National Cathedral

I last remember going to the cathedral on a high school weekend trip to Washington SC when I was at St Peter's Prep and had a vague recollection it was pretty cool. So this would have been my first visit to a great cathedral (I don't recall visiting St Johns in NYC). On our way back from Bethesda down Wisconsin, we decided to drop in. We parked in the underground lot which is $6 on weekends and went in through the side entrance. We got there just before noon on a saturday so there was a small mass set to start on the high alter.

The Cathedral is grand and awe inspiring in the way the great European ones are, yet it felt quite new, as it should having only been built this century and really just completed in the last 20 years. What I found really distinctive was the artwork. The windows felt very contemporary and American. Contemporary because of the colors used, the abstractness of some of the scenes, and the sometimes purposeful abstraction of the figures. You see this in some of the European churches that were damaged during WWII and whose windows have been modernized, but these are often juxtaposed against the remaining original windows, where as here, all the windows seem to blend together better. It felt American because of the presence of colonial figures in many of the scenes. The other great work of art is the creation inspired sculpture over the main entrance of which I have seen nothing like it in any European church or cathedral. There is an exhibit up on the history of the church which I walked through which gave great background on the construction and the art work.