Chapel Windows

 created by

Sr. Ann Therese Kelly, CSSF

Creation of the Earth" represents Sister Moon, the cave, the abyss, a birth place, a healing place, the womb, a spiritual desert, the river beneath the river, the feminine. Meister Eckhardt, the great mystic of the Rhine, spoke of darkness, emptiness, silence, out of which the fountain-fullness flows, the desert of the Godhead. This divine abyss is mysterious ground that the mystics speak of. We see images of the moon and stars, the cave, and emergence, or birth to life.

"The Kingdom of God Among us" represent the earth in light of the medieval concept of alchemy which St. Francis alluded to in his Canticle. The earth becomes a heaven and thus heaven are united (conjunction). Alchemy is that medieval concept of the changing of base metals into gold. It has always been used as a powerful metaphor toward sacred and spiritual mystical thought that just as something common like lead can become gold, so the earth can  become a heaven - the Kingdom of God is among us. For more than a millennium, humanity has coated precious and sacred objects in gold. St. Francis is quoted as saying: "Tell me, brother: if anyone were to give for your infirmities and tribulations such as a great and precious treasure that, if the whole earth were pure gold, all stones were precious tones and all water were balsam, yet you would consider all this as nothing, and these substances as earth, stones and water in comparison with the great and precious treasure given to you, surely, you would rejoice greatly?" Here in these windows we see a reoccurring motif of water, stones, wind and fire: earth.