"I also found that within the positivistic, scientific canon I had grown up with as a student at Cambridge, it was virtually impossible even to formulate adequate concepts that would be capable of solving the more profound issues which lie at the root of architecture."
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he starts using a peculiar kind of experiment: "a person would attempt to judge the quality of an action, or a building, or a painting, by consulting his own self, as to the degree of wholeness, or healed-ness, that appeared in the items under discussion"
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so wholeness, healing, and health become central concerns for this approach to architecture, it's almost like medicine: you need rich, deep understanding of health, and with architecture it's clearly a lot about "mental health", "well-being", it's a kind of soul care
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"we began to discover a new kind of empirical complex in buildings and works of art that is connected with the human self, God, spirituality, social and mental health, [...] the role that love plays in establishing wholeness, the role of art [...]"
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"we may believe in the existence of God, as something immense, yet also as something modest, something which lies under the surface of all matter, and which comes to life, and shines forth, when we treat the garden properly"
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"The most urgent, and I think most inspiring way we can think [...] is that each small action we take [...] is a form of worship [...] in which we give ourselves up, and lay what we have in our hearts, at the door of that fiery furnace within all things, which we may call God."
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"by a surprising twist, the search for a true architecture, [...] a real architecture which works, and in which this feeling of rightness is present in every bone, in an irreligious era has the unique power to bring back the reality of God to center stage in our concerns"
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"To make each brick [...] a reflection of God. The world shaped by this presence will thrive from it, and will surely lead us back to a vision of God, and a sense of right and wrong, and a sense of well-being. This vision of the world [...] will lead us back to a vision of God."
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"It is an understanding very far beyond religion, something which is true within the canon of every religion, not connected with any one religion in particular [...] which therefore moves us beyond the secularism and strife that has torn the world for more than a thousand years."
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these quotes were from "The Long Path that Leads from the Making of Our World to God", a shorter version of which was also published in First Things as "Making the Garden"
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we are talking about the "world building activity" of humans .. which is an inherently spiritual activity, often ignored
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