I discovered these marvelous photos of the Forth Rail Bridge in North Queensferry, Scotland by Myles Fitt, who graciously allowed us to publish them here. They are a fitting illustration as I present the PONTIFUS series again for your quarantine reading enjoyment.
Just a few months ago scenes like the one above we might have taken for granted. In a town like ours, such gathering places are part of the life of our community. Suddenly, it seems, they are gone. Lost are the essential comings together. But look! Even as some lamented the fact that we could not assemble during the Holy days, inspiration and innovation let us find a way! The great feast of Passover is celebrated at home. A story of redemption, plagues and deliverance is told in the medium of the meal. A timely celebration if ever there was one. Easter traditionally is a time when Christians gather as large congregations. Some people said “we would not have Easter this year.” But the tomb is still empty and modern technology allowed congregations to come together in celebration! They just had to do it on screens. Pastors preached in front of cameras. Prayer meetings happened on Zoom! Many people created stained glass pictures on their driveway. Up in Selma, Virginia, Kristina Elaine Greer created a wonderful banner celebrating the news “He is Risen!” She put her children’s messages online. Eliza Peltola, children’s ministry director of Greenmonte Fellowship, created a drive through ‘Resurrection Egg Hunt.’ Keeping social distancing, families drove through the local retirement community. Staying in their cars they collected clues posted around the property’s drive. They waved at the residents as they passed through the place. We’re finding ways to be together (safely and responsibly) while we must stay apart.
Here are some extra issues we’ve created to help you weather this time of being apart. We hope you enjoy them!
Richard Finkelsteincaptured this unique photo of Staunton, Virginia's C and O Station with no cars parked in front! The station was designed by Architect T. J. Collins and built in 1902.
Volume XVIII, Issue VIIIa: Picture of Redemption and Resurrection
Although in our house “the book is always better” is a credo, I was watching the Disney Narnia movie and noticed something. Though the story loses touch with C. S. Lewis’ original autograph, it is clear that visually there is something to recommend. It is in the scene where Aslan dies on the stone table and comes to life again. Lewis meant this to be a modern day telling of the Christ story. While the dialogue preceding this scene entirely muddles discussion of ‘deep magic,’ visually the ‘true myth’ remains. The cinematographers add an architectural element to the stone table entirely missing from the book – a large stone doorway. Evil creatures dance on it as Aslan is sacrificed for Edmund. It does not seem to have a purpose… until the resurrected Aslan appears in light through the doorway. It is a perfect picture of the Resurrected Christ if you are looking for it. The death of Aslan too, shows the pain that sin truly inflicts – and the seriousness thereof. Indeed, upon meeting the resurrected lion, Edmund first confesses, but very quickly Peter makes the perhaps greater confession that it was his sin that egged Edmund on. Indeed, there is a holy moment where each character owns his or her personal failings in this department. Repentance must indeed begin personally. 2 Chronicles 7:13-14 says: “When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” Indeed, the charge is to the people of God. It is all too easy to see the ‘villain’ in a story, the Edmund, the ‘evil secularists,’ whoever, but when we stand in the presence of Christ, as His people, it is our own knees that need to be knocking.
The Meaning of the Miraculous For many Centuries man has acknowledged the miraculous. The Jewish community celebrates their deliverance from Egypt and the beginning of their journey to the Promised Land A dialogue set in a meals has all generations together consider the preservation of their people that could only be seen as a work of G-d. Previous generations always saw G-d, or some miraculous force as Creator. The Patriarchs saw Him as Provider and Deliverer! The relatively recent concept of Evolution (Charles Darwin in the Nineteenth Century) has created a philosophy of Naturalism that either outright rejects or quietly diminishes the Theistic explanation.
I once attended an Easter service at a large church in Richmond. The minister asserted that the Resurrection was not important! I don't remember anything else he said. I was astonished because Christ's Resurrection would seem to be a cornerstone of Christianity. Many voices today denounce Faith. They may not directly denounce it, but in the academy it is the subject of "open discourse" such as that experienced by Ryan Rotella at FAU [click to read]. Rotella was asked to leave a class. His "offense" was refusing to participate in an excercise where students were required to "stamp on Jesus."Dennis Prager [click to read] has more details. Though the school ultimately apologized to Rotella, it justified its so-called "open discourse" in doing so.
