Stained Glass

Many years ago, a slightly inebriated graduate student told me that stained glass windows have their roots in Gnosticism. According to her, some Gnostics believed that creating the universe was so great an effort that it shattered God into pieces. Each of us has one of those pieces—we call it a soul—and our purpose in this world is to reassemble them to re-create the divine. That’s what stained glass portrays: fragments of something greater brought together to be made whole. But no piece is completed by just one other; instead, each piece is only where it belongs when it’s joined with several others.

Time to make another cup of tea. If you came in peace, be welcome.