Cathedral Thinking Triptych
The Temple of Time in Your Mind
It won’t take just one brainstorm to solve climate change-- which you’ll know after considering the billion bolts of inspiration striking you while facing the problem honestly, so it’ll take putting our heads together, which is still to say: we are the brainstorm we’ve been waiting for, or "It will take cathedral thinking," as young climate striker Greta Thunberg laid in foundation taking a cornerstone from past projects, which paints a specific zig to the zag of a strike of lightning dangling from a sistine cosmic ceiling, from which roots hang of a pure, towering megastructure of sustained peace and balance, like a forest within a forest, fertile landscapes gaining apace, restored, reforested, remediated, rewilded, renewed, rebuilt with care and consent, an environment built of loving intent.
So it becomes the work of our and several lifetimes to carry the cornerstone, taking apart the old and putting together the new, and we can’t look towards what got us here to get out– no more promises of good whispered in toxic tongues. There are many models of beauty lasting in faith, but are they all models for us? Is monastic thinking helpful? Church thinking? Synagogic thinking, that a thing? Does any of the smaller scale or inertia-full Crusade-thinking help? (anyone?) No, this is a prescriptive poem, and the Doctor’s only ordered one recommendation within a multi-part composition– no more shall we build-to-dispose, but build-to-impose:
"It will take cathedral thinking"
Flying Buttresses
We, the long-standing
Structure support for our future
Protect a vital meeting place
Saving sanctuary of striving
Carrying a vault
We, the strong support
Incline towards the roof
Enhance form and function
Tower high ceilings
Planting solution seedlings
We, the latest earthsthetic
Extending action more poetic
Scaling a better planet
Fortify faith where found
Supporting a future bound to-
We, the flying buttresses
Arch towards justice.
Rose Window Shade
I have an eye to see
Out towards what we can be
While holding a mass of dedication
In our monument of sacred celebration
At the center-top pinnacle you see
From outside-in unmissable beauty
A large round window like an Earth-overview
Fabricated from shards of glass of a worldview–
A Rose Window
Like our World–
A series of delicate networks of radiating forms
Each decorated and glazed in how light transforms
Catching the sun, reflecting colorful stories
Refracting all the work and fighting and worries
Of a catastrophic scale-up of cathedral-thinking cascade
Now together under the gleam of our rose window shade
Under melting pools of earthly light
Absorbing stained kaleidoscope vibes
Praying with rays of bright emanating
Outward like rose petals radiating
Seeing through our rose window
A built world–
Our series of delicate networks of refracting forms
Each decorated and traced in how light transforms
What’ll be worth it is the image of
Whatever you leave behind or love
In the light of a planet-shaped window glowing
Under petals of light vibrantly growing
Dancing down from the sun meeting what we made
Pattern of life in stone and glass divided in crisscrossing scale
Encircling an oculus centered with explosions of petals jointly
Creation of creating, traced stories spiraling flamboyantly
Seeing through our rose window
A work-in-progress world–
Our series of latticed connections refracting forms
Each ornate and geometric in how light transforms.