GORDY READS: WINDOW

The ways of need amuse me even today. Satisfaction of one need brings not peace, but simply the awareness of the next, a coffle of human demands constantly promoted, one after the other, to eminence. When I was running, my need was rest. Once I was rested, my need was warmth. Once warm, I was hungry. Once full, thirsty. Quenched, the injuries I had performed upon my outraged body presented themselves again to me, and I found I needed rest once more. Outside was the cold, and so I was led by my chain of need, brought to heel like a trained dog, up the spiral staircase behind the altar, seeking some manger for a bed. High above, the domed ceiling, its base ringed with small lamps, illuminated both the valanced (and newly desecrated) altar below, and the frescoes of angels above, in soft lambency. I entered upon a narrow balcony, which rose sharply upward behind me in four terraces, each supporting a row of choral pews made of dark varnished wood and padded with red velvet cushions. The balcony itself described a semicircle huddled against the back of the apse, exempt from the lighting encapsulating the rest of the dome.

I lowered myself into a pew on the front row near the center of the arc, hunched forward like a child at a matinee, my hands and chin resting on the balustrade.

I now faced directly back the way I had come. Below, on the wall opposite, the doors through which I had come were visible. Directly above them, peering at me like a giant’s extinguished eye, the opaque glass circle dominated. I closed my eyes, lost in weariness and a growing awareness that soon, despite cold and fatigue, I’d have to move on. Faintly, a choir singing from unseen speakers floated down to me. I sighed again, but relaxed, content, allowing myself to live in the animal now. It was pleasant here, and calm. Long years of ceremony had embedded itself in this place, speaking of depth, promising meaning. But I, cuddled into my new cynicism, remembered my father’s “laboratory,” and congratulated myself on having pierced the illusion. Belief itself was for fools. I allowed myself to luxuriate in my suffering, melancholic and noble, realizations that pained me, but even in the pain, provided grips to which I could cling. These at least would not change. A painful but constant wisdom had, at great cost, been attained.

I opened my eyes.

I had seen stained-glass windows before.

I hadn’t seen anything like this.

It could not have been more than a minute since I had closed my eyes with the window darkened by night, but now the giant’s eye had come alive with vibrant light pulsing from delicate, multihued slivers connected by a frame of nearly invisible webbing. A prophet, staff in hand, stood beside a rock gushing water. In detail the artist had not spared pain or labor; the prophet’s gray and tangled beard, the folds of his robe, his eyes glinting defiance, his staff raised high, needles of the inhospitable rock, ripples in the stream, white spray of foam leaping from the new-lanced freshet to the lofty upper periphery of the window’s circular frame, while below the trickle spread to a creek at the prophet’s feet, flourishing to a river as it swept downward and past the window’s scope. The glass, so recently impenetrable, now disclosed itself, blue and white and gold and crimson, in its translucence creating a strange doubling effect. You could focus on the artist’s vision, or you could shift your gaze, and there, around the image and through it, the prospect beyond emerged: a ragged horizon, jutting sunlight, buildings looming like great trunks on either side, the city captured in color. Near the center, directly above and to the right of the prophet’s head, like bishops parting for a new pontiff, the skyline gave way, and for a scant length of horizon, the sunrise pierced through the concrete forest, scraped the roof of the building directly across the cathedral, and shone like a diamond in its setting. Whether by propitious accident or design, the tip of the prophet’s staff glowed with divine power as its end made a perfect confluence with the heart of this morning jewel. The nave, now revealed in detail, lay blanketed in diaphanous light refracting from every facet; it bathed me, cleansed me like a benediction, washed me in peace. The altar rails cast long shadows stretching beneath my perch and away out of sight. The slender sentinel windows lining the nave now woke from their slumber and glowed, not from morning light without, but from the ineffable beauty filling the space within.

“It’s a fine thing,” came a voice from behind me. “I never miss it.”

I screamed and jumped. A miracle I didn’t go flying over the balustrade.

Behind me, previously hidden but now revealed in morning light, sat a short, round priest. Her hair, black flecked with gray, retreated with precision into a high bun. A cable-knit sweater hung around her black dress. Thick glasses clung to her nose, and her eyes smiled. Her feet rested upon the back of the pew ahead of her. At a remove from her, but in the same pew, sat a filthy man, obviously homeless.

“Don’t be afraid,” she said.

I stared at her stupidly.

“I’m Father Bernadette,” she said, “and this gent is my good friend Dave.”

“My friends call me ‘Wavy Dave,’ ” said Dave. “You can call me that.”

Then, as I continued staring, Bernadette continued: “And, unless we are experiencing an extraordinary coincidence, you have a different name…?”

“Julius,” I mumbled.

“Julius,” she said. “Welcome, Julius.”

There was a presence about her that encouraged trust. Pointing down to the mess below, I made my first confession. “I ate the communion wafers.”

She smiled, kindly. “We saw. You also drank a little bit of the wine, though you didn’t seem to like it.” When I said nothing, she continued: “They aren’t much good, though—as crackers, I mean. You must have been hungry.”

“Yes,” I agreed. I realized I still was.

“David and his companions were hungry once,” she said, as if that settled things. She stretched, and indicated the window. “You’re missing it.”

I looked back to the wondrous eye holding prophet, rock, stream, city, sky, rising sun.