Over at CAF, they have a "Beautiful Catholic Church" thread. It's amazing to see some of the ancient and modern Church designs. With this thread, I invite all Anglicans to post pics of the most beautiful Anglican Churches from all around the Communion! I'll start with the Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, known as, Washington National Cathedral: http://www.tripadvisor.com/Location...edral-Washington_DC_District_of_Columbia.html
Saint Mary's Bourne Street in London, England: http://www.stmarysbournest.com/index.php/galleries All Saints Margaret Street in London, England: http://www.allsaintsmargaretstreet.org.uk/about/photos/Architecture
In my Diocese: St Just in Roseland, Cornwall, UK http://www.flickr.com/photos/therevsteve/551183205/ ...and not forgetting the mother ship, Truro Cathedral, Cornwall UK: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cornishcarolin/5610541621/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/dwphoto_kent/2684058793/
Christ Church Episcopal: An Anglo-Catholic parish in New Haven, CT http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.111908022166903.12808.111872795503759&type=3
St. John the Divine Episcopal Cathedral, New York. The largest Cathedral in the United States. http://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/80fv...aeySApSSUmQn3DSMXRLhlQ#d9EHWVDBUSPp5bEj_crMNQ
These are beautiful. Reminds me of Beauty and Spirituality, an online article written by Christine Valters Paintner, founder and director of Abbey of the Arts. Beauty and Spirituality. . . The great theologian, Hans Urs von Balthasar, saw beauty as a joyful experience that calls us out of ourselves to connect with others, and most importantly to connect us with the Other. Beauty is a bridge to God, and art is a means of cooperating with the divine in creation's act. For von Balthasar, the aesthetic saturates all of creation; it is not one source of insight among others, with its own autonomy. The aesthetic is woven into the fabric of human experience and our knowledge of things. When we see a beautiful work of art, or a radiant sunset, we are confronted with the mystery of its otherness. Every person has an aching need for beauty; in beauty we discover the face of God.Spiritual and aesthetic experiences are intimately linked. Both reveal the unutterable, the invisible, the transcendent. Spirituality is about this longing for God, for a connection to the mystery dimension of life, the ultimate that fills our world with meaning. An aesthetic spirituality is one that recognizes this longing as a response to a call already issued, to an invitation always present in the world through beauty's presence. We are called to awaken to beauty, to see more deeply, to cultivate practices of attentiveness. We are invited to let beauty penetrate the heart, and to respond to it by creating further beauty in our own lives.We each arrive in this world created as a unique and beautiful image of God. [Thomas] Merton describes this self as the ‘true self', moulded and crafted lovingly by God - the self that wants nothing more, or less, than for us to be who we were created to be. That core of our being, created by God as whole and beautiful, is a wave in the ocean of God, a flame in God's fire. For Merton, the true inner self is a jewel resting on the bottom of the sea, and the path of contemplation is the journey to this true self from the false one:I break through the superficial exterior appearances that form my routine vision of the world and my own self, and I find myself in the presence of hidden majesty (New Seeds of Contemplation, 41)....Scottish Monk
All Saints' Cathedral, Albany, NY, also the first cathedral built for that purpose in the US, 1888. http://www.thecathedralofallsaints.org/
St.Leonard's, Newland England. A very beautiful church with much colour and detail. http://www.stleonardsnewland.org/index.html