I visited the Cathedral of St. John the Divine at the recommendation of my cousin. She’s lived in Manhattan her whole life and said this was “one of the coolest things she’s ever seen.” I’m pretty unemployed and quite underworked, so I decided to check it out.

Getting there, like all pilgrimages, is a shlep. You take the train all the way uptown, to the very tippy corner of northwest Central Park. You exit the station, turn the corner, and there’s your first glimpse: A giant, city-block-long wall of dark brown stone and sculpture in the distance.

“Ah,” I said to myself, “I’m going to Hogwarts.”

When you walk into this cathedral——the largest in the world——you feel it. Joseph Campbell talked about “sacred spaces”——places where you feel a heightened consciousness, a palpable energy, something that is too powerful to leave. Or as he put it: “Here, breakthrough is possible.”

Indeed, this cathedral harbors the potential of breakthrough. It reminded me of being in an empty theater, when you can hear the creak of the old wooden floor, the gentle brush of someone’s footsteps. Things slowed down. You just feel comfortable within yourself. At ease. This feeling is especially noticeable — and rare — since we’re in New York City, where it’s almost impossible to find true silence.

As I’d later learn, there’s reason for this. The Cathedral of St. John the Divine was built on soft, marshy land. A river runs through it underneath (the New York Times just did a big piece about it). They actually can’t finish the main spire of the cathedral because it’s too heavy, and it’d literally sink into the soggy earth.

This is contrasted to the rest of Manhattan, which is built largely on a slab of rock (this is what helps hold up the skyscrapers). This would support my hypothesis for why it’s so hard to remain grounded in New York: There is nothing to absorb the energy. Everything is a hard surface, so the buzzy energy just bounces around erratically. The cathedral, meanwhile, sits on soft land and flowing water. Rivers are known to be great sources of qi—bodies that stimulate energetic flow. This is why the air inside feels so…serene.

That said, the cathedral is a spectacle. For one, it’s massive. And cavernous. When I first walked up to the front, I involuntarily gasped, “Oh my God.” Turns out, the cathedral actually sells shirts in their little gift shop that say, in big bold letters: “OH MY GOD.” “We heard it so many times from people, we just had to put it on a T-shirt,” he said. “They can’t help but say it."

That was from Tom, our tour guide. We were a group of six, sitting in the church pew as the tour was about to begin. Truthfully, I didn’t expect much from the tour. That’s not a knock against Tom, but myself: In these types of places, I usually gawk at the stone edifices and stained glass windows, I’ll relish in the silence, yet after about fifteen minutes I’m ready to leave. Tom, though, assured this would not be possible.

“This is not just a tour of a cathedral,” he said empathically as he paced in front of us. “This is a tour of architecture.”

Gothic architecture, Tom tells us, has three principles. “Gothic architecture is logical. It is harmonious,” he said. “And last but not least, Gothic architecture is functional. Nothing is wasted.”

The cathedral is indeed built in perfect harmony. It is 124 feet high, from ground to ceiling. The length is exactly double that, measuring at 248 feet. Even the large stained glass circle, the “oculus,” is precisely 124 feet in circumference.

“A building is a web of forces pushing in all directions,” Tom continued. “Do you know what makes a building work?” He paused and waited. “Because it stands! If a building is balanced, it stands. If it’s out of balance, it collapses. Simple as that.”

A building, like this cathedral, stands for the same reasons we do. We each have a balanced skeletal structure. Weight bears down, which is then dispersed equally and horizontally. In our case, that support is our rib cage. The cathedral functions the same: a set of six “ribs” disperse the downward force horizontally, where columns (“limbs”) keep it standing.

“We’ll now go up to the top,” Tom said excitedly. “Just be careful — these steps aren’t all uniform.”

“But Tom,” I said, “I thought this cathedral was built with perfect harmony. Why don’t the stairs have that too?”

He waited for a moment, looked around, then answered with a very fitting religious-inspired response: “Well for the architect, that would be a matter of confession.”

*Harmony - the second principle of Gothic architecture.*

I didn’t get his exact age, but I’d reckon Tom’s in his 70s. I know he’s at least past 70, because when we were in the gift shop, we were talking to one of the employees about how amazing of a tour guide Tom is. “Tom loves this building more than anyone I’ve ever seen,” the employee said. “Actually, he was supposed to give a tour on his 70th birthday, but he was sick and unable to come in,” he said. “I have never seen a man so gutted, it was devastating. He wanted nothing more on his birthday than to give a tour of this cathedral.”

I do know Tom has children — he mentioned having two daughters. To my surprise, he was not an architect in his working life. As he put it — and rather quickly — he worked for a research and consulting firm. He’s been giving this tour now for over 39 years. “Since the Reagan administration,” he said.

Ascending the stairs put me in a different world. I felt like we were navigating the catacombs of a Dan Brown novel, let alone walking in Manhattan’s Upper West Side. The stairs had a cool, dank feel. They were narrow, twisting, disorienting. We walked by thick wooden doors with iron handles, cracked glass windows, warm lights.

Tom, like all great tour guides, had a way with words, and a specific brand of humor. One woman pointed out how an oculus fit perfectly within one of the stone arches, then asked if that was on purpose. “Well, it’s not intentional,” he said. “But it is indisputable.”

Or when we got to the third floor, and Tom was beside himself as we walked on a narrow walkway. “And now, ladies and gentlemen, we’ve arrived at one of my favorite parts. Do you know what it is we’re standing on?” He waited, but nobody answered. “A buttress! It’s a buttress!”

Or when he pointed out a change in architectural style, based off where one firm finished and another began. He asked a question, paused for effect, then excitedly delivered his punchline: “It tells me these two architects were as unfriendly in stone as they were in life.” He then smiled to himself.

When we got to the top of cathedral, we walked on the roof and were gifted with one of the best views of Manhattan I’ve ever seen. Ahead of us was one of the most iconic skylines in the world, with the sun setting right behind it. And to the right was the cathedral’s infamously unfinished spire. We were at the conclusion of the tour.

“This building is magnificent. It resonates with people. It strikes a chord,” Tom said. “And what gives it its vitality, its energy, the reason why it resonates, is because as spectacular as it is, this building, just like all of us, will always be a work in progress.”

We made our way down, and Tom was giving his thanks to everyone — and receiving it too. Everyone loved Tom. Someone asked him, just as we were ending, how long had he been doing this?

“I’ve been doing this tour for 39 years,” he said. “This building is the love of my life.”

We all broke away and said our goodbyes. Tom strolled toward the gift shop. I was nagged by what he said, so I ran to catch up with him.

“Tom,” I asked, “why is this building the love of your life?”

“Every time I walk in, this building is mysterious,” he said. “It gives me something I never saw or expected. One person told me he comes here whenever he needs a good cry.” As Tom said this, his lip started to quiver tremendously. “Another said to me, ‘I don’t believe in God. But when I’m in here, I do.’”

Tom gathered himself, took a breath, then asked for the name of my travel blog (I’d told him earlier I’d be writing about this). He asked me to repeat it, said it softly to himself, and we said our goodbyes.

I started heading back to Brooklyn. Like my cousin said, it was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done in New York. Yet as I walked away, I was struck not by the awe and grandeur of that magnificent building, but by the sheer love for which this man has for it. It was a reverence, a surrender to something too big and beautiful to comprehend, something so vast and powerful that all you can do is give yourself to it.

It sparked a word that’s been associated with the church, though until I met Tom, I’d never really seen it in action. I saw its meaning not through the church itself, but by the man who gives himself daily to the telling of its story.

Devotion.

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