Friday open thread: An encounter with the Ineffable

I was pretty wrecked yesterday. I was tired and icky. And I was about to let this impinge on today's post.

But as I've done often in these my middle years, I re-centered. The day's minutiae and pains are a fleeting thing. There is beauty and wonder in the world, and today I want to focus on that.

On our final night in Spain, I and the Gaybrarian finally made it to La Sagrada Familia. Begun by Antoni Gaudí, one of the greatest architects and visionaries of the late 19th/early 20th centuries, it is still incomplete one hundred and fifty years later. But that's of no concern. The great cathedrals often took hundreds of years to complete—we went to the Catedral de Barcelona, which was begun in the 11th century and wasn't completed until the 15th.

But whereas those ancient cathedrals were built by anonymous master masons, La Sagrada Familia is one man's vision. Gaudí poured his Catholic faith, his belief in humanity's oneness, his love of the divine and of the divine's creation of nature into this building. He knew, like those master masons, that he wouldn't live to complete the project. Therefore, he left detailed models and plans for how to proceed.

When he died in a traffic accident in 1926, all of Barcelona turned out to lead him to the next life. He was buried in the crypt of the "temple", one of the few parts of the basilica to have been completed. He had lived the final years of his life onsite, his work and his life becoming one.

This is the beauty and the power of art. How, when you are at the right place, it consumes you. You cannot live without it. You cannot exist apart from it. It is who you are.

For today's open thread, I'm sharing some of the pictures I took there. If you ever get the chance, you must visit.

I hope I was able to bring a bit of Spain to all of you.