Interior Space, St. Elizabeth's

The photos shown here were taken recently by local photographer John Cremons. They show much of the grandeur and some of the vulnerability of the interior space at Saint Elizabeth's. After his visit, he sent us an email with the following message:

Thanks so much for letting me photograph your beautiful church. The character and presence in this sanctuary is powerful. I noticed that you have great respect for the past and your predecessors. This is good.

A Sacred Space of Norwood

Here's a picture of Saint Elizabeth's, home to Vineyard Central(VC) in Norwood, Ohio. My wife and I started attending services in January, 2006. We had been doing some church shopping, but after the first service at VC, we knew we had found a home.

You can't see it in this photo, but St. Es has a fantastic interior space, some exquisite old stained glass windows, and some pretty extensive water damage. (I will be posting pictures of the interior in later posts.) There are several places where the plaster has completely fallen away, revealing the underlying columns of brick, like the underlying bones of the building. For me, it combines a sense of beauty and vulnerability. I think it's one of the reasons Vineyard Central feels like home.

It is a Sacred Space of Norwood. You have to live in Cincinnati to see the humor in that statement. Norwood is often the butt of local Cincinnati jokes, and West Norwood has been considered the arm pit of Norwood. Nonetheless, Saint Elizabeth's is a sacred space, and I have volunteered to help lead the efforts to create a restorative community focused on this beautiful, vulnerable space. Over the next weeks, months and years, I intend to use this blog to explain how I came to become one of the stewards of this sacred space and explore what that means and how it works on me, how I change as a result, and what we do to reach in to the surrounding community. I expect it will be quite a journey.