Saturday, April 21, 2012

China calling

Went up for the day to Ossining, about an hour north of the city on the Hudson (it changed its original name when a prison was build there: Sing Sing), and another world! One remarkable place they introduced me to was Maryknoll, home of an order of Catholic missionaries. Their first mission went to China, and their ongoing commitments there - reflected in the very architecture of the place - make this like a Sino-Hogwarts.


The site is a monument to mid-century Catholic arts, with many striking stained glass windows, here are two, reflected (looking in different directions) in the holy water font at the entrance of a side chapel, the 12-year-old Jesus teaching in the synagogue ("in my father's house"), and a woman with Christ as he bears the cross to Golgotha.