how’d we get here?

He looks around, around

He sees angels in the architecture

Spinning in infinity

He says “Amen and Hallelujah!”

-Paul Simon, “You Can Call Me Al” (1986)

Angels in the architecture have become very important to me, but not in an exclusively religious sense. As an English major, I love the alliteration and syllabic distribution. As a music lover and Simon and Garfunkel devotee, I love the reference to Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al” (which has its own story for me), as well as Frank Ticheli’s glorious symphony. As a sociology and theology student, I find myself engrossed in the social and theological connotations. I view not only churches but my entire world through through an overwhelmingly Judeo-Christian, Western, and systematically white perspective, and define them in ways I know how. This is a testament to my evolving faith, while shedding expository light on my inherently privileged, pervasive and ignorant worldview. This blog will undoubtedly contain not-so-subtly cloaked self-criticism and frustration. I’ve been in Rome for a week, and I still can’t believe the universe let me come here.

I don’t know how to be here, and I’ve done little to earn the fruits of my comfortable life. I keep expecting the world to tell me ‘no,’ but it hasn’t. I’m perplexed. How far can I go? How am I granted so much automatic trust and approval? I’m in the midst of a months-long existential crisis, and after moments of lucidity with when I can see my situation objectively, I am enormously grateful, albeit suspended in some disbelief, that I can examine my conscience in a most epic city.

Not only am I located in a historical and cultural goldmine- and get to excitedly study such treasures- I am also in a contemplative, wholesome, reverent, faithful, and service-oriented environment. I am surrounded by tributes to this almighty, eternal God.

Just a little peep at the grandeur of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Holy See. ’Twas built for the glory of God by the labor of people long forgotten with the materials from many other existing places. It would make me furious if it wasn’t so gloriously beautiful. This building took so much from Rome- and yet it has given so much to future generations.

This eyesore, which is the view outside my window, is a fascist monument. People build terribly cool shit when they care an awful lot.

What I’m finding I love the most- and find the most awe some- is humanity. All of this, all that I’m studying, was created for the greater glory of God, and this human creation is utterly spectacular. It is absolutely brilliant for the sociologically-minded soul to witness the legacies of what people create when they put their entire hearts, souls, and faiths in; when they give of themselves in love and reverence for something much greater than themselves. Sure, there are marble angels literally sculpted into the fantastical architecture all over, but I think it’s more than that. The angels take many forms.

The angels in this metaphysical, metaphorical architecture of human history and innovation are the love that is the unique sensation of what it means to be human. The angels are in and of our transcending drive to create. This, for me, is magic, and it’s love.

And in these existential woes, it’s what I want to think about.

I want to notice and find and remember the love in each day that remind us of what a glorious gift it is to be alive, to be human, and to be ourselves. I’m using religion and architecture as a veil, because really, this blog is about gratitude.

This is my happy-and-on-the-verge-of-tears face. La vita è bella.

The angels in the architecture are up there. May we always remember to look up.

This is what I see when I look up at work. Amen and hallelujah.

Cashew gone rogue View all posts by annemarielepp

Originally published at http://angelsinthearchitecture.home.blog on June 19, 2019.