Epilogue: North Carolina

Editor's Note: Apart from another post on things seen in churches and possibly a couple of reflections, I'm done here. Kinda appropriate, since I've been a month behind on almost everything here. But if you enjoy ramblings, I think I'll continue over at Blackbirds and Berries. Best wishes, all! 

I think I about cried when they told us that we were being diverted to Greensboro. After 2 months,  nineteen days and  eleven long hours away from home, all I wanted to do was land in Charlotte, see my parents and drive forty-five minutes back to Granite Falls, my house and my own bed. If storm clouds could be burned away by a glare from angry eyes, the storm over Charlotte would have evaporated on the spot.

But we landed in Greensboro and the people around me on the tiny plane that had left from Chicago a little over an hour before all pulled out their cell phones and started to call their families or friends. My own American cell phone was sitting at Christine's house, voicemail full and useless, and my European cell phone had stopped working a continent ago. I amused myself by listening to people describe where they were. "No, we aren't in Charlotte. We're in some place called Greensboro… no, b-o-r-o. No, I don't know where it is." "Yeah, I think it's kinda north of Charlotte? It's really small." "Well, I think we're in North Carolina. We're in some place called Greensville…" The more travel savvy passengers weathers the diversion well and pointed out Charlotte landmarks when we landed there an hour and a fifteen minute hop later. "There's the downtown area… there's the football stadium." So odd to me, who's been to Greensboro plenty and who has been on the field in the Panther's Stadium in Charlotte, to listen to these outsiders talk about my state. My beautiful, green, hill-covered, mountain and sea bounded state. So glad to be home.

I wasn't back for long before I packed up a small bag and drove to Chapel Hill to work for a week at the planetarium. I didn't even unpack my toiletries, carrying my life around again in a backpack. I stayed on friends' couches and road public transportation and felt like a nomad once again, awkwardly re-familiarizing myself with bus schedules and local customs. I jumped when the waitress came to refill my water at Pam's birthday dinner and almost balked in surprise when a campus ministry member asked if there was anything she could pray for me about as I sat in the Union on a break from shifts. I listened in closely, deciphering again the sweet melody of southern accents and soaking in the forgotten songs of crickets.  I basked in the undeniable warmth of the end of a North Carolina summer and smiled as happily when I saw a firefly as I had seeing the lights dance up and down the Eiffel Tower. I ordered a Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger and Cheerwine at Wendy's and thought about the potato casserole, ranch dressing and steak that my family had had for dinner and the grits that I would soon have for a breakfast. When I drove, I drove with my windows down, taking every opportunity to breathe in the North Carolina summer I had missed.

It's weird, isn't it, coming back? Quarters almost seem like foreign objects when you haven't seen that coinage denomination in months. I thanked the bus driver with no question about the appropriateness of my action. I became an expert again on the history and culture of an area, answering question after question about the campus, Franklin Street and the planetarium. I turned around in surprise when someone didn't speak English instead of when someone did. Everything savored of home and yet the places I slept I visited for less time than I had spent in any single city in Europe. So maybe I wasn't back yet.

Saturday, a week and two days after we had left Europe, after we had walked up to Pam's apartment door on a few hours before she turned twenty-one and gotten the most surprised hugs of our lives; after  six days of traveling again, this time through a place I had been many, many times before; after half a day's worth of travel hours up and down the highways of North Carolina and after a couple of hours struggling with boxes and mattress, I was moved into my new apartment, finally in a place of residence that would last me for months instead of days.

And Sunday I went to church. I came in late and had to sit in the back, sheltered by the balcony that used to segregate the congregation. As I found my spot in a wooden pew on the left of the church, the two associate pastors played out a dialogue about small groups starting up in the school year. We had a call to worship and the choir processed in as we all, a congregation of hundreds of people, sang a hymn. We confessed our sins and passed the peace, listened to a couple of lessons, one read by a student lector up at the pulpit at the end of the long hall of the church, in front of the apse that help the choir and a set of stairs up from the altar centered in the chancel. The campus minister preached a beautiful sermon, an associate minister led the congregation in the prayers of the people, we took up an offering (because wherever two are gathered an offering will be taken) and the ushers brought it to the waiting pastors as we sang the Doxology. A closing hymn, a parting blessing and a postlude and suddenly I was standing in a line with one of my roommates from last year, waiting to shake hands with the pastors on the way out the door.

