The Geometry of Love
Margaret Visser
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2000 North Point Press/Farrar, Straus & Giroux
ISBN: 0865476403

Space, Time Mystery, and Meaning in an Ordinary Church. More than any other kind of building, a church is intentionally meaningful in all its aspects. The relatively simple Sant'Agnese fuori le Mura just outside the walls of Rome comes under the scrutiny of history, theology, anthropology & folklore to illuminate its physical & spiritual architecture.

“...at Sant'Agnese's...the entrance into the nave from the narthex stand two dark granite columns with Composite capitals. They clearly announce that stepping from the street into the house of God is a momentous act: you are leaving the world outside to enter a place that represents your own inner being, your deepest desire and transcendental destiny...”

As Margaret Visser guides us through this organic aged basilica, from its apse to its nave, its catacombs to its campanile, she opens our eyes to its symbolism, its layers of religious expression, the Christian fascination with lambs & virgins, the meaning of martyrdom & the provenance of relics.

“...The church as a spatial entity represents the mystery that one day we shall discover that the beginning and the end of time, Alpha and Omega, are one...”

Effortlessly, this tranquil & earnest author moves us back through the ages to reveal, like the ancient stones she walks past, the erstwhile Roman attitudes toward our mortal remains & then through Christianity's infancy, in all its forms & purposes.

The Geometry of Love ends at the church's beginning, with the grave of Agnes, a 12 year old Christian girl who preferred spiritual marriage with her Savior than the advances of a proud & powerful aristocrat who murdered her for her choice all those centuries ago & whose remains are buried beneath the altar along with another girl martyred for just such a misdemeanor -- ah, those good old days!

“...The church can be read in yet another way, as a series of containers enfolded one within the next, with the heart and see of the whole held in the cup enclosed in the tiny domed tabernacle on the altar...”

By book's end we have learnt how to read any church building, how to interpret what it “does” & “says” whether we're of the faith or not. We will be able to wander through any church now & know what it is saying & what the symbols in it mean. Such a joyous accomplishment, written with luminous prose & exquisite detail.

One of the losses I noticed, when I arrived in Chicago four decades ago, was the sound of church bells. In England, they rang for everything, the time, services, funerals, peace & holidays. Stone churches abounded. On my last jaunt back to the “old country” where did I feel drawn to go? A bantam sanctuary on the edge of a bluff, high above the mystical Cornish coast.

So when I came across Margaret Visser's epic of Space, Time, Mystery, and Meaning in an Ordinary Church it was like coming home. I loved this quiet, transformative, meditative meander through the depths & heights of this little country church now surrounded by a thriving, noisy city.

Part archaeology, part love story, part poetry & part tourist guide, The Geometry of Love is a quintessential read. It is like opening up a pomegranate, itself an ancient symbol of fruitfulness, with its hard, unassuming outer skin which once broken open, reveals a superabundance of life. Thus is a church, when we know how to see it.

A superb example of writing about what you know -- this author bequeaths us a unique & enfolding account of the why, where, who, when & what of a charming house of worship.

More from Margaret Visser:
Much Depends on Dinner; The Rituals of Dinner
The Way We Are
(06/24/01)

Rebecca