And my saddened sympathies to colleagues at Virginia Theological Seminary, whose chapel burned down yesterday afternoon. The grief from such losses shows that maxims about ‘church not being about buildings,’ though true as far as they go, don’t get to every important human dimension of how our imaginations collaborate across time and space to make a sensuous expression of our joy in God’s glory, and of our solidarity with the communion of saints. God does not need us to build a house, nor do we need a designated shelter to celebrate the sacraments — but we build for God anyway out of a deep, persistent sense that this is one particularly apt way of committing our faith to stone and wood, brick and glass. May all the saints whose lives honoured God in Immanuel Chapel uphold and console one another during these sorrowful days.