q. i. f?

Now, some may argue that Barbie has nicer clothes. Barbie has nicer hair. Barbie is hot. Barbie has action figure friends.
   But Jesus could have nicer clothes if designers would give the Nazarene a whole new wardrobe! Plastic Jesus cannot seriously take on Barbie wearing that old bathrobe that He usually goes out in. No way. I expect we will soon see “Project Runway” meets “The 700 Club.”
   As for hair, Jesus has always had great hair — even atheists recognize that.

Only a year or so behind the rest of the country, I discover — flipping through the Dec. ’08 Baltimore Style — the recent toy-season sales phenomenon of talking action-figure Jesus. I can’t find it in me to complain too much about parents wanting to co-opt toy lust in their children as a vehicle for the Christian imprint they (perhaps confusedly) hope to leave. I can understand that impulse. But Jesus stuffed in the closet with the Jedi warriors & G.I. Joes, the Barbies & Hannah Montanas? I wonder what the message is, in the end.

Noted last week at Inhabitat an article with striking photos of the newly consecrated Cathedral of Christ the Light in Oakland, CA — ‘the world’s newest cathedral,’ according to the diocese’s cathedral web site.

See the Inhabitat article, along with its source, for impressive architectural photography, but see also certain pics offered by one of the Inhabitat commenters. It would be easy to conclude from the articles — and, strangely, from the cathedral web site itself — that Christian imagery & symbolism are deliberately restrained, almost obscured, in the design, but these sources are a little misleading.

The Oakland cathedral seems to have among its notable architectural antecedents Oscar Niemeyer’s Cathedral of Brasilia and the creepily alien-machinelike Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral. It also recalls to my mind’s eye Renzo Piano’s New Caledonia Cultural Center.