Stained Windows

One of the best things about going to the National Cathedral are the stained windows.   But first - did know that the National Cathedral was finished in 1990?   Did not know that.  And wham!  Twenty-one years later an earthquake hits it.

There are 200 stained windows in the National Cathedral.  No, I'm not that smart and I didn't count them all.  I just looked it up.  Love the Web. In 1960 I'd have had to go down to the library, pull out a heavy book and look it up.   And they wouldn't have had that information anyway in 1960.

Just sayin'.

This is my favorite window in the whole place.   The Rose.  This picture and professional pictures do not even do it justice.  One of those things in life that you must see.  Years ago Alice sent me a window hanging of this window that you hang in a sunny place and it becomes beautiful.  I have it in a south window because I don't have a sunny window.  For a few minutes the sun hits it in the summertime.

I didn't see this when I took this photo, but look at the pinkish reflections onto the marble walls.  Very cool.

I like this but I also wish the netting has not been up there.  I suppose they are practicing safety since they are still working on the upper floors and top to repair what was damaged in the earthquake.

I got to this point  late for this but when I found Alice she had been photographing the reflections on this pillar.  I didn't think I got any of it, but looks like I got a little bit.  Her photos of it are incredible.   And I like this.

When I was uploading these photos onto this post, I put them in x-large form and found out that they look better smaller.  So that's why they aren't BIG.

Again, I didn't see the colorful beams coming in through the windows until I looked at this photo.  Neat.

Now I loved this window.  It's called the Space Window.   See that little round whitish thingy in the middle of that great big red circle?    It's an actual rock from the moon.   The whole story of it is on the web right here on this link.

This is what the rock does when the sun hits it just right.

Each of the 200 windows have a story.

I don't know what this actually was.  I think it was downstairs and it was tunneled into the wall with the window at the end.  Again, this picture does not do it justice.

This wasn't one of the windows, but it was one of my most favorite things in the building.  As you started to go downstairs on the marble steps, a kneeling Abraham Lincoln met you at the turn to go down further.  I was fascinated with it.

When I got to the bottom I turned to look up and this was what I saw.   The other thing I saw was that the steps were bowed down in the middle from all of the people over the last century walking up and down.   There were several other chapels in the lower part of the building and services going on even as we were there on a week-day.  We sat in on one.  Very moving.

One other place in Washington DC where the worn steps occur that I saw once was in the Capitol Building.   I was walking up somewhere in the building once and realized the bowing of the marble steps and it hit me with a bang whose steps I was walking in.   Many great and wonderful persons.  I have walked those steps again since that first time and it still chills me.

 

If you'd like to see the stained glass windows clearer and each one named, check out this stained glass link.