Cobalt stain in Chartres
It was my first time seeing Chartres, and I wanted to take a piece of that light home.
I didn’t know the train would be like that. Seats across a table like something from a movie. But I’d never been on a French train before. I was twenty-one, so everything felt surprising and it was springtime.
The winter had been more grey than I expected. I was a student on exchange for the year in
Edinburgh and I’d left my winter boots at home, expecting rain and mild temperatures. Only, my student apartment must have been built before insulation was invented because the cold penetrated it and I hadn’t been warm in months. But now I was on a train in the sunshine.
That day, I’d been to Chartres to see the cathedral’s famous medieval stained glass. Legend says that the method for making this blue glass has been lost or even hidden. But this is only a legend. The recipe has been on European library shelves without interruption since the twelfth century. We can read how the craftsmen added cobalt to the melting glass to create a deep saturation because the resulting colour was in – rather than on – the glass. Cobalt also strengthened the glass, making it more durable than the contemporary reds and greens.
Standing in the cathedral, I’d been awed by the colours. The drench of that ubiquitous blue ignited the biblical figures clad in orange and amber robes. I was dazzled. I wanted to take some home. I wanted to keep that light near me, wrapped around me, always.
In a street near the cathedral, there was a small jewellery shop and I went in, hoping foolishly that they sold light. Instead I bought a silver pendant – a cross with amber at each tip. The silver’s beautiful blue reflections and the amber’s glow felt right. Of course, it was insufficient – a necklace is no cathedral – but it was a symbol of my feelings that day and on the train, my fingers kept finding the silver as I watched the wheat fields pass by.
“You are a believer?”
He surprised me. The man across the table had been sitting quietly, his wife reading a book. His voice was deep, with a rhythmic, West African cadence. Now, he smiled and pointed to my cross.
“Yes,” I said. “I am.” I told him about visiting the cathedral and tried to say something about the light, but I felt awkward.
His smile widened. “I understand. I, too. We are far from home, believers. So, you are my sister. Welcome.”
They were from Côte d’Ivoire and had loved the cathedral, too. It was so beautiful. But a different kind of church from what they knew, they said.
I understood. It was so different for me, too, so much older than I was used to and then that shock of colour. And yet, I was loved by this ancient cathedral’s continuing testimony to God’s Spirit.
The same Spirit moved this man to call me sister and to give me welcome. This is the Spirit’s hospitality, that – when we are open to it – will strengthen us from the inside, so that we might be lovingly connected across the table.
