Every time I see this memorial it reminds me of nothing so much as a giant plumbing fixture that carries the thoughts of the departed into a bottomless abyss. At least it invokes the proper seriousness. But because of the studied removal of the religious from the site it seems to leave the onlooker with nothing but a depressing feeling.
I understand this reaction, and I find myself wondering if you have actually been because being there I at least experienced what saves the memorial from this final sense of which you speak.
What? It is the moving water and its sound. So the memorial displays a hole as it should, and indeed it is serious. But it has a boundary and somehow the water still flows, which for Christians points I think to the hint of a further word than this word, and for flowing life in a world to come.
Thanks Kendall – your comments about the rushing water and the actual experience of being there make sense. I have not been to the site since the memorial has been completed. I did see the site from across the river one week afterward and remember the sky carrying a wide line of oily black smoke, like a vast aerial highway, over what must have been a good part of the Jersey coastline.
Every time I see this memorial it reminds me of nothing so much as a giant plumbing fixture that carries the thoughts of the departed into a bottomless abyss. At least it invokes the proper seriousness. But because of the studied removal of the religious from the site it seems to leave the onlooker with nothing but a depressing feeling.
I understand this reaction, and I find myself wondering if you have actually been because being there I at least experienced what saves the memorial from this final sense of which you speak.
What? It is the moving water and its sound. So the memorial displays a hole as it should, and indeed it is serious. But it has a boundary and somehow the water still flows, which for Christians points I think to the hint of a further word than this word, and for flowing life in a world to come.
Thanks Kendall – your comments about the rushing water and the actual experience of being there make sense. I have not been to the site since the memorial has been completed. I did see the site from across the river one week afterward and remember the sky carrying a wide line of oily black smoke, like a vast aerial highway, over what must have been a good part of the Jersey coastline.