When you live in a place for a while, your mental map of that place starts getting annotations. Specifically, I find that I start coming up with names for places that are better than their actual names. On Fifth Avenue, across the street from WQED, is a church; its given, wrong, name is “Holy Spirit Byzantine Catholic Church.”
I used to walk past this building every day on the way to class. The front of the church is covered with a huge mosaic:
I never thought much of it, not caring much about religious iconography. One day, however, I examined the mosaic a little more closely.
As I did so, I realized it had a particular detail that I found not only jarring, but downright disturbing. Here’s a close-up shot of that detail (click to enlarge):
To the person who created this particular work of art, I ask the question: what the hell?.
Ever since noticing the World War II-era bomber and the fighter jet on the mosaic, I’ve always thought of this church by its secret True Name: Our Lady of Nagasaki.
When you elevate torture devices as religious iconography, it’s only right that WMDs should play a part too.
Not sure how common this is in the US, but there is a tendency in British churches to decorate the stained glass windows with iconography from World War I & II (i.e. soldiers, tanks, airplanes, warships). That always struck me as kind of strange, but maybe it is because the Church of England is so closely linked to the English head of state.
Amazing. How many times have I walked past this church and never noticed that?