And it was like coming home

Some Helpful* Hints for Cathedral** Travel

I'm convinced it'll take me a couple of months if not years to really realize how much I've learned while I've been away. Traveling is an experience in itself and add to that the spiritual whirlwind that took over my life for nearly three months and I've got a lot to write home about. But I've learned some concrete things that might help other people, even if you're just visiting a cathedral because it's pretty or if you stumble into any old church on a hot day in a Mediterranean city. Because I like them, here's an enumerated list of things I learned.

*This may not actually be all that helpful, but it should be vaguely interesting?
**This isn't really exclusive to cathedrals. Cathedrals just sound cooler than churches.

1. Check the website.

Want to see Notre Dame? Of course you do, you're in Paris. I happen to know that it's free to walk into the sanctuary and that it costs five euros to climb the tower and see the gargoyles and pretend you're Quasimodo, but you might not, so you should check the website. (En normally means English) Want to see St. Peter's Basilica? Of course you do, it's a sacrilege to be in Rome and not head over to Vatican city to look at that. I happen to know that if your shoulders are uncovered or your knees are showing, you'll be turned away, but you might not, so you should check thewebsite. (Surprisingly, one of the least attractive church websites I've seen in a while.) Want to go to church on Easter? It's a nice thought, so you might. I happen to know that if you don't believe that the host is transformed into the body of Christ that you shouldn't take communion in a Catholic church, but you might not, so you should check the website.

Most large churches and cathedrals will have a pretty decent website. If you don't want to troll the internet, Sacred Destinations gives you a description of the sacred space you're planning on visiting, the times the place is open and any fees or dress or action restrictions. They'll often have a link to the website so you can check and see that the information is up-to-date and everything's listed by country and city, so you can check here to see if there are other places that would be good to visit while you're in a place.

2. Check the calendar.

Ever heard of Ascension Day? It happens forty days after Easter and in some countries it can mean that everything's closed except for churches and they'll often have extra services on that day. Most churches aren't going to allow you to come in and take pictures while a mass or service is going on and it can be awkward to wander into a church in the middle of a service. If you're planning your visit ahead and want to be a part of a service on a holy day, you can check the church's website to see if they have anything special up their sleeve. It can be an interesting perspective to go to a service or mass based around a saint. I was in St. Paul's in London on the feast for St. Joachim and St. Anne, the parents of Mary better known as the mother of Jesus, and I got a little historical background on the saints' story in England that I wouldn't have known. All the same, it's good to be aware of the events in the church's calendar, like Pentecost and the like, so you can appreciate the service, even if it's not in your language. And, of course, it's always good to be aware of the holy days of religions everywhere.

3. Don't expect English.

The international service in Notre Dame consisted of a bulletin with the scripture readings printed in English and Italian. The rest of the order of service was in French and the entire service was in French. The priest did pause and thank the choir in English as they were visiting from England, but that was the only moment of the most internationally-recognized tongue in the world. The mass I went to that the pope led was in Latin and Italian and there were pilgrims from all over listening to that. Most countries are proud of their language and even in big cities where they expect and even depend on tourism for the upkeep of their churches they'll keep to their native tongue. I know as thinking people we don't expect a greeting in English as we walk into a service, but you should be aware that if you sit down for mass in La Sagrada Familia, there will be no one around to tell you when to kneel.

At the same time, there will often be guided tours, especially in the bigger places, in English, though they may leave less often than tours in the native language. There should be pamphlets that you might have to pay money for in English, or it could be Sainte Chapelle where a stand held large laminated boards in a variety of languages explaining what visitors were seeing. The staff of the church will often speak at least limited English, especially if they're expecting tourists, and they all know how to tell you how much money to pay. Still, if you really want to know what you're seeing, your best bet is a guide book brought with you or some research online. Which brings me to my next point…

4. Do some research online.

With the internet today, there's almost no excuse not to check up on some place you want to see. Sacred Destinations is a good place for quick hits about place. Wikipedia can be a good guide for a short history of a space and it will certainly hit the most famous things about any place. The church's own website might have some interesting history on it- Notre Dame has an explanation of the figures above the three front entrances plus tons of other information. (It may seem that a theme is developing, but really, I cannot recommend any Gothic cathedral so heartily as I can recommend Our Lady of Pairs.) Beyond just visiting practicalities, the internet can help you get an appreciation for the things you're seeing.