Running from the Resurrection
In fact, among many in academia today you are likely to hear some variation of the following: "There are other reasons why I consider Christianity to be an
ill-chosen creed, such as the morals actually taught in the Bible,
many of which are abhorrent to a compassionate and just man, or other
details of its theology which run counter to observable facts." writes atheist
Richard Carrier in introduction to his argument against Jesus' resurrection from the dead.
Here in his introduction, Carrier gives what I believe is his real reason for being
uncomfortable with a physical resurrection. A G-d who can so control
the laws of nature can ask 'unreasonable' things of us as well. A
'Compassionate and Just Man,' in Carrier's world can support abortion
on demand because it is not 'abhorrent' to his viewpoint that abortion
is a kind response to the needs of women with unplanned pregnancies. The beating heart of the unborn child need not be seen here as an 'observable fact.'
Likewise, the 'restrictive' definition of marriage as a relationship
defined by Scripture in specific terms may be viewed as archaic and
discriminatory.If G-d didn't design it, He cannot write the specifications.
The elimination of Christianity as an authoritative source allows us
to personalize moral decisions. In a culture that elevates
self-actualization, this is virtue. It spares us the heavy lifting
required to weigh moral absolutes with human frailty.
Jesus, meeting a Samaritan woman at a well, is a prime example of what
I mean by this heavy lifting. Balancing compassion for the woman with his observation that
she has not been a faithful wife, Jesus creates a constructive
dialogue. He does not condemn her, nor does He overlook the complexity
she has created in her relationships. He speaks truth and ultimately
the dialogue that results sets her free. Here Absolute Love and Absolute Truth are in no way mutually exclusive. In the end her search for 'Living Water' trumps her desire to live as she pleases. [2.]
A G-d who can part the Red Sea, Create worlds and has power over death is pretty much to be respected. A G-d who changes human lives in intimate communion with his Creation is amazing.
Before Jesus appeared, the concept of Resurrection is found in Scripture. Sometimes it is very clear and other times it is a logical assumption consistent with the text.
Resurrection Foretold
And he made his grave
with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no
violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. Yet it pleased the Lord
to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul
an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days,
and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. He
shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his
knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear
their iniquities. Therefore
will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the
spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death:
and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors." -- Isaiah 53:9-12 The famous Messianic text above talks of triumph after death. Other texts that may be seen as prophetic of Resurrection are: Genesis 3:15, Psalm 2:7, Psalm 16:9-11, Psalm 22:14-25, Psalm 30:29, Psalm 40:13, Psalm 110:1, Psalm 118:21-24, Hosea 5:15-6:3, Zechariah 12:10.
Resurrection Documented and Verified
I know of no one fact in the history of mankind which is proved by
better, fuller evidence of every sort, to the understanding of a fair
inquirer, than the great sign which God hath given us that Christ died,
and rose again from the dead." says Dr. Thomas Arnold, formerly Professor of History at Rugby and Oxford Universities. Simon Greenleaf, one of the most skilled legal minds ever produced in this nation, top
authority on the question of what constitutes sound evidence, developer
of the Harvard Law School, after a thorough evaluation of the four
Gospel accounts from the point of view of their validity as objective
testimonial evidence, concluded:
It was therefore impossible that they could have persisted in affirming
the truths they had narrated, had not Jesus actually risen from the
dead, and had they not known this fact as certainly as they knew any
other fact." [3.]Dr. Henry M. Morris PhD writes more onThe Importance of the Resurrection [click to read]. His point is that the foundational truth of the Christian faith has plenty of evidence to support it.
A G-d who can part the Red Sea, Create worlds and has power over death
is pretty much to be respected. A G-d who changes human lives in
intimate communion with his Creation is amazing.
