God's House

Nothing is quite like walking into a cathedral. One immediately looks up, to the dark vaulted ceiling, then ahead, along the row of pillars that disappear into a chapel for Mary or a saint. The weight of that great open space pushes a breath from you, and maybe you forget the camera in your hand and the couple muttering in English next to you.



The first time I walked into a cathedral I was twelve. And it taught me more about religion in a moment then I had learned in all more short life before. It made more sense.

We’ve seen a lot of churches on this trip, and a few spectacular cathedrals – Notre Dame and the York Minister, San Marco and the Sagrada Familia. But in Bavaria we got to see a new kind of church.

Klaus, my mother’s cousin, says that they were built as a catholic reaction to the success of the Lutherans in Germany.



They are perhaps more spectacular because the outsides are so modest – simple pink or white stucco with a copper cap on the bell tower. You do not walk in under a scene of the last judgment, no damned souls.



Where the cathedrals make you gulp, these churches make you want to laugh for joy. They have over-gilded altars, angels and trumpets bursting from the walls, and pink and gold filigree circling clear windows that let the sunshine in. They make you full of wonder rather than the awe of a cathedral.



When you walk in, you still look up. Instead of the imposing stone and shadowed corners are huge rainbow bright murals: more angels and Mary, the infant Christ and various miracles and saints. Even in the small ones. The ceilings are high, and there is still that sense of space, but free rather than enclosed.



On top of that we caught them at harvest time, so in front of every church is a pile of food – cabbages and rice, a round loaf of bread and squash, tomatoes, apples, and zucchini. The expression of bounty is an ancient one: look we have enough food for winter, so we can offer some to God.



On the wall of one of these were small amateur paintings, done by supplicants in thanks to Mary for her help. Klaus deciphered a few, reading the cramped old scripts. And he found one from a family dated 400 years ago. He chuckled because he had taught students from that family.

When we were planning this trip I saved Bavaria as the last place we would stay with family before going south and east to Istanbul. We're very glad we did.