This picture gives me the feeling I had as a child in church.

I was confused by the stained glass windows high up and lining the red brick walls all around the periphery of Immaculate Conception Church on Well St, Stratford Ontario. I was 4 or 5 in this memory, around 1966-67. I’d nod off during the mass — it was mostly in incomprehensible Latin that the white-robed priest had learned to chant in a rising and falling wave pattern, his arms raised, his back to the congregation. I’d drift off easily, but I’d be nudged awake by siblings or parents.

I often passed that early Sunday morning hour gazing up at those tall windows in that liminal state, held below wakeful awareness but still above full-on sleeping. It was while drifting in such a half-open-eyed unconscious state that I’d gaze at those sun-filled windows as in the painting.

In reality, the art in them contained images of the 14 Stations of the Cross, the various agonizing scenes depicting Christ’s bodily suffering, blood-soaked crowns of thorns rammed down onto his head, deep spear-jabs into his ribs, and his ultimate death nailed through hands and feet and hung from beams of lumber.