Leonardo da Vinci's Portable Bridge
A Message of Hope for the Youth of Our Community
Last year Augusta Christian Educators studio art classes built a model of Leonardo da Vinci’s portable fastenerless bridge. Amanda Riley and Bob Kirchman fabricated the pieces of the bridge structure which the students assembled. The piece calls to mind this poem by Will Allen Dromgoole:
The Bridge Builder
Poem byWill Allen Dromgoole
Bridges
Paintings bySavhanna Herndon
But between them and the foot of the sky there was something so white on the green grass that even with their eagles’ eyes they could hardly look at it. They came on and saw that it was a Lamb. “Come and have breakfast,” said the Lamb in its sweet milky voice. Then they noticed for the first time that there was a fire lit on the grass and fish roasting on it. They sat down and ate the fish, hungry now for the first time for many days. And it was the most delicious food they had ever tasted. “Please, Lamb,” said Lucy, “is this the way to Aslan’s country?” “Not for you,” said the Lamb. “For you the door into Aslan’s country is from your own world.” “What!” said Edmund. “Is there a way into Aslan’s country from our world too?” “There is a way into my country from all the worlds,” said the Lamb; but as he spoke, his snowy white flushed into tawny gold and his size changed and he was Aslan himself, towering above them and scattering light from his mane. “Oh, Aslan,” said Lucy. “Will you tell us how to get into your country from our world?” “I shall be telling you all the time,” said Aslan. “But I will not tell you how long or short the way will be; only that it lies across a river. But do not fear that, for I am the great Bridge Builder. And now come; I will open the door in the sky and send you to your own land.” – C. S. Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Though the media of the time largely concentrated on its flaws, the 1964/65 World's Fair presented a compelling vision for the future.
Walt Disney’s father had worked on the construction of the great Chicago World’s Fair of 1893. The fair is rightly credited with creating a renewed vision for America’s public architecture and the introduction of such modern marvels as electric lighting. In fact, it was the first in a series of American ‘Great World’s Fairs’ that would rise to a crescendo in 1964. Walt would play a major part in that fair, the second great fair held on the site of a former ash dump in Flushing Meadow Park. After his success with animated films, Disney created Disneyland – an amusement park that was more – offering vision and history along with the rides. It was only natural then that several large corporations tasked Disney with designing their pavilions for the 1964/65 fair. Disney and his team of Imagineers did not disappoint. They created rides and robotic actors. Corporate America invested heavily in this opportunity to show their stories to the world. Disney designers had an unprecedented opportunity to develop their ideas. There were three great world’s fairs on the American continent in the 1960’s, Seattle in 1962, New York in 1963/64 and Montreal in 1967. Each presented great vision. Each was incredibly expensive to produce. Unlike Chicago, which made money through the more commercialized and tawdry Midway Plessance, New York in particular rejected the more lewd side of world expositions. Robert Moses demanded a family friendly fair. Whereas fairs of the past had featured gaudy midways and girlie shows, Robert Moses created a fair so clean that the only controversy erupted over some topless marionettes.
Children could even explore Atomsville, USA without their parents – in fact, parents were banned from the exhibit. Lost children around the fair were escorted to a children’s center by friendly fair policemen. Parents eventually made their way to the center in order to retrieve them. This in America’s largest city! That probably wouldn’t even be allowed today! Although the architecture was quite eclectic when compared to Chicago’s ‘White City,’ it featured both kitsch and some stunning examples of modernism. Unlike Chicago’s ‘White City,’ which was built of plaster over lath, the New York World’s Fair buildings were required to be built to New York’s stringent building codes. Roofs had to be built to last 20 years. Electrical code and egress requirements were strongly enforced. In Chicago, the great Cold Storage Building of the 1893 fair had burned to the ground killing 17 people. New York’s fair buildings were designed to prevent such a tragedy. America’s greatest modernist designers contributed their skills to the fair and developments surrounding it such as the Lincoln Center and upgraded transit and airport facilities. Though the Van Wyk Expressway is often mentioned as a push by Robert Moses to build more highways, it must be remembered that the subway and the Long Island Railroad were built up too. Most local visitors to the fair arrived by train. In the end, it might be said that Robert Moses’ comprehensive transportation projects broke the bank. Moses had planned to use profits from the fair to complete a beautiful and permenant Flushing Meadow Park. The fair lost money. Though great world’s fairs still are held, there has not been one on the American continent since the 20th Century… or HAS there?
