23 march 2005

I’m not sure where God is but I don’t think he’s here anyway, in this particular mosque in Cordoba on this particular day. I feel this because instead of my lungs and other insides filling with God as they usually do in startling places of worship, I’m clinical and in my head, thinking about language and travel and online personals. It must be all the tourists, with their cameras and guidebooks and inappropriately loud, casual conversation. It hasn’t left any room for spirit. With all the flash photography and fanny packs, this place feels as sacred as Disney World. I wonder what they’re all here for. The architecture? I wonder if God returns when they leave.

This place was once a cathedral, and then was a mosque, and now is a cathedral again. I bet God stuck around through all of that. But the tourists – that was the last straw.

There are cases in the walls with religious artifacts. On some of the processional crosses Jesus is very, very small. Small enough to fit entirely on the vertical piece of the cross, his arms just barely reaching out to the sides. He looks tiny and sad, dwarfed by all that gold. He is smooth and whole and shiny, while everything around him is gilded and sharp.