St. Paul's Cathedral - The Beauty Within

From the outside of St. Paul’s the grandeur of the building leaves you speechless.  To even capture the building, with the details that it has in a small camera was impossible.

Slowly one by one a soul enters into St. Paul's Cathedral and the sight of the murals, stained glass windows, statues, people and just the whole magnificence of it hits you.

I have never been to a catholic mass before, so I knew that I had to observe and see how things were being done amongst everyone else. The book “Ways of Seeing” by John Berger, he explains that what we see is what makes our thoughts come together. With that, I would observe the people around me and the people who were leading the mass.  What I saw with my eyes and what people were doing around me, I put into practice.  When people would stand and read off of the paper, I would do the same.  

It amazed me that people knew when to stand up, sit down, and when to respond back to the leader of the church.  Also the music that was coming out from the choir and the organist was beautiful.  I have heard music like that on a cd or on the television, but to be surround by it and in the middle of it all was too much for words.  From where I was sitting, I could see a guy in the choir covering one ear while he was singing so that he could hear himself more.  The echo that the church was giving back when the choir and congregation was singing was a bit hard because you would hear twice the voices around and it could also throw someone off their tune or even the words they were singing.  But the professionalism that the choir had and also the congregation was very inspiring.  

Berger says that "seeing establishes our place in the surrounding world..." and for me, being in a different type of setting or "world"I really had to see every aspect of it to really take in and understand what was going around me.