{Each day in Lent 2021, I am looking through my personal photo files for images of sanctuaries. With the pandemic keeping many of us from those sacred spaces, I am letting the images fuel some written reflections.}

 

Yesterday I wrote of a church that was meant to be “rock solid” after a previous wooden building was blown down in a storm. Today, we look at a church that is literally carved into solid rock. In the heart of Helsinki, Finland is the Temppeliaukio church, completed in 1969. It is a wonder, both primitive and contemporary at the same time. Obviously, if you want the details of its construction, there’s a search machine for that. (Especially interesting is the ceiling dome made of 13 miles of coiled copper plate ribbon!) As I write these Lenten posts, I’m not doing deep research; I’m letting my mind wander over the images and typing off the top of my head. You can deal with it.

Excavated directly into solid rock, Helsinki’s Temppeliaukio church is commonly called “The Rock Church”

What strikes me looking at this photo, one of many we took that day, is the “congregation.” This was not a Sunday service of worship in that unique sanctuary. It was a weekday crowd of tourists. Whenever Joan and I travel, if it’s a Sunday and the schedule allows it, we go to church, becoming part of a worshipping community. But much of the time we’re traveling, we seek out churches to visit just because we love the architecture of sanctuaries large and small, and one never knows when one might hear an organist practicing, or meet a docent eager to tell the church’s story. I’ve noticed that if the sanctuary is busy with tourists, some are indeed gaping at high arches or high altars, walking the aisles and aiming cameras, chatting about artworks or studying stained glass. But there are always a few people there treating the space as sacred.

No matter the church, there are some people sitting quietly in the pews, some with heads bowed and others simply staring ahead experiencing their own silence, even in the din of noisy tourists moving about the aisles. I especially noticed this on an early cruise when we recognized some crew members coming into a Catholic church amid the crowd of guided tours. Many were Filipino, some Hispanic…all devout Roman Catholics. They crossed themselves with holy water as they entered and went straight into the pews to pray. Some lighted candles before exiting. They treated the church as a spiritual home away from home, and met God there. 

Apart from that initial experience, when we visit those places of prayer and devotion, there are always people sitting in the pews while others of us are snapping our pics and reading the guidebook. I know there are locals who come to church every time the doors are open. And there are others who may have come to sightsee, but who are moved to take a seat even for a short time to meditate, to pray, to commune with their Lord, or just to rest in that temporary peace.

Often Joan and I do that too. We carve out a bit of Sabbath space in what is often a busy, even hectic, travel schedule. To be sure, there are times we are in church spaces not overrun by other tourists, and the quiet, the beauty, the need to simply stop — that moves us to remember we are in “sanctuary.” And we pause there.

In the photo above, just a glimpse into the space carved in rock, most of the people are taking pictures (as was I obviously), and some walking around gaping at the unusual architectural features. But I see two or three just being. Being there. In their own space. There were others outside my lens’ range. They see the space with different eyes.

“How lovely is thy dwelling place, O Lord.” A place not always built of stone or wood, of course. Sometimes that place is in a wooded glen, or on a mountaintop, or in a corner of one’s own home. But lovely. And never lonely.