A holy place

I dropped into a run-of-the-mill Chinese take-out restaurant today, in the shabby strip mall near my house, to order dinner. My attention was immediately captured by a huge picture on the wall, in a stainless steel frame, of the place that you see above. I looked at it for several minutes while the pseudo-Chinese food I had ordered was being prepared. I wondered about the characters on the brilliant blue background at the top of the building -- what they meant. But most of all, I wondered what this building was.

If you already know, then congratulations, you are smarter or at least more geographically knowledgeable than the average bear.

I imprinted its distinctive design in my mind, then chafed for several hours until I could get home and open up one of my literary treasures: The World's Greatest Architecture.

And there it was: The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, in the Temple of Heaven, Beijing, China. According to my book, it is "probably the most familiar building in China."

According to a website about the place:

"Construction of the Temple of Heaven began during the reign of Emperor Yongle and was completed in 1420. It was used by all subsequent Emperors of the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

The Chinese Emperor ruled "All Under Heaven" by divine authority. The Temple of Heaven was central to his authority as he prayed for blessings for his people.

In imperial China, the emperor was regarded as the Son of Heaven, the intermediary between Earth and Heaven. To be seen to be showing respect to the source of his authority, in the form of sacrifices to heaven, was extremely important. The Temple of Heaven was built for these ceremonies.

The most important ceremony of the year took place on the winter solstice, when the emperor prayed for good harvests. After three days of fasting, the emperor and his entourage, wearing splendid robes, would make their way to the park on the day before the solstice. It was forbidden for the commoners to catch a glimpse of the great annual procession; they had to bolt their windows and remain in silence indoors throughout the event.

Upon arrival at Tian Tan, the emperor meditated in the Imperial Vault, ritually conversing with the gods on the details of government. He then spent the night in the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests."

What man hath built

Blogger Kat has gotten me thinking again about architecture, the science and art of building.

I love the natural world and I hate so much of what man has done to it -- yet I am not so narrow minded as to loathe everything about my own species and to despise everything that he has created, some of which is breathtaking in its beauty.

We are fortunate that despite thousands of years of war and nature's own destructive hand, many of the great buildings of history still stand -- the Pyramids, the Parthenon (though we almost lost that one), a myriad of medieval cathedrals, Taj Mahal, Angor Wat, etc.

I returned tonight to my reading of James Carroll's "Constantine's Sword," which examines the historical relationship and antagonism between Christians and Jews. Tonight's chapter discussed the Jewish temple, destroyed almost 2000 years ago by vengeful Romans.

What a building that must have been! Carroll alludes to Josephus (Ant. Book XV, Chapt. 11, verse 5):

"For while [the adjacent] valley was very deep and its bottom could not be seen, if you looked from above into the depth, this further vastly high elevation of the cloister stood upon that height, insomuch that if anyone looked down from the top of the battlements ... he would be giddy ..."

When I read Josephus a few years ago, I read that passage but failed to appreciate what it was trying to tell me.

This blog is certainly not the place to go into any great detail about the Jewish temple, its significance, its history. But consider that there is evidence that the spot has been considered sacred since the Stone Age; consider that a shovel cannot be thrust into the ground there nor a ramp repaired today without inciting a riot.