be remembered as a sort of one hit wonder kind of singer.  She is an extremely special performer.  She doesn’t just sing with a pretty voice.  She takes ownership of a song.  She gives voice to the words and interprets them with emotions in her voice and being.  She brings a song to life.  She also, sometimes sings words that are truly profound in their meaning.

            I can’t quite get enough of her song from her “Little Wild One” CD entitled “Cathedrals.”  I find it to be a beautiful song, and there is this beautiful chorus with words as profound as any you will find anywhere in pop music.  She sings: “In the cathedrals of New York and Rome there is a feeling you should just go home and spend a lifetime figuring out just where that is.”

            With that chorus it seems to me that Joan Osborne has given voice to something a church should be.  It should be a place not where we come to forget the world, but a place which reminds us and gives us a feeling that we should just go home and spend a lifetime figuring out where that place, we are to call home really is.  I actually think her song captures a sense of why architecture can be an important facet in building a church.  Her song has made me think.  I have ordered a couple of books on the subject.  But these are my thoughts before I read the books.  Maybe later I’ll write better more informed thoughts, but these are my thoughts probably thanks to Joan Osborne’s song and a lifetime of thinking about the faith, and then wondering how it would look if I were to build a cathedral.  Well, not if I built it, but someone who built it who could actually build a cathedral.

            Joan Osborne was born and raised in Kentucky but her home now is New York City.  “Little Wild One” is a CD where Joan sings of her home these days from her opening song “Hallelujah in the City” to her closing song where she sings “Bury me on the Battery” with a scene from somewhere in New York City that I a non- New Yorker don’t know, but of which every true New Yorker can readily relate.  But at least one song seems to give a hint that there are memories of a life much closer to rural areas when she sings “Rodeo.”  But wherever we call home, there is a sense as we grow older and have left the security of childhood that we seem always to be in search of home, and the cathedrals of New York and Rome, says Joan, tells us that we should just go home and spend a lifetime figuring out just where that is."

            She pictures the cathedrals in New York and Rome where “the line moves slowly past the electric fence across the borders between continents."  New York City is a unique and American city, but the borders and boundaries dividing countries seem to disintegrate here and speak of connections between an old world and a new one.  So in the cathedrals we remember that the cathedrals stretch across boundaries and speak of a kingdom that defies all human attempts to put up electric fences to keep others out.  Rather the electric lines are currents, and electronic communications that bring people from varied lands and nations coming to a cathedral which reminds you whether in New York or Rome that “you should just go home and spend a lifetime finding out just where that is.”

            Joan Osborne sings of cathedrals in New York and Rome built in the shadow of tall buildings.  I think that is the first element a cathedral, a church, a neighborhood parish, a chapel should do.  The church should be built to be at home in its own parish community.  It should be built to look like a church, but also to blend into a community.  I have often thought of how my church needs a pathway across its property connecting it to the neighborhood in which we live.  There is a pond where people walk very near our property.  I hope one day there is a walking path and picnic tables completing that pathway to our major city street at the edge of our church property.  That pathway will connect our neighborhood walking area across our church's property to our major street at the edge of our property.  A church building should be built in a community in a way that says “we are part of your community, and you are part of our community.”  The cathedrals in New York and Rome built in the shadow of tall buildings are built to look like part of that urban community; and yet having the features of a church these cathedrals also speak of this being a place offering a glimpse into a kingdom above.

            I can picture a movie scene as Joan Osborne sings of how “someone is watching all of the outsiders.  The line moves slowly through the numbered gate past the mosaic of the head of state.”  Outside the cathedral are tall buildings, and inside the cathedral there is a sense “of open arches endlessly kneeling sonic landscapes echoing vistas.  Someone is listening from a safe distance.”

            I can almost see a movie scene where someone troubled in spirit seeks the inner sanctuary of a cathedral.  There is a sense someone is watching him come into the cathedral.  He is not watching to cast blame or to make one feel guilty but is watching one come into the sanctuary.  The one who has come into the sanctuary looks and sees the flows of arches, Bible stories, statues, grandeur and yet vistas and a sense that someone is listening from a safe distance.  This listening is done from a safe distance.  We cannot see his blinding glory or his utter holiness.  He is at a distance not for his safety but for ours.  He wants us to feel the freedom to kneel in his presence to be heard but from a distance that expresses safety to us.  The word “sanctuary” softly stretches across the ages and so we have come into the cathedral seeking safety, seeking sanctuary, seeking a divine and gracious presence.

            What is the meaning of a cathedral, a temple where the God who has become one of us is worshipped? This cathedral is where the God, who is one of us resides.  He is the one, who as Joan sang elsewhere “is one of us, a stranger on the bus looking for his way home.”  He has come to our earth, and spent a lifetime finding his way home.  He is the one listening, seeing, filling the cathedral with his presence, wherever two or three are gathered in his name.  He is the one who knows the way home.  He knows just where that place is.  “In the cathedrals of New York and Rome there is a feeling that you should just go home and spend a lifetime finding out just where that is.”