Stairway to Heaven 6-29-9

Copenhagen, Denmark

There are few things as breath taking as being on a very high place without an enclosure to provide a sense of safety. Once I was on top of the CNN tower in Toronto, standing on a glass floor 1,300 feet above the street but I got to that floor on a glass elevator that was fully enclosed. The wind was blowing at that great height but I was fully contained and felt safe. Today we arrived in Copenhagen on our eastward journey that will have us in Russia at the weekend and I embarked on a vertical detour that took my breath away.

The Church of Our Savior was built in a distant era centuries ago when the metaphor of ascension to Heaven was profoundly important to the faith of people living in a world that had a strong religious cosmology. Airplanes, hot air balloons, and rockets had not been invented when the black spire steeple of the Savior church was thrust 100 meters or more into the northern skies of this Danish capital. No one had ever orbited the globe or been much more that twenty feet above the ground. Today I found myself standing on top of the city, far above all the twenty floor buildings around me.

What was stunning about this ascension was the fact that the last half of it was made on the outside of a winding spire. A narrow copper clad set of stairs cantilevered on the exterior of this spire allowed me to go up in the wind and enter into a dizzying climb to the bottom of a low hanging cloud deck. The lower air was absolutely clear, affording a commanding view of what was once thought to be the known world. I have never thought myself particularly averse to being on high places and thought myself fairly height confident. This proved that illusion to be just that. I was nearly weak kneed on that tiny 9” wide step that was close to five hundred from the first one at street level. The strong cold wind made me more than a bit curious about the integrity of this wood structure that has been piercing the cosmos for centuries. I had visions of fumbling my new Nikon camera and having it disappear, only to end up as specks of glass and aluminum on the cobblestones far below. I did manage to hang on to my camera and my wits and get a complete panorama of the terra cotta world far below. I found myself having a new appreciation for people that hang themselves on high places like Mt. Everest for weeks at a time.

The New Testament passage in Thessalonians that describes the raising of believers into the clouds at the second coming of Christ and being united with their Savior suddenly had a new meaning. I can rest in the reality that I do not have to make a breathless climb up an endless staircase to reach my promised room in the Father’s house in Heaven. He will provide me a lift that will be even better than the glass enclosed capsule in the CNN tower. A church sign quipped that salvation is so easy for us because He paid so much for it.

I climbed down a series of narrow steps, ladders, spirals, and even conventional steps at the bottom and carried on with the usual ground level activities one would be expected to do while diligently photographing a splendid country, new to me. I photographed several miles of splendid canals, four palaces, three epic churches, the harbor, a brass band, about eight miles of streets with rather pleasing Danish facades.

As transcendent as that experience was on top of the black spire, I had one that was nearly as much so at sea level. I was walking back across the city centre after having photographed the four palaces of Amalieborg and the changing of the guard that takes place there. I found myself in proximity again to the great Fredericks Church which contains the third largest free span rotunda in the world. I went in. In late afternoon with the sun breaking free of the dense cloud above and illuminating the interior of this great space, I suddenly found myself entirely alone. Unexpectedly all the school classes, tour guides, and hordes of tourists were completely absent. The place was suddenly mine. The great organ suddenly erupted into gigantic major chords and I was transfixed. I was rooted to my place and experienced mindfulness of the highest order. Nothing else mattered. Perhaps the business and busyness of doing intense photographic work was being blasted aside so I could instead hear the still small voice of the Numinous. How easy it is to let the novelty and intensity of a project get in the way of the truly epic.

As grand as it is to climb the great spires of an ancient age and to be sole proprietor of one of the world’s great spaces for a short time, none of this compares to the sense that comes from conscious contact with God and the sense that he really is interested in our very small lives. That is the ultimate high.

Perhaps I can remember that when I go to two cities in what was East Germany and photograph several of the great medieval churches built along the Baltic Coast some 800 years ago.