How High Is This Church?

Nearly four hundred years ago, the famed Japanese tea-master, Rikyu, planned the construction of a new tea-house and garden. He designed it with great care in order to give it a spiritual dimension. When the project was completed, he invited friends to participate in an opening tea-ceremony — a kind of “house-warming.” The tea-house was built on a hill overlooking the ocean, and the guests expected to find some ingenious design which would make the best use of the sea. When they arrived, they discovered that Rikyu had planted a row of large evergreen trees which obstructed the ocean view. When it came time to enter the tea-room, the guests proceeded, one-by-one, to a stone water-basin which had been placed near the row of trees. There they carried out the tradition of rinsing their mouths and washing their hands — a gesture of symbolic cleansing, physically and mentally, before going into the tea-room. It was at the water basin that they understood Rikyu’s purpose in…