The internet can also tell you what to expect in a service, if you want to attend one. If the country is mostly Roman Catholic but you yourself have never been to a mass, you may find yourself a little out of the loop. (PS- Here's a map of European countries by religion, right above the map of the frequency of fair hair, goodness, I can't laugh enough at that.) It's easy enough to stand when everyone else stands and kneel when everyone else kneels, but if you want to know why all of this is happening and don't have a parent or priest to pass on this knowledge to you, you can use the internet. More than likely, you're not going to get an order of service in the church because the priest will assume that anyone actually there for the service knows what's going to happen as mass is pretty much the same everywhere. You can check up on which Protestant denominations are going to do things that look Catholic-y, if you're not already a member of that denomination, and you can check and see if you should expect some speaking in tongues. Most of the places you'll want to see, though, are Catholic, so learning about a mass is a good priority, though figuring out which churches it's best not to cross yourself in might also be a good idea.

While the internet is wonderful, It can also lie worse than Dan Brown in the middle of a Robert Langston chase scene (honestly, the guy tells you that Venus is rising as the sun is setting- you can't trust him at all), so double check something before you go looking for that hidden doorway into the secret upper story.

5. Be respectful.

Looking for a hidden doorway into a secret upper story isn't exactly what I'd call respectful. Most of the time, if you're interested in visiting a place, chances are no less than a hundred other people are interested in visiting that place the same hour in which you want to visit. There will at the very least be staff around to guide people and to make sure the sacred place stays sacred. Don't be the guy that the guard has to call out "No photo!" to. Don't be the girl who has to be asked to leave because there's doubt as to whether her shorts qualify as outer garments. Even in countries less religiously conservative than Spain and Italy, appropriate attire is good. All churches are used as places of prayer and your voice should be kept down, even if the sheer number of tourists creates a dull roar that you feel you need to speak over.  And for heaven's sake, don't take a picture in the Sistine Chapel. The guard may be angry, but you will have killed a little piece of Michelangelo's soul. Please. Put your camera away. For the sake of the ninja turtles.

Europe From Above

I have a lot of pictures from Europe. Like, a lot. And I'm not quite sure what to do with them all, but I figured I'd share some of the vistas I've seen because I became a semi-professional cathedral climber over the summer. Enjoy! 

Prague

Berlin

Vienna

Venice. Actually, one of the less impressive pictures I took there.

Florence. Sigh. Love!

Rome

Pompeii

Madrid

Seville

Marseilles

Lyon

Paris

Glasgow

Edinburgh

Edinburgh

Editor's Note: This is lengthy and internet is oddly harder to obtain when you're busy, even if you're in America. Also, I couldn't get all the pictures to load. A thousand apologies. 

On my last night in Edinburgh, I went to go see a comedian with Christine, Kerry, and a couple of people from the hostel. Being of Scottish heritage but born in Canada and currently residing in England, he had a, shall we say, unique perspective on the different societies that he had viewed. He was hilarious and I laughed so hard that I cried throughout much of the show. Just one of the positives of visiting Edinburgh during the Fringe Fest- the place was full of comedy, plays and other performing arts. The comedian remarked that arriving in Edinburgh is much more impressive when one arrived by train in Waverly Station. You get off the train and there are bagpipes and people dressed up for performances and tourists galore and then there's this castle- you're generally a little overwhelmed when you get off the train in Edinburgh.

I loved it there, despite the rain and cold that I will almost incessantly complain about when I talk about the city, having become very homesick for heat that hits you like a wall of boiling air and humidity, and near drought conditions. Neil Gaiman stuck it into my head that Oscar Wilde once said that if this is how the Scots treat their summers, they don't deserve one. I don't know that the Scots must have done to offend summer so, but the entire time I was there it felt more like January of perhaps a cold snap in March than early August.

Still, the hostel I was at was small and full of interesting, friends people. On my second night a group of four came in from London and I spent many of my nights listening to their conversations and easy friendship. As wonderful as it was to find new people to be friends with, that wonderfulness was exceeded by having more familiar faces to enjoy the city with. Christine returned from her visit with her family in Ireland and brought Kerry, a friend of hers and an acquaintance of mine, with her from the independent island off the British coast. Her friend Jesse also came to visit, taking the bus up from London where he had been studying this summer.

