It's Easter (for the western Church) but we're still not able to gather in churches, so it doesn't quite feel real. Like being in our zoom gallery was a Lenten austerity which hasn't lifted - for the second time!
I had a palpable sense of Lent protracted/Easter interrupted in the Cathedral Church of S. John the Divine today. They've only recently reopened their doors, after closing them during Lent last year. This remarkable artwork, "The Miraculous Draught" by Ukrainian-born Germany-based artist Aljoscha, was to be installed in two stages last year, 100 clear and three violet pieces of acrylic glass at the start of Lent, and fifty neon pink ones at Easter. (153 is the oddly specific number of fish caught in the "miraculous draught" where Jesus tells his fishermen disciples, who'd caught nothing one day, to cast their nets again, only to catch fish in such abundance their nets nearly burst.) The first 103 are up, still, having filled the silenced cathedral space for over a year. Of the Easter fifty, no sign.
I took this picture near the center of the nave, facing toward the altar, then moving the camera up and over, nearly doing a backbend. If you start to the bottom and move upward you can share the experience, starting with looking past the three purple pieces and the void leading to the high altar, ending, a little off balance, with rose window over the west face of the cathedral.
