The Very Good Insanity (52 Weeks: Episode 4)

I’m traveling, so I’m publishing this on my phone. If it all feels a little wonky (or typo ridden), bear with me. I’ll be back at the keyboard next week.

There are “Buy me a coffee” buttons today, because formatting the button on a mobile device requires an act of congress. But if you like what you’re reading, you know what to do

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There are ways of thinking about things.

In the colossal rotunda of the Pantheon, an oculus opens 142 feet above the floor. A window to heaven? An opening for the all-seeing eye of God? Perhaps the interpretation is up for grabs.

In Ancient Rome, the structure was a celestial temple, a tiny universe devoted to the gods of the universe. The seven niches in the rotunda may have contained the sky gods—the sun, moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn—at least, this is what the expert tells me with no small amount of certainty. But how certain can an expert be without seeing a thing with their own two eyes?

In 609 A.D., Pope Boniface IV said “Let the Pantheon be a Christian Church.” There was evening, then day, and it was so. The Christian era descended over the dome, morphing the mythology. The seven niches were stripped of the seven gods, and the vacant walls served as place holders for the extraordinary religious art of an age to come.

The christened dome of Christendom became a place of pilgrimage, a place for believers in the One True Triune God to offer prayers and seek divine inspiration. 800 years after its conversion, Filippo Brunelleschi made his own pilgrimage to the colossus, studying the construction of the free-standing dome that had withstood 700 years of earthquakes, floods, and fires. The dome may have been his place of prayer, of inspiration, or mere ego-fueled architectural study. (Who can say what’s in any man’s heart?) There, he’d learn the secrets needed to build the great dome rising above the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, which was finished under his care in 1436.

Here is the architectural and meteorological anomaly of the Pantheon: Though there is a 28.5 foot hole in the Pantheon’s ceiling, rain rarely reaches the floor.  It’s atomized by the rising body heat of the praying people. At least, that’s what some say. Other experts say that isn’t real science, that rainwater falls through the hole as you’d expect but is quickly wicked down a slight slope and into internal drainage. (Thank you, humanists, for always ruining our miraculous fun.)

Anyway, there are ways of thinking about things.

In my way of thinking, rain may enter from time to time. (Doesn’t the rain fall on the wicked and just alike?) Still, I choose to believe the rains of Rome are atomized near the oculus by the daily prayers of the people. Some of those prayers are whispered. Some are held in the heart. Even those who do not pray—Saluti, humanists!—carry a sort of prayer when they look through the great eye and fumble for a word like, Whoa.

These prayers—or holy longings or human hungers—are fueled by wonder. No, that’s not quite right. They are fueled by insanity. Why should a God—any God—care about the tiny ants leaving scuff marks and wheelchair streaks on the polished marble floor? Why should he look through the oculus at all? But still, so many of us are insane, which may be the sanest thing about us. (Even the best of humanist do not believe we’re alone in the universe.)

The prayers collect at the floor somewhere near the statue of the Holy Mother or the burial tomb of Raphael or the ancient wooden crucifix. Mine collect in front of the statue of St. Joseph with the boy Jesus. It sounds something like this: St. Joseph, teach me how to love, even to the death.

Here are some other prayers gathering on the floor:

Be with my father, whose bones are breaking;

Forgive my mother, my brother, my neighbor;

Be in the mouth of those who speak to me;

Help.

These insanities make their way to the ceiling, to the oculus, to the great eye of God. He sees these great acts of insanity and gives them atomizing power.

See? There are ways of thinking about things.

If you are a human—and not some AI bot scrubbing the web—you have probably wondered this at some bleak point: Is prayer anything more than hoping to punch a hole to heaven? Still, we punch and punch and punch because humans are a driven more by insanity than science. We choose to believe wild atomizing theories, things that are more than science.

Here are some things science explains: the world is round; it spins on its axis; it is tilted just so. And I f it were not for this science, the things that are more than science would not be up for interpretation.

Here are some things that are more than science: human longing; the love of a father for a son; the devotion of men to the ways of a woman; a belief in a soul, in the afterlife; the sense shared by the majority of humanity that some great eye watches us all.

In the Pantheon, I raise my camera to capture the oculus. As I press the shutter, a bird flies into the frame. A divine wink—or so I think—at the insanity of my heart, the insanity in the hearts of those under the Great Watchful Eye. Everything is more than science. This season of life dictates that I believe this truth.

There are ways of thinking about things.

Some of that thinking is the very good insanity.

Bird in the Oculus (Rome, 2025)