Lift Up Your Hearts

Another strangely spiritual machine

A few months ago, I was flying out of O'Hare Airport (Chicago) on a Saturday night, and I needed to catch Mass. I knew O'Hare has a chapel, so I went online to check the times. This website had a logo (colors edited, from the original white and blue, because that's how we do it here):

I had two senses upon seeing this logo. First, it's kitschy and gives me boomer vibes. Someone decided to sketch the Chicago skyline and add in some clip art. Second, it's… actually kind of cool.

Perhaps this logo is similar to a tree's lightning rod in which I didn't expect a metal lightning rod to be beautiful. I didn't expect an airplane - such a modern technology - to have spiritual significance. And yet, because it's in the world, it still can. The alignment of the plane with the exhortation to "lift up your hearts [to the Lord]" draws out their similarity of lifting and raising. It takes energy and force - fighting against gravity - to lift up.

If we can use jet fuel and hydrocarbons to lift metal up off the ground, can we take the time and energy to lift our hearts and minds to Christ? I don’t mean this in some sort of shallow pun (though as McLuhan notes, the Church was founded on a pun.) There is a truth or a pattern underlying both of these things. In studying one, we can gain some visceral sense of the other.