arty

I've got big complicated thoughts tonight but not enough time to thread them all together...here's an attempt at one part of a larger picture, I hope it makes a little sense:

Another place we visited on the church field trip on Thursday was the chapel in Kantonsspital Obwalden - which, as its name implies, is the cantonal hospital for Obwalden. Obwalden is the canton smack in the center of Switzerland, and it boasts a population of around 37,000 people and postcard-worthy views in all directions. It's Catholic to the point that the church chapel isn't a multi-faith prayer room or anything like that, but a "proper" chapel complete with sacristy and tabernacle. At the same time, it's very...conceptual. The altar is a giant wooden slab that extends from one end of the room to the other - it's even supposed to go "through" the wall and out into the hallway, though they haven't installed that part of it. And behind the altar is a painting of four squares - red and blue on one diagonal, white on the other. Here's a photo:

The chapel in Kantonsspital Obwalden, with its stretch-limo altar. The thick post you can see near the wall is the tabernacle (in case there are any non-Catholics here, that's the holy place where the bread-that-is-now-Jesus's-body is stored). 

I'm not good with Photoshop, but maybe you can use your imagination to temporarily erase the crucifix, the icon sitting on the altar, the tablecloth, and maybe also the flowers. Because in the artist's conception of the room, the painting is supposed to be the crucifix. And the altar is supposed to be that whole long table, with enough space for everyone. Our group's conversation about all this was funny. The historian who was our guide for the day said that the axes between the squares on the painting clearly implied the cross, with its vertical connection between heaven and earth and its horizontal connection to all of humanity, and that the red and blue were meant to represent the elements water and fire. But somebody said well, this is a hospital, could that also be arterial blood and venous blood? And someone else said, that looks like the coat of arms of Ticino! And the altar looks like it could be a slaughterhouse table...or a drawer in the morgue? Oooh, we've cracked the code! Abstract art invites its viewers to come to their own conclusions! But religion...that's different, right? In church, theologians much smarter than ourselves have worked out the answers for us and we just have to take them on faith, or (if we're the thinking-for-ourselves types) struggle our way towards them. Right? Or is there another way, one in which we honor our traditions but allow people to have their own journeys? Can we hold space for people to interpret things differently? To ask with honest curiosity, "what do you see here?" and listen to their answers? Where? How?