Magnetic Mass

More about Magnetic Mass

We installed the electromagnetic crane in the cathedral the way you put a thought into your head you probably shouldn’t have, but do anyway because curiosity is louder than obedience. The stained glass blinked in soft confession. The old stone sighed. The saints pretended not to watch, but their eyes were full of electricians.

The crane hummed like a sleeping god dreaming of refrigerators. It was meant to lift rusted beams, fallen ceiling ribs, the accumulated gravity of centuries. We flipped the switch the way Ezekiel must have blinked into the bright impossible—wheel within wheel, eyes all around, the steady burn of something holy and mechanical. And the cathedral listened.

Then the strange thing happened.

It wasn’t only the metal that rose.

The angels shifted. Not the decorative ones. Not the plaster cherubs pretending to be babies that had read too many hymns. I mean the real angles—those golden geometries hovering just outside visibility, those precise luminous inclines where heaven leans into stone. They trembled. They rang. They drifted downward in aching, curious arcs toward the magnet.

It turns out faith has iron filings in it.

They fluttered like pages of a Bible in a restless wind, caught halfway between obedience and wonder. Their halos elongated slightly, like coins being persuaded. They were embarrassed, I think, the way you are when you realize you are part machinery after all. Even Gabriel leaned forward three degrees. So much for spiritual independence. So much for blessed non-attachment.

Nobody said anything, as is traditional when miracles go a little sideways.

We dialed the power down, respectfully. The angels floated back, pretending they hadn’t moved. The crane sat there humming its calm electric psalm. The organ pipes blushed. Even God, if God had a face at that moment, must have rubbed His chin thoughtfully, considering the mechanical tenderness of it all.

Ezekiel’s wheels spun somewhere in memory, shining, confessing what they had always known: the divine is not allergic to machinery. The sacred can have bolts. The eternal can hum. The cathedral breathed again, a long stone exhale.

We left the crane hanging there like a quiet prayer with a switch attached, and every now and then, when nobody is watching, I think the angels lean toward it again, just a little, remembering that gravity isn’t the only thing that pulls.