Karen Scheffler's magnificent stained-glass artwork was inspired by The Cathedral, from George MacDonald's At the Back of the North Wind (see passage below), and is one of several entries in our Annual Competition. Make sure and scroll below the passage to see other views of Karen's art from different angles and in different light.
From AT THE BACK OF THE NORTH WIND
THE CATHEDRAL:
"Look then," said North Wind; and, with one sweep of her great white arm, she swept yards deep of darkness like a great curtain from before the face of the boy.
And lo! It was a blue night, lit up with stars. Where it did not shine with stars it shimmered with the milk of the stars, except where, just opposite to Diamond's face, the grey towers of a cathedral blotted out each its own shape of sky and stars.
"Oh! What's that?" cried Diamond, struck with a kind of terror, for he had never seen a cathedral, and it rose before him with awful reality in the midst of the wide spaces, conquering emptiness with grandeur.
"A very good place for you to wait in," said North Wind. "But we shall go in, and you shall judge for yourself."……….
She left the words, "Come after me," sounding in his ears.
But move he dared not. In a moment more he would from very terror have fallen into the church, but suddenly there came a gentle breath of cool wind upon his face, and it kept blowing upon him in little puffs, and at every puff Diamond felt his faintness going away, and his fear with it. Courage was reviving in his little heart, and still the cool wafts of the soft wind breathed upon him, and the soft wind was so mighty and strong within its gentleness, that in a minute more Diamond was marching along the narrow ledge as fearless for the time as North Wind herself.
He walked on and on, with the windows all in a row on one side of him, and the great empty nave of the church echoing to every one of his brave strides on the other, until at last he came to a little open door, from which a broader stair led him down and down and down, till at last all at once he found himself in the arms of North Wind, who held him close to her, and kissed him on the forehead. Diamond nestled to her, and murmured in her bosom,—
"Why did you leave me, dear North Wind?"
"Because I wanted you to walk alone," she answered
“But is so much nicer here!" said Diamond.
"I daresay; but I couldn't hold a little coward to my heart. It would make me so cold!"
But I wasn't brave of myself," said Diamond, whom my older readers will have already discovered to be a true child in this, that he was given to metaphysics. "It was the wind that blew in my face that made me brave. Wasn't it now, North Wind?"
"Yes: I know that. You had to be taught what courage was. And you couldn't know what it was without feeling it: therefore it was given you. But don't you feel as if you would try to be brave yourself next time?"
"Yes, I do. But trying is not much."
"Yes, it is—a very great deal, for it is a beginning. And a beginning is the greatest thing of all. To try to be brave is to be brave...."