Walt Disney, having created an amazing new level of experience for his clients at the New York fair, created Disney World in Florida. Going beyond the Magic Kingdom, Disney developed the concept for his Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. Originally Disney intended for people to live there in a city that was ever upgraded to the latest technologies. The actual creation of such a city proved to be quite daunting. Disney’s imagineers created a permanent world’s fair instead. That is what EPCOT is today. Visitors see a variety of international exhibits and some innovative technology exhibits in a permanent campus surrounding a large lake. Addressing the ‘tomorrowland problem,’ the phenomenon of an exhibit meant to portray the future becoming rapidly obsolete, Disney’s imagineers are continually changing the exhibits. The structures themselves are more or less constant so construction costs are not lost on a temporary campus. Admission prices are hefty but Disney’s combined ticket packages make for a value most vacationers are glad to purchase. Most of the attractions require no additional fees but your lunch is going to be expensive. Experienced travelers make reservations early for a nice meal in one of the international restaurants for lunch in the heat of the day. If you’re going to pay a fortune to eat, why not make it memorable? If you stay in the resort, the monorail is truly your transportation system. Thus the World’s Fair, in North America anyway, may have found itself a permanent home.
The Unisphere by Peter Müller-Munk at Fifty-Six
Photos byMichael Anderson
Peter Müller-Munk
The Silversmith Who Designed the Unisphere
Peter Müller-Munk, Industrial Designer.
Today the Unisphere, a twelve story representation of the world balanced above a reflecting pool in Flushing Meadow Park remains as a reminder of the 1964 New York World’s Fair. Most people know that it was fabricated by U.S. Steel in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania but few people know that the design was created by a German silversmith.
Peter Müller-Munk was born Klaus-Peter Wilhelm Müller on June 25, 1904, in a wealthy suburb of Berlin, in present-day Germany. He began his career as a silversmith, crafting unique and custom silver objects before turning to industrial design. He emigrated to the United States in 1926 and worked as a metalworker at Tiffany and Co. in New York City. He moved to Pittsburgh in 1935 to accept a job at the Carnegie Institute of Technology as assistant professor in the first American university baccalaureate degree program in industrial design. In 1938 he opened his first consulting office in Pittsburgh with Robert Paul Karlen as his first employee. Clients had so expanded by 1945 that he found it necessary to resign from Carnegie Tech to devote himself to his business. At the time, he began operating under the name Peter Müller-Munk Associates with Karlen and Raymond Smith as associates. Anton Parisson became the fifth partner in 1957. In 1956 Ernst Budke became an associate of the firm. By 1960 there were five partners and six associates. PMMA's client list spanned the globe; local ones included the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company, Westinghouse, and U.S. Steel. Perhaps the firm’s most recognized design is that of the Unisphere, commissioned by U.S. Steel as the iconic symbol of the 1964 New York World’s Fair. After Müller-Munk died in 1967, his work was largely forgotten until the Carnegie Museum of Art mounted a show of his work.
Unisphere. Photo by Guy Percival.
Beyond Peter Müller-Munk
Iconic Representation of the World and Her Children
The BSB Corporation Pavilion at the 2019 Waynesboro World’s Fair. This was a FunDoodle Art Camp project where we built architectural models and photographed them against the sky to give them scale. The pavilion is a concept for an outdoor installation of the ‘Journey to Jesus ‘ Mural created by Kristina Elaine Greer and Bob Kirchman.
For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.” – Ephesians 2:10 NLT
As a boy, I saw Peter Müller-Monk’s Unisphere and wondered: “What do you do after that to create an Icon for a World Exposition. The delicately balanced steel globe was such a powerful statement. Indeed, I had seen copies of it in a retirement community near Washington, DC and in Santa Cruz, Bolivia (here tilted to give prominence to South America). What could possibly go beyond that?
This past Summer I brought out my World’s Fair lessons for a Summer Camp. I needed to create some ‘sample’ pavilions for the students and I had in my studio a little globe with a base very reminiscent of Peter Müller-Munk’s base for the Unisphere. I set it in a reflecting pool and set to work surrounding it with a copy of the mural ‘Journey to Jesus.’ This was a project that I worked on with Kristina Elaine Greer that showed children around the world coming to the Saviour. The figures were placed in geographical order along a hallway but the work called to be wrapped around the globe!
We had found photographs of children in many lands – often in war-torn places or places of extreme poverty. Once my colleague arrived at our project quite shaken, having found photos of dead children on the internet, so we determined to make the painting about Redemption and Transformation. As we painted closer to Jesus, something happened. I found myself stepping into the background as Kristina came forward. The colors became brighter. The costumes became more vibrant! Transformation! Peter Müller-Munk’s brilliance, at least in part, was that he inspired his colleagues and stepped into the background. He was all about the work, not the recognition.
In the end the work became a statement about God’s workmanship in Redemption. Living Stones fitted into a Divine Design!
Imagine what the Vatican and Rome would have looked like today if the popes, architects, and other masterminds of this architectural complex would have designed and built something to only commemorate the tragedy of Saint Peter’s death?
Hypothetically speaking, the obelisk may have remained in its original position on Nero’s Circus, perhaps covered in shards of glass to symbolize “brokenness” and a “call to reflection.” The exact spot where Saint Peter was martyred might become a fountain with the shape of an inverted cross (to be jarring rather than awesome) with the names of all the other Christian martyrs engraved in a metallic material surrounding the water source. From these names, red water would cascade down into a hole in the ground, as if the water carried their souls into an abyss of nothingness.
Hypothetically, of course, the Vatican complex would have looked like a cemetery, but also a park so that future Christians could have utilized the uncontained “space” for recreation, lamentation, and “meditation.” The overall complex would perhaps have been a reconstruction of Nero’s Circus surrounded by reflective glass, as if the resulting glare was a part of the tragic experience of walking through the site at the time of the killings.
Over the centuries, architects who would have fallen out of fashion would have been fired by trend-seeking popes and the populus seeking newness for its own sake. The site would have become a new way to showcase the vogue architect’s latest and greatest reinvention of a glass box. The basilica that has inspired the architecture of countless churches might have become the headquarters of a religion very different than the one we know today. (read more)
St Peter's Basilica / Via della Conciliazione: Basilica begun 1506. Architects: Donato Bramante; façade Carlo Maderna; dome Michelangelo Buonarroti; baroque Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Seen from Via della Conciliazione, built 1936-50, architect: Marcello Piacentini. Vatican City and Rome, Italy. Photo by George Rex.
The winner of the World Trade Center Site Memorial Competition was Israeli architect Michael Arad of Handel Architects, a New York- and San Francisco-based firm. Arad worked with landscape-architecture firm Peter Walker and Partners on the design, a forest of trees with two square pools in the center where the Twin Towers stood on the morning of 9/11/2001. On September 11, 2011, a dedication ceremony commemorating the tenth anniversary of the attacks was held at the Memorial. It opened to the public the following day. The square pool shown above represents the site of the South Twin Tower The image was taken from the One World Trade Center Observatory, located at 285 Fulton Street, New York (NY). Photo by Ron Cogswell [1.]
The Voices of September Eleventh
Xaver Wilhelmy's Design for a memorial at the World Trade Center site in New York. The memorial features a 3000 pipe organ to give a voice to everyone who's voice was lost on that terrible day. Rendering by Bob Kirchman
Now imagine, if you will, a different memorial at ‘Ground Zero.’ Instead of two voids, an immense glass chapel – really a pipe organ, where 3000 glass pipes give a ‘voice’ to each soul who’s life was taken on that terrible day. Such was the vision created by Staunton, Virginia organ builder Xaver Wilhelmy. I had the privilege to bring his designs to life in renderings. What would have happened if instead of a sterile plaza there was a memorial that reached to the Heavens both visually and in music? It is something to ponder.
Every Spring I look forward to presenting new prints of Rockbridge County’s most famous landmark. This year I will have to do it by means of this publication. If you would like to purchase one of these prints at 8” x 10,” please contact me and I will make arrangements to get one to you.
