The heat of the summer day is diminished within the confines of the church walls. The apsidal space featuring Christ on the lignum vitae immediately summons all of the pilgrim's earthly attention. She progresses along the floor's central guilloche of red porphry and green serpentine roundels surrounded by sinusoidal strands. The central quincunx in the floor's design echoes the apsidal mosaic's cross and forms a royal pathway. As a representation of the Tree of Life, the depiction of Christ on the lignum vitae reveales the paradox of Christian cosmology: the death of Christ brings life. Yes, to be in that space is to feel the power of that paradox. Yet, the pilgrim can not reach that divine space. She is cut off, denied. The pilgrim's progression halts at the edge of the schola cantorum. She watches the bishop and clerics progress into the paradoxical zone. Sees the bishop deliver his message at the head of the quincuncial cross marked by a square of red porphry. Ante altare subtus pirfireticum lapidem, ubi pontifex stat, quando missam canit.
That's when the whale king drops salvation down like a lumpy pickle. Big, blue, and ready to roll. He fills the void above the lignum vitae, the heavens of a three-tiered universe. His fin crosses in the shape of a Chrismon with the loop of a hook forming the P. The alpha and omega written clearly on each half show that this fin is for more than swimming. It is the beginning. The end. The whale king ad aeternum.
The pilgrim understands now, as the whale king appears to her, that the church is no place for pilgrims. It is a place for pontiffs and priests. Her place is in the ocean, in the skies, riding aloft the whale king's mane, like two star-crossed lovers in a crowded room.
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