Once Upon a Wednesday Dreary…

The chapel is dreary today. Ironically though, it is much more balanced than usual. Windows on both sides are reflecting blurry sections of color onto the stone below them. There is no reflection of color on the pews. The shadows at the altar are present but less sharp. Everything seems muddied – frosted.

Due to the bland state of the rest of the room, I do something I haven’t thus far – I look straight up. From this angle, I can just barely see the rose window. (Note – 1:51- the clouds outside move. The right side of the room feels must brighter as per previous weeks.)
Back to the rose window- based on how the windows on the sides behave, I expected the light to bounce more off the molding of the window. This is very much not the case. There are very few places on the stone that show the color of the surrounding window. Visible to me are the pinks and reds in the bottom and top center panels. They seem more vibrant than the reds in the windows on the sides perhaps because light streams through them more directly? That seems unlikely. Perhaps they are slightly more orange than red. From here, I can’t tell. My neck hurts from craning back to look at the window so I’ll stop now.

I always expect the light from the rose window to reflect more onto the altar. However, whether it’s caused by distance or lack of intensity, this effect does not occur. The idea of having that swarm of colors reflected onto the organ, which would then redirect the colors around the room by the nature of the curved pipes, is thrilling to me and I wish that it could actually happen. However, it has not. At least in my experience in Churches, this never occurs. Unfortunate – for that would surely be a powerful image. Though I suppose it might be distracting to play ‘follow the light source’ while in mass.