Arches are structures with deep resonance. They embody and symbolize many things: strength and support, lightness and openness within density, thresholds into liminal space. As an archetypal symbol, it is fundamentally masculine. In mythology arches/ doorways are understood as thresholds in time and space (chronos/physical world) through which one passes to enter another kind of time and space (kairos/spiritual world), a concept that is deeply consonant with our ministries of both worship and hospitality. In architecture, the arches serve to lift the eye (and spirit) upwards to a higher plane/ideal. It is also a fundamentally Johannine symbol, which may well have figured into the architect Ralph Adams Cram's extensive use of them throughout the monastery, recalling the I AM sayings–the Way, the door to the sheepfold, etc.
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