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Inside the village chapel, the stained glass is anything but medieval, but it does have every element of the faith that was born in those times long ago. The most prominent figure in these windows is that of the bird, which in every medieval church meant the Holy Spirit and the breath of Jehovah, thus the central figure of the Trinity. Here, in an art that combines modern realism with the abstract, the bird is both the spirit and the image of the canary that watched over the miner's very breath. A canary in the mine was the first means of measuring the oxygen and noxious gases that meant life or death to a miner. This "pietà" is not an image of Christ dead in the arms of Mary, but of a miner dead in the arms of his brethren. The heart is "holy" in either case.
