Written by Dennis Aubrey

Happy Holidays


PJ and I send to all our Via Lucis friends our wishes for a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. It has been a wonderful year of blogging about our Romanesque and Gothic inspirations. Peace to you all and a heartfelt “thank you”.

Holiday 2012-2

40 thoughts on “Happy Holidays”

    1. Best to you and Kay, Gordon. Just yesterday PJ and I were discussing your marvelous understanding of words, both written and spoken. It is an interesting thing to be able to see your video sermons – we can feel you ministering to us across the distances.

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    1. Glad to have you along for the ride. We are frankly shocked by the number of people who are responding to our work at Via Lucis. We thought it was such a small subset of the world that not many would be interested. What a pleasant surprise to see that so many others respond as we do.

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    1. Harushi、素晴らしいホリデーシーズンを持っています。私はあなたの笑顔を見て欠場。

      Boy, I hope Google Translate works and I didn’t say something like “The cow in your eye splashes merrily.”

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  5. Happy Christmas! The church in this post doesn’t look very Romanesque or Gothic… 😉

    (It does, however, bring back happy memories of my family’s holiday to Massachussetts last year. We didn’t make it up as far as Concord, but saw plenty of lovely “New England” churches!)

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    1. John, you’re right, not Romanesque or Gothic this time. But we don’t spend winters in Europe, so it’s tough to get a snow picture:) But living in Cape Cod, plenty of opportunities here! Thanks for your note, and have a great holiday.

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  7. Within the past three days I’ve heard the idea expressed by various people that there needs to be more emphasis on what is beautiful in the world. You are certainly doing your part in that regard… thank you for that! Wishing you a Merry Christmas and all good things in the New Year.

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  10. Joyeux Noël to you and PJ. Your work on this blog has been of great interest to me this year. Merci merci merci.

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    1. Joyeux Noël, Trish. Best of luck with your translations and writings. Make sure to keep us posted in the new year, although we are regular visitors to “Sounds like Wish”.

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      1. Thanks for telling me you visit my blog. And thanks for remembering I’ve been translating. I’m presently preparing a publishing proposal. Let’s see if anyone’s interested.

  11. A truly beautiful church with the dawn of a new day illuminating. Thank you so much for such wonderful holiday wishes. Merry Christmas to you as well, and look forward to more beautiful churches in the New Year.

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    1. Merry Christmas, Jong-Soung, and thank you for enriching us with the wonderful contributions you made to the Via Lucis blog in 2012. Your Hildesheim post is one of the most popular we have ever done. Someday we will meet in person. I look forward to that.

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    1. Definitely not Romanesque or Gothic, but pure New England. We don’t shoot in Europe during the winter so we didn’t have any seasonal shots from our beloved French churches. This had to do. So nice to hear from you and your predilection for the hand-made.

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  17. Just a brief note to thank you – I have been following your blogs for half the year or more, with gratitude. I much enjoy your texts, I love your images. I love the buildings, of course, and always the excitement at meeting one I don’t know. (Putting together a vast history/encyclopaedia of architecture a few years ago, I was collecting such buildings voraciously, perhaps indiscriminately, but trying always to ensure the result was not the same few which always stood for a hugely rich and varied enterprise.)

    Your blogs, as your images most eloquently, so often speak of calm and quietude, stillness and the space to expand personally… things we find so difficult to find these days – but hang on: life for almost all in those centuries when the cathedrals were new was nasty, brutish and short. And those for whom it as longer were probably the nastier brutes.

    There’s nothing wrong with these contrasts: we always value, and use, the past for ourselves. It’s not a ‘sentimental irony’ that we do so, as some say. However… while I’m all for mass concord, I must say I prefer the Romanesque interiors. Joyeux Noël et bonne année.

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    1. John, so glad to hear that you have been with us on our journey on Via Lucis. As far as your point about the tempestuous histories of these churches and how they were anything but refuges of calm, you are absolutely correct. Our post on the Cathédrale de Beziers makes that clear. In fact, I have written often that it is amazing that any of these survive, much less 5,000 in France alone. I think that the point that is most important is that these churches offer us the possibility of contemplation in a world where it is so difficult to find a man-made structure that does so. I remember years ago being on one of the Greek islands and looking across the water to a ruined temple on a promontory. It was a site that made one take stock of civilizations, ideas, peoples and history.

      I am so pleased to hear thoughts like those you express, and proud that you put them here on Via Lucis. You are always welcome. Et Joyeux Noël et bonne année.

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