Together we took a walking tour of Edinburgh that I highly recommend if you have the means. We listened to the history of Scotland as told through the lens of its capital, walking up and down the Royal Mile, stopping by  the outside of the cathedral, John Knox's grave, the Grassmarket, Greyfriars Kirkyard, home to Greyfriars Bobby, walking past Fringe venues and ending up in the Princes Street Gardens. Did you know that James Clerk Maxwell was a Scotsman? Good, because if you did it would probably be because you learned his equations in E&M and I would fear for your state after enduring the merciless tyranny of physics. But there are plenty of other notable Scotsman besides William Wallace- Robert Burns, Ewan McGregor, Sean Connery, David Hume, Adam Smith, the father of modern economics. JK Rowling has a small castle up there. I have also visited the Elephant Room, the café where she wrote the first three books of Harry Potter. Nerd moment of the trip completed.

I went back to the cathedral on my own for the Sunday morning service, taking communion in a huge circle by passing the loaf of bread and the cup of wine, each eating and drinking on their own before being blessed as a group by the priest. The choir sang an anthem, little bags were passed around for the offering, the priest preached a sermon on a letter of Paul and a gospel lesson about Jesus walking on water and Simon Peter sinking. Later, as I walked around, I noticed the lion and the unicorn protecting a shield as I'm used to seeing in Scotland and thistles in the decorations, proclaiming the national symbol of Scotland. 

The cathedral was interesting and historical. It was laid out in a Greek cross, the first church I had visited like that and the altar stood at the intersection of the arms of the cross with the congregation on either side coming together for communion. It's a different kind of space and coming forward for communion made me think about the service back in St. Mary's in Berlin, passing the peace to people whose language I didn't speak. Here, I walked to the heart of the church and circled around the altar and smiled and shook hands with kind Scots and thought about how far I'd been.

The last thing I did in Edinburgh was climb Arthur's Seat. It's a huge hill on the edge of town, a touch of the highlands for which my heart ached. We had climbed it earlier, Christine, Kerry, Jesse and I, and we had stopped by the small ruin of a chapel near the beginning of the climb. 

There's not much left of this chapel, just and entry way, two windows, an arch support and a couple of corners, but the space lends itself to an absolutely mystical quality. You can rebuilt the chapel in your mind and imagine the monks who must have come here, lighting torches or candles for late night vigils. The crag around you minds you of a faerie world where sprites and nymphs could come and infest the stone of a place meant for Someone else, packing the place with a meaning all to different from the one you're accustomed to assume. And if you let your thoughts run wild you can imagine a day when we've all but left these places, these cities and these cathedrals, when the grass will grow again in the wind-deposited dirt and the walls of all of these grand houses of God that I've seen time and again in my months abroad will be reduced to a doorway, two windows and a corner, blackbirds racing each other around the ruins.

I didn't revisit the chapel on my solitary hike up and we didn't stay long as a crew the first climb up. We were beat up the hill by a trio of middle aged men determined to scale the mountain quicker than the college kids in their prime. We stopped often to take pictures and be distracted by a man walking his cat along the heath at the bottom of the valley. We paused just before the final trek up to the rocky peak, collapsing on the oddly-well maintained grass to guess at the shapes hidden in the clouds, watching as the high wind demolished them, leaving us with new patterns. I paused to look out again at the sea the sneaks into Edinburgh when I climbed by myself, but only for the briefest of seconds before picking out another path among the rocks.

The climb up to the top of the seat is up uncovered rock, different from the steep slope of grass that came before. As a group we laughed, first following the chains and posts and then guessing at the easiest climb before stumbling up to the open vista of the crown of the hill. I meandered around when I returned by myself, not pausing at the top but instead selecting a hidden outcropping to sit and think and read. Leaves of Grass lay abandoned in the pocket of my pack. I broke out a collection of stories by Neil Gaiman and immersed myself in a world of wonder, feeling the wind blow my hair around for the last time. When we four had climbed the seat, we had found our way around to the tops of the rocks, laughing and taking pictures and waiting for a group of Spanish-speaking tourists to give up their place on the highest before giving up and climbing up there anyway, crowding around the back of the dulled peak of peaks.

I left the last of my locks on a iron hook up on Arthur's Seat, the hefty one I had bought for five euro in Paris. I hadn't needed it in the hostel and wouldn't need it for our one night in Dublin before flying from there to Chicago to Charlotte. I can remember the jokes the group told as we picked our way down the rocks and flew down the hill before, but as I walked back by myself I turned a corner I hadn't seen before and walked down a stair step of rocks and trickling water. I walked through grass and by thistles, purple and green and perfect as I tugged my jacket closer against the wind.

