On Cars and Churches in Cape Breton
We honeymooned in Cape Breton, a beautiful island in Nova Scotia, Canada. We went on various day trips around the island in our fast and sleek looking rented car. (Renting cars is a great way to create dissatisfaction with what you have back home) While we didn't always have the sunniest of backdrops, we took quite a few pictures with our new digital camera.

While I don't always agree with the theology of having grand and elaborate churches, my eye is still drawn to them when I see them. Cape Breton is full of small towns with very prominent churches, Catholic, Anglican, United and Presbyterian. The role of these churches as cornerstones of the community has likely diminished, but they are still they are still centerpieces visually. They are also usually accompanied by quite extensive cemeteries and various statues. Like my church, these buildings are usually locked, which is disappointing as a visitor. While I don't a building to do it in, I enjoy stopping along the way to pray and meditate, and centuries old churches seem to meet that need quite well.

While traveling, I try to behave as a visitor, not as a tourist. This means that I eat the local food, speak with the local people, and just enjoy the local life. I've only briefly lived in a tourist town (Ottawa), but I've seen and heard the annoyance they create in various places I go. Tourists pronounce things wrong. Tourists treat local residents like quaint pieces of scenery. Tourists like to impose on the locals what in their town is worthy of pride and what is not. In that sense, the tourists are only welcome because they spend money. My travel philosophy is that if I respect people, they will respect me. They won't see me as a walking wallet and I won't look at them as anything other than equal human beings.

While I still want to come back with a lot of photographs of my time, I want the sensory enjoyment to happen first and the photographic remembrance second. Nothing makes you look like a tourist more than thoughtlessly snapping pictures. As I photographed these churches, I often wondered if I looked like a tourist. If the church is no longer an important part of the town, maybe I should take a picture of the local coffee shop or post office. We also visited a few places that were likely deemed by some to be holy/sacred places. While I don't have the same reverence for shrines and cemeteries as other faith traditions might, I still enjoyed visiting them. I started to think that these are the kinds of places that a Christian tourist would visit, but that seemed quite incomplete.

When I travel, I like visiting churches, cemeteries, etc because they are interesting to me, not because it's my Christian duty. A Christian tourist should follow Christ's example at home and on the road, regardless of which stops they make along the way.

PS - This of course brings up the meaning of the word "church". While I generally like to stick to the ekklesia (assembly, etc.) definition of church, for this specific post, I mean the physical buildings which are also called churches.

Here are some of the pictures we took:

Cheticamp

Mabou Shrine

Fortress of Louisbourg Chapel

   [ posted by William @ 10:40 AM ]