Tim Woodcock writes: One of the things I miss most about conventional, in-person church is the stained glass windows at 2 nd Pres. Yes, the people, the music, the sermons, too. All that can be experienced in a modified form online. But not spending time among the glow of the stained glass has affected me more acutely than I would have guessed. During the last two Sundays I found myself in the sanctuary for the first time in more than a year, hanging out on the sidelines rather than fully participating in the service, because Freya was doing a “Minute for Mission” one week and Katy was the liturgist the following week. Knowing that I would be at loose end, I had brought a sketchpad with me and spent some time communing with the images on the east side of the sanctuary (see below). While the significance of 2PC’s windows can recounted, as it is on the church’s website , here I’m only trying to get down some impressionistic feelings about them. Some  idiosyncratic highligh...

During a recent Sunday morning Bible study on the book of Ephesians, the conversation turned to the sustenance the people drew from the church's stained glass windows. Below is an expanded version of Don Cochran's thoughtful contribution to the conversation. Don Cochran writes: When I first started worshipping at Second, I was puzzled by the military figure in the circular window in the west transept. Who was he?   Why was he put in the window?   What meaning did he have for those who contracted Tiffany to create the window?   And what meaning does he have for us today? I soon leaned that this is a memorial window to remember the life of a young man from our congregation whose life was tragically taken from him in London during the 1918 pandemic. He died not on a battlefield in France during the war but in a London hospital unsuspectedly.   As I view the figure now, I cannot help but wonder what goals he had for his life, who he would have become had...