The Window Maker’s Letter
TOC
“When it comes to paint fused to a silicon lens, the glass artist’s skill is not so much in the application of colour
as in its scraping and scratching away.”
The Window Maker
During my research at Barkerville, I came across the following letter from Glass Maker Serena Carson to Rev. Christopher Newman. It speaks for itself…
Dear Reverend Newman,
Thank you for your commission to do the stained glass for St. Saviour’s Anglican Church in Barkerville. I have never visited the Cariboo and don’t expect I ever will. It is unlikely I will get to see the finished work in situ, so to speak. I can tell you, though, that it will shed a very special light on your congregation. I have done hundreds, possibly thousands, of windows for clients over the years, but none has been more inspiring than this small project. That is why I feel I must take the time to write at some length about a work of art that has been mine in the making and will be yours—or, rather, your congregation’s—for the keeping. I hope it brings joy to all who look upon it.
Strange as it may seem, I have never been commissioned to do a Mary Magdalene. So, as is my practice with any unfamiliar subject, I delved into the story of this woman’s life, attempting to gain a sense of who she was and what type of world she may have lived in.
Well! I never thought my research would take me beyond the threshold of professional, and I dare say academic interest, into the realms of admiration and devotion. Strange as this may sound, I feel I have been in the presence of Mary Magdalene’s spirit, carrying out your commission—that in transforming strips of metal and shards of coloured glass into her likeness, I have transformed myself into a believer in her awakened, present spirit.
Being a religious man, I hope you will be able to understand the epiphany I have experienced and won’t think me mad. I assure you, I am not given to spiritual fervour or joyous outbursts of any kind. My worship inclines to the thoughtful, quiet, even solemn—I hate drawing attention to myself or being in the midst of enraptured cultists. So, no one could have been more surprised than I when the spirit of Mary Magdalene made herself known to me.
In retrospect, and without distorting the truth, I can say I was somewhat aware of her from the moment I accepted your commission. It was as if someone else was in the library or studio with me, watching over my shoulder as I researched, sketched, and selected the glass for your window. I know we humans sometimes revise the past by imposing the present on it; we confirm what we have come to believe by re-visioning our experiences. And perhaps I can be accused of having done so in this instance. But I am a compulsive journal keeper and can cite entrees that will confirm my presentiments about Mary Magdalene.
“Sometimes spirit moves like a breeze, whispering in the grass, ruffling our hair, rustling our papers and the fragile pages of our ancient manuscripts, before we’re properly aware of its presence. That’s how I feel about Mary Magdalene—that she wants to make herself known to me.” I wrote that within a week of having taken on your commission, before I’d designed your window or delved into the literature about her. So, I can say in this instance that the future has borne out the prescience of my past, not altered it to conform to some sort of fantasy.
My investigations into other cultures and systems of belief have led me to the almost inevitable conclusion that different peoples have different modes of thinking. I don’t mean their specific thoughts are different, which would be too obvious a statement to be worth making, but that their ways of thinking are unique. Europeans, for instance, tend to think in a linear mode, like steam engines running along a set of rails. You may not know what’s around the next bend, but you have no doubt about how you’re going to get there. For some cultures, events aren’t strung together like beads on a necklace. Not at all! Their experiences coalesce, perhaps like shapes in coloured clouds, or bits of metal in the presence of a magnet, or specks of tinted glass on a table. Time and space, it seems to me, are not as objectively real as we would like to think, which is to say, there is still a place for visions in our human experience. Irrational is not necessarily irrelevant!
Was it rational for me, a woman of agnostic bent, to have been commissioned for this sacred work, or to be rhapsodizing about a saintly spirit like Mary Magdalene? Probably not. Does that irony render my love for this biblical figure mere infatuation? Certainly not! Women have been maligned and abused in the histories made and written by men. Mary’s courage—which illuminates the window that you are about to install in St. Saviour’s—is the true spirit of womanhood on the verge of self-awareness, and the day will surely come when the fierce power of love will cast off the chains and shrouds of the patriarchs.
She does not look at Jesus in adoration; she meets his gaze with her own affirming spirit, saying, ‘I choose to believe in you.’
The art of stained glass is opposite to that of painting. You aren’t looking at reflected light when you cast your gaze upon a stained-glass window; what you are seeing is pure light that has passed through translucent, transfiguring glass. When it comes to paint fused to a silicon lens, the glass artist’s skill is not so much in the application of pigment as in its scraping and scratching away to reveal the unfiltered blaze of brilliant, white light. That is the magic of my art. The cutting, breaking, fitting, leading, soldering, and so on are simply consequents—tasks that must be performed to realize the glass’s sublime truth.
I thank you for choosing me for that—as it has turned out—glorious task. No matter what the fate of the window we have created, its vision will animate my soul for the brief eternity of my earthly existence.
Yours in all sincerity,
Glass Maker,
Serena Carson
