Temples

Later this morning I will stand in front of the congregation of my local parish church and talk to them about Jesus and his unnervingly acccurate estimate of the use by date of the Jerusalem Temple. I will talk about how temples, and other such buildings are the expressions of our hopes and dreams and beliefs and how we get these things hopelessly muddled up with our ideas about God. I will talk about how these psychological constructs are provisional and temporary, and so also are the buildings we express them in. They may last decades, or centuries or millennia, but all of them -ideas and architecture -will fall down one day. I will express my belief that Jesus wasn't being merely nihilistic in pointing this out, but rather that he was inviting his hearers to shift their views: to take their eyes off their own dramatic projections, no matter how impressive they might seem, and place them on the eternity which is lying close to them, hidden in plain sight all about them.

Photo. Nikon D7100, Tokina 12-24 F4 @12mm; 1/40 f4 iso 200. This picture of Dunedin Cathedral is an HDR photo. With the camera on a tripod I took a burst of 5 shots, in steps of 0.7 f stops. Later, using Corel PSP I combined these, so that the information contained in each of the picture files could be used to make the final image.

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