 some others, do have altars. And they are called that because they remain places of sacrifice, in the old sense of presenting ourselves as holy and reasonable sacrifices to God as we are fed with the holy food and drink of bread and wine in which Christ is truly present.
So, what about your altars. It’s two part answer. First, I love them. Their design invites the viewer into a sacred space where intimacy with God, as they understand God, may happen. Sacred moments like that make the viewer sacred, at least for the moment, and the sacrifice has taken place, no ritual required. Yes, but where’s the altar, the table? In the mind of the viewer. Maybe not so oddly enough, your altars are in the shape of a basilica apse. Here’s the second and last part of this too long note. An apse is the semicircular space behind the altar in a basilica style churchIn Roman times a basilica was something like a town hall or legislative assembly building. The governor would sit on a raised platform in the apse to do whatever Roman governors did. As the early Christian church grew out of house churches and into dedicated buildings, it copied the basilica style as a statement that it is God and not the emperor who sits in judgment, and it is God and not the emperor to whom Christians give their ultimate loyalty. The style is still common today.
So your altars reside in the apsides (that’s the plural I guess) you have created, there for each viewer to discover in her or his own way.
My Anglian tradition is heavily laden with Celtic Christianity ways of thinking, one of which is the idea of thin placesThin places can exist anywhere at anytime, and are places where the boundary is very thin between the holy and the profane, heaven and earth, material and spiritual. The drawings that adorn your altar spaces evoke, for me, the idea of thin places, and invite the possibility that they may become one, at least for a few seconds.
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