The Downward Spiral

Today I have a Visio Divina experience for you. I invite you to go slowly through this blog post, looking at the images, reading my narration and the Bible verses included. Please share your thoughts about how this spiral staircase shapes your thoughts in a new way. Do you connect at all with the idea of a downward spiral? How?

My next post will share what God taught me through these images.

In Santa Fe, New Mexico, the faithful Sisters of Loretto started building the tiny Loretto Chapel in 1873. The architect died before the chapel was completed, leaving the choir loft inaccessible. There was no stairway and no room for a stairway, no financial resources, and no carpenter. So, the faithful Sisters when to their knees in prayer. A mysterious carpenter appeared out of nowhere and built the “Miraculous Staircase,” which spirals upward in two graceful 360-degree turns. With no central support beam, the radiating steps are held together only with wooden pegs. When his work was done, the master carpenter disappeared. The Sisters of Loretto never even had a chance to thank him. No one knew his identity or could locate him afterwards.[i]

When my parents and I visited Santa Fe in 2022, I left the Loretto Chapel with a postcard (above) and the tiny seed of an idea for a painting. Here is how it developed:

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[i] “Our Story.” https://www.lorettochapel.com/our-story.

I am counted among those who go down to the pit; I am a person who has no strength.

Ps. 88:4

…my eye grows dim through sorrow. Every day I call upon you, O Lord; I spread out my hands to you.

Ps. 88:9

Do you work wonders for the dead? Do the departed rise up to praise you?

Ps. 88:10

Are your wonders known in the darkness, or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?

Ps. 88:12

But I, O Lord, cry to you; in the morning my prayer comes before you.

Ps. 88:13, ESV

Then he said, “I tell you the truth, you will all see heaven open and the angels of God going up and down on the Son of Man, the one who is the stairway between heaven and earth.”

John 1:51, NLT [emphasis added]