On our way out of the city the next morning we sat on the top of the double-decker bus to the Edinburgh airport and Kerry cut off the conversation for a few moments so she could say her goodbyes to Edinburgh. I had been woken up that morning by a goodbye- Brooke, the Australian nurse from my room, had left the hostel group early to get on a plane for a night in London, despite the riots, before leaving out on a tour of the continent. We had said multiple goodbyes to the people in the hostel before walking in the rain to the bus station. Through all of this, I had never thought of saying goodbye to the city. Faced with the thought of leaving, I found my mind distracting itself from the idea. I don't do goodbyes. I was glad when Kerry finished hers and Christine and I discussed plans for surprising Pam when we returned to the States for her birthday.

I sat in an aisle seat on the plane. Given a window, I'll stare out at the ground, memorizing the place I've been from the air before it disappears in the clouds. With that moment taken away, I think I'll keep long montage of pictures taken from the upper floors of castles and cathedrals and hills looking over the cities I've seen in my mind as my memorization of Europe. I'll begin in Prague and I'll end at Arthur's Seat and I'll think of all the things I've left. And all the things I've gained.

Glasgow Churches

Editor's note: I left my camera card my computer because I was catching up on Paris posts and so I didn't take any pictures. Sorry. 
Editor's secondary note: I can't claim to have come up with some of my comments on the use of spaces in church architecture that come later in the post. I'd love to talk it over with you, citing heavily from Richard Kieckhefer's Theology in Stone.
Editor's final note: This is a long post. I'm sorry again. 

So the last time I came to Scotland I came with my youth choir. It's quite different when you're traveling in a large group- the potential for getting the wrong train or bus isn't as great, as you've got a coach to travel in, your meals are much more determined and you have a ready-made group of friends. It's very different from showing up at the train station and hoping your hostel is close enough to walk and sociable enough to make friends.

The wonderful thing about having been in a place already, though, is the potential of friends to meet you. My choir director from back home is friends with a Scottish Methodist pastor who has a circuit of four churches just outside of Glasgow and after a couple of emails, Liz and her husband met me outside my hostel on Sunday morning for a day of exploring the Methodist churches around Glasgow.

Now, I grew up in the Bible Belt of the United States. We had FCA in high school and most people had a youth group of some kind that they went to on Sundays or Wednesdays or the occasional Thursdays. I pretty much lived at my church in high school and it was a big change in college when I only had Sunday School, a small group and bell choir to go to. I'm used to a regular congregation of 200 or more filling the room I'm in on a Sunday morning and there's nothing unusual to me about not knowing every member of the congregation. In short, I'm used to big spaces and lots of people on a Sunday morning.

The church in Scotland isn't particularly like that. Across Europe I've been to several services in large cathedrals with full crowds, but on the whole, the services have been made of smaller congregations. Christianity is on the decline in the Western world and there's not really any getting around that. With that in mind, getting up to read the two lessons on a Sunday morning in front of less than twenty members of the congregation wasn't surprising, especially after having been warned. We were in a small sanctuary upstairs in the church, looking for all the world like a small village church placed on top of a meeting hall.

This is the thing that I've been missing most when visiting big churches- none of them seem to have fellowship halls or a church office in another building or rehearsal spaces around back or anything like that. My church campus back home has four or five buildings depending on how you count- there's the sanctuary and the attached children's building, the church office and education building, the youth building and the Family Life Center (fellowship hall). It's the meetings that occur, either on Sunday mornings for Sunday school or during the week for any number of small groups, committees, organizations or rehearsals that form the life of the church. The ceremony on Sunday is the knot that ties all the strings of our different focuses together.

So I climbed a set of stairs following behind the greeter at the church door and walked into the sanctuary, noting the layout of the church- three sections of fixed pews plus a balcony all facing the altar on a raised platform in the center front of the church, accompanied by a pulpit just off on stage left, a piano on stage right and a nice set of stairs up to the organ that dominated the wall behind the altar. In a cathedral, you're likely to see a huge altar piece behind the main altar after walking through the choir. It was a comfort to see an organ back there, almost marking the Wesley brothers' musical emphasis.

Liz had told the people we greeted just outside the sanctuary that I was here visiting and studying worship spaces and how they're used in liturgy. This has indeed been a focus of mine but not something I've talked about very much at all here. Let me explain.

The majority of the places I've seen have been longitudinal ceremonial churches- they're laid out either in a hall or in a cross and the focus of the church is the altar. The liturgical focus is communion- sermons have grown important over the years, but we're as expected or central as we see them today until the Middle Ages leading into the Renaissance. Mass is pretty much the same everywhere beginning with a procession Bible bearers, acolytes, crucifers and priests who all need to bring the holy accoutrements of a service into the prepared space. The congregation sits and watches and comes forward for communion at the end. All of the rest of the side altars, chapels and decorations, unless they're used in the procession, are there for devotional use. There hasn't been much need to talk over this use of the space- it's the same, with variations over time, that's been in place since Christians began using basilicas in Constantine;s time.

This church was arranged the same way, though without the side altars. Another difference is that the action of the service happened at the pulpit as opposed to the altar- Liz led prayers and started off hymns and preached from the pulpit. We didn't even have communion. Much of the time, a protestant service is going to be focused on the pulpit and the sermon. Even though we occupy ceremonial churches, we've adapted them to put a focus on the things we feel are important. Some honor tradition more than others but most reflect the changes that came about a couple hundred years ago.

But that's just the inside layout of the church. Most longitudinal churches are going to be on the ground floor of a building, because the space is so well suited for processions into the building. A few ceremonial steps up to the entrance to the sanctuary aren't that big of a deal, but the winding stair in this church sets the sanctuary apart from the more easily accessible fellowship hall. The sanctuary is an upper room now, and you go there purposefully, no chance of wandering in off the street and finding it. It's a different emphasis, an interesting combination of ceremony and fellowship that also presents challenges in accessibility. It makes you want to read into the history of the church and see the thought behind the design even as you sit through a Sunday in the life of the living church.

I loved reading the lessons and singing hymns and listening again to a service in my language with a sermon I could understand and think through. We're such people of words, we protestants. It's the lyrics that make our songs holy, not the tunes in particular. Liz had picked the hymn words but let the organist pick the tunes. After the service, the organist came over to chat and offered me an old red hymnal. Not to brag, but I've been told by multiple other people that Methodists have the best hymnal and, as a church choir mouse, I've loved my fair share of hymnals over time. I was surprised at the gift and I kept asking, "To have? I can keep it?" and Liz said, "It's funny the things she gets excited about," with a laugh.

A favorite pastime of mine is exploring churches. Given the connections to facilitate the opportunity, I would love to spend days wandering in and out of the maze of back halls I'm sure cathedrals have. Maybe I'll write a book and then I can go like Victor Hugo and familiarize myself with the twists and turns of the stairs of Notre Dame. Given the opportunity here, just outside of Glasgow, we found our way into the old sacristy down a back stair that led from the sanctuary to a hallway that led eventually to the fellowship hall. A small room at the back of the sanctuary served as the sacristy now and this room lay forgotten. On wall, though, was a framed letter from John Wesley himself. See, I'm a nerd. This means I'm given free reign to be utterly excited about subjects that might confuse other people. A letter from the founder of my favorite branch of Christianity? I love history.

We left Port Glasgow and headed over to Paisley, home of the fabric pattern. The streets are all named after things in the textiles industry- there's a Gauze Street and a Silk Street, etc. You figure I'd feel at home, growing up across the street from a clothing factory. There's an abbey in Paisley and the largest Baptist church in Europe, I believe. It's interesting to think about the heydey of the town and the kinds of churches built then- how exactly do the stars align to set prosperous times in Paisley with a rise in the Baptist interpretation of the faith?

But we came to Paisley to look at the Methodist hall that houses a congregation of 80, a fair sized congregation. The place looks like a theater from the street, a large building on a street corner without a peaked roof or steeple to mark it from the shops around it. The gated front door even reminded me a bit of a box office, though no ticket windows peered out from the walls. The morning's service, held in the fellowship hall on the first floor, had ended but a few people had come in to see the hall. We walked upstairs and I felt in my element again- after two months, give or take a week, of walking into churches with the express purpose of looking around, I was quite used to touring sacred spaces.

The Methodist Hall in Paisley is quite different from the other churches I've primarily studied, but not so different from the churches I've found myself worshiping in over the years. Instead of following in the traditions of Roman basilicas shaped into crosses that had formed church architecture for the longest time, designed for ceremonies and sacraments, the Methodist Hall is an auditorium, built for the speaking and hearing of sermons. The downstairs is full of theater seats facing a raised stage comprising of two side stages and a central platform jutting out just a bit with indentations. The pulpit used to stand there, when the hall was in use, again just in front of the organ console and pipes that dominated the wall behind it. A communion table could be brought out as well and probably placed on the lower level, underneath the pulpit. Upstairs the rest of the organ sat opposite the pulpit, surrounded by a balcony full of the same seats as below.

In a day and age of megachurches in America and huge Christian conferences meeting in arenas in Atlanta, it doesn't seem odd to me that people would choose to worship in a space like this. There's great acoustics and a choir could have a killer show in a place like this. Man, bring a gospel choir over here- it's a near perfect venue for that. There are these back stairs that lead from the chancel's upper levels to a little backstage place where the choir could get ready before walking in. I've missed choir lofts. But this place is designed for a performance. It's liturgically planned for the congregation to come in and sit and watch. The fellowship hall downstairs is planned for participation.

That's not to say that it has to be used like that. Yes, it's ideal for lectures and concerts- it would be a great space for a conference on any topic. There's not even a ton of religious symbolism in the room- the walls are white and the skylights have cherubs on them, but that's all. And churches today, everyone's so creative. A person with a good eye for the stage could really use this space- there's a lot of potential there. I mean, there are all sorts of considerations to take into effect when you've got a space like this- I've often wondered how much it costs to heat a cathedral (because goodness knows they're always cold unless you're in Spain), and, again, with the flight of stairs to contend with, there's a bit of an inconvenience in accessing the space, but there's always inconvenience when you're doing some spectacular.

And that's what was happening with big venues like this were built. Spectacular things. But all across Europe, Christian is a thing that people have been. And you can hear stories of spectacular things happening in, say, South America or Asia or Africa, but the places from which we've been sending missionaries, they're mostly over this whole church thing. And it's going to take quite a bit of work to convince them different. I mean, there's a thousand different ways to do the work, the future being oddly similar to the cavernous building in Paisley. It's difficult to know your way around, but the entire space, it's full of potential, you know?

Glasgow Cathedral

The cathedral in Glasgow is dedicated to St. Mungo who is said to have been buried there. Anybody else think of St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries? Good.

Pictured: Not a magical hospital in London

It's actually a pretty well preserved medieval cathedral, something that tended to be torn down in Reformations and the rejection of Catholicism. I can never decide how interesting I find the history of the Protestant Reformation with all its different sects ending up allowing for the thousands of versions of Christianity we have today. I mean, if we had cards, I'd be a card carrying United Methodist, but that's mostly because I'm good at joining organizations and the United Methodist Church in the states is an organized monster indeed. But more on all of this later. The cathedral in Glasgow is a Presbyterian, Church of Scotland place. It was popular during the Reformation to de-roof churches but this medieval cathedral survived and, though desecrated during the Reformation, the people of Glasgow willing paid for its repair.

And so I walked around inside with some kind of appreciation. Sure, the outside was covered with scaffolding, but the inside preserved the quire (choir) screen,

The thing that looks like a wall. Yup, that's a screen.

 separating the open nave from the pewed choir, and even if the stained glass windows were new, they kept up with the traditions of the windows, one belonging to the guilds of Glasgow, another to a wealthy family, each eager to leave a mark on such an important holy place. Again, I enjoyed the English on the walls, from being able to understand that this list of names was a list of those killed in a war and this list of names was a list of honored bishops of the cathedral. I loved picking out Bible verses and stories I knew from the words in the windows and floors. I love that a prayer for a guided path encircled the column in the sacristy and that Jesus' injunction to care for the sick, hungry, thirsty and imprisoned carried the theme of the windows in that same space.






I walked down to the lower church to see the tomb of St. Mungo and caught the end of a tour of the cathedral, pointing out an older Gothic column preserved in its decoration

and a chapel with brilliantly white walls used for weddings. I left the cathedral as they were setting up for a wedding in the upstairs church, giving space for a new life to begin while I walked slowly around the lives that had been ended, reposing on a nearby hill.

The Necropolis in Glasgow is modeled after Pere Lachaise and is from a time when the fortunes of the British Empire smiled on Glasgow as the second most important city in Britain. Names that I don't know of rich people who died long ago and not so long ago adorned tombstone after tombstone. A high monument to John Knox and other reformers sat on top of the hill with the best view of the cathedral and Glasgow and I smiled as a little boy ran up to it and turned to ask his father if it was a king on top of the high pedestal.

Right around the corner from the cathedral is St. Mungo's Museum of Religious Life and Art. It's got plenty of good stuff in there from the five major religions and I spent a couple of hours reading every plaque and thinking over every exhibit. I watched the wedding party arrive and leave from a second story window, keeping my laughter to myself as a group of older German ladies stepped in front of the window and cooed at the small boy in a kilt I had been amused by an hour earlier.

All of this is swirling around in my head, all these bits of religion that I've encountered in one day. On the one hand, you have an extremely familiar form of church for me sitting right out there, a ceremonial church designed for sacraments, inspiration and words of authority. Then there's a graveyard, familiar in its unfamiliarity with a monument to men that I recognize briefly but realize I could not tell their story. And now, here I sit, among Buddhas, copies of the Qu'ran, dancing skeletons and Shiva as the Lord of the Dance. Plenty of people think that if you're a religious studies major, you're on your way to seminary and that you're focused on their religion and a history of their church.

On my right I have a building to remind me of why they think that and on my left I'm surrounded with proof to the contrary.

Glasgow

It's not a bad train ride from London to Glasgow. I took an early train because it was literally fifty pounds cheaper and oscillated between reading and staring out the window. Tiredness and excitement vied internally- I remembered loving Scotland the last time I was there but I hadn't slept well in the large dorms in Paris and London and so, though I stared out the windows with anticipation, it was difficult to bounce around as one is said to do when excited.

Glasgow Central train station makes my top three favorite train stations (you know you're backpacking around Europe when you have favorite train stations). I arrived before my check-in time, so I enjoyed some Starbucks internet and watched the pigeons harass passengers before walking down a couple of blocks and catching a glimpse of the Clyde River before walking into my hostel.

Here's a hint, if you're ever planning on doing something like this yourself: If you have the option and the funds, pick smaller hostels. Big hostels might have... well... well, actually, the only thing bigger hostels have that smaller hostels don't is an excess of floors. You can find a kitchen, laundry and free internet at smaller hostels and in smaller hostels, you actually get to meet people. In a big place it's easy to get lost among the crowds of school groups there on holiday or packs of friends traveling together with no need for another person. I hate being excluded like that.

Thus, I was quite happy when I found myself in a smaller room than requested- I was in a four bed room instead of a fourteen bed dorm. Through lucky happenstance (by the way, did you know that our word happy has its roots with the older English word hap, or by chance?) I was in a room with, among a rotating door of others, two girls my own age, one of whom was a musician (the aforementioned Bec Sandrige, who you should go give a listen to now) and the other her friend just visiting in Glasgow for a few days to support Bec at her shows.

It's crazy nice to come back to a room with people you like to be around. It's ridiculous the amount of empathy you develop over the course of trips like this- I understand much better the feeling a body can have when you don't want to go home but you don't have anywhere else to sleep. And so I was, again, delighted to have good roomies. I went out to see Bec perform at a venue one night and loved it, and spent the rest of their time in Glasgow enjoying chance meetings at the hostel even after they had to book another room.


Other than that, much of my time in Glasgow was spent walking over to the Starbucks with the internet and catching up on things. I'd go down to the river on less rainy days, watching people walk, bike, stroll, skate and sit on calm paths that bore witness to the night's excitements the next day. I went up to the cathedral and wandered through the Necropolis, walked through museums and shuffled through shops, spending every day other than my Sunday when I visited two churches just outside of Glasgow with a friend, in town filling the time between the early sunrise and the late sunset. I read.

It's amazing how caught up a person can get in the news and thoughts of the world around them. It does not do for me to have that much extra time on my hands, spotting potential TARDISes that turned out to be ice cream shops and musing on my trip long before it's over. I spent an afternoon in a bookshop, having become determined to buy Looking For Alaska, sitting and reading from my two new books. I had to put Looking For Alaska down. The talk of summer heat in Louisiana made me homesick. I had to put the internet down for a while too. Thinking over the headlines made me worldsick.

In the end, though, I was glad to head on to Edinburgh. Eventually, even the destinations become part of the journey and you start to look at the days on the calendar like hours on the train, carrying you along to a not-too-distant end. Oh, distant enough, I guess. But approaching.

Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's Cathedral

The annual cost of running Westminster Abbey is about 9 million pounds. (I was really hoping it would be over 9,000. Internet memes, anyone? No? No? OK.) That's why you have to pay 15 pounds to walk around and take pictures. It's the same kind of scenario for St. Paul's. Both places are free if you're just going in for a service or to pray, but that means that you can't walk around and take pictures. All this is fine by me. After all, they're primarily houