Relief and Restoration?

May 21, 2024

Beloved ~

     Pittsburgh is further than six and half hours away on the map of my mind, while in reality it’s a little better than halfway to Philadelphia.  It rests in the western crags and curves of the Appalachian mountain range, with more in common with West Virginia coal and textile communities than east coast cities.  The dead steel mills have been replaced with software companies, full of workers who ride their bikes to riverside* office buildings.  I also didn’t expect it to be so beautiful.  Those 19th century industrialists and bankers built schools, parks, museums and churches and filled them with art.  They gave them to the city, for anyone to enjoy for free – though the upkeep costs are staggering – and as a legacy to themselves.

     My preaching conference was held in two of those churches, and at first I couldn’t shake off my discomfort with those upkeep costs.  But once I settled in, I let all that beauty soak into the worship:  the soaring architecture, the sculpture and the windows – wow, the windows.**  I sat  in those straight back pews, and reflected on what it must have been like to work in a mill or factory ten or twelve hours a day, six days a week and then rest in such a place, once a week for an hour, 

listening to the music and the prayers.  The relief and restoration such full-on sensuous worship must have allowed.  I hope and pray, at least, for them and for me.  I expect they also struggled to put aside their worries, not the least of which were financial.  How frustrating to be given a cathedral, when higher wages and decent working conditions would have been their own relief and restoration, if not so soaring a legacy for a single family.  That kind of worry must surely distract from one’s worship, even in the most beautiful of spaces.

     An industrialist’s motives aside, I find something holy about these sacred spaces smack dab in the middle of cities positively teeming with humanity.  All that hustling capitalism and the poverty it generates, people working at jobs they love or hate or tolerate, the poor and broken down just trying to survive.  So much constant activity, and every day all that humanity passes by these cathedrals housing the open, sacred space in which all are welcome to come and sit and rest and breathe and pray and know that what goes on outside those walls is not all that’s true in this world.
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     These spaces testify to the reality of a peace and quiet below all the noise and trauma of this life, of relief and healing from the damage experienced, and forgiveness for damage inflicted.  They testify to that path of reparation, redemption and restoration for those willing to come into these sacred spaces and submit to the way community works within these walls.  Even if the walls are made of 1990’s sheetrock, not 1902 stonework.  Within those walls is quiet and peace.  Relief and restoration is there, in the palpable Spirit of the Creator who made the mountains and the rivers and our very selves.  That same spirit binds us to one another and to the rest of creation in ways that make a city we’ve barely thought about a place that welcomes us like a neighbor if we are open enough to be so welcomed.  All of which is to say, I started my conference itchy and uncomfortable and finished it soothed and grateful for the experience of worship and community I treasure every year in May.  I’ve come home to the most beautiful weather and a yard that is exploding with life.  I pray the day is treating you kindly and you have the chance to get outside.  I hope to see you tomorrow night at church supper.

~peace & prayers, 
pastor annette

*The Ohio River is formed in Pittsburgh, where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers converge.

**East Liberty Presbyterian Church ~ https://cathedralofhope.org/ .  Cost to build in 1935 - $4M.  In 2024 - $91.5M.  This amount reflects inflation only.

Calvary Episcopal Church - https://www.calvarypgh.org/art-and-architecture