Standing in a medieval cathedral gives you a kind of x-ray vision of the world. Meaning is everywhere, full and rich. The material world has been gathered to a saturation point. In a cathedral, then, the spiritual world feels like it is leaking in, and our response is to want to soar up and through and out. Simply look up any of the black-and-white photographs of Salisbury Cathedral, and you’ll see what I mean.46 In short, such medieval and modern experiences of the cathedral help us reconstruct the sense of awe and fullness and saturation that Lewis himself felt when contemplating the
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