Other portals grab the popular imagination: Dr. Who’s time-traveling blue box called the Tardis, or the Hogwarts Express. Each generation claims its own portals, so beware ending your explorations with the Starship Enterprise, which is the equivalent of telling WWII stories in today’s pulpits.
Icons. It’s no accident that the graphic images used in technology are called icons. In the Eastern tradition, an icon is a representation of a saint, the contemplation of which allows the viewer to cross a threshold into a more spiritual realm. In the computer world, icons flicker on screens, and we use them to cross more mundane thresholds: getting information, making purchases, paying bills.
Thresholds. If ancient icons and computer icons both allow viewers to cross thresholds, are the thresholds really that different? When we click on an icon to purchase movie tickets, then another icon to find directions to the theater, what are we hoping to find when we arrive at the theater? In a word: meaning. We want the filmmaker to help interpret the world for us, or at least to tell us a story we can use to create our own meaning.
Internet. Leonard Sweet observed some 20 years ago that the computer screen is the new Gutenberg press. Or did he call it the new Wittenberg door? If he didn’t, he should have. The first generation of technology was mainly a way to disseminate information (Web sites, e-mail), but the second generation provides a way to dialogue about that information (blogs, tweets, virtual chats, webinars).
The human need to cross thresholds doesn’t change, but the iconography that allows us to do so, does. How does the church make use of the abundance of portals around us?
A little story. My church, Poolesville (Md.) Church, has the smallest sanctuary I’ve ever seen. Perhaps that makes it easier to imagine it as a portal. The front wall of the sanctuary used to be painted with a kind of 3-D archway, which was black inside. I always wondered what the painting meant, and who had put it there. I asked around. Many parishioners told me that the painting “creeped them out.” Finally I heard this interpretation: the painting symbolized the tomb. At any rate, the paint was old and chipped, and mildewing along the bottom. Eventually we painted it over in order to brighten up the worship space.
At about this same time, I went on a pilgrimage to Israel and wanted to share a few pictures from my trip. The wall was white, so I decided to try projecting pictures. So it began. One donated projector has led to the next, and now the use of technology to display images is as common, and varied, as church music.
Some Sundays I project a stained glass image that depicts the Scripture of the day. Other times I choose an image that gives a feeling of movement, or catches the imagination. Some Sundays there are a plethora of images, sometimes none. I have shown YouTube videos and snippets of movies. (Disclaimer: be careful of copyright.) At our Annual Meeting we had fun using Active Voters.
Last Sunday an elder who was charged with talking about Stewardship of the Earth chose to show a five-minute home movie interview with her great-aunt, describing the values of thriftiness. What a treat — such connection and power with simple images.
I realize: we have replaced one generation’s iconography with another’s.
Sola Deo Gloria.
What portals does your church use?
Ruth Everhart is stated supply for Poolesville Church, Poolesville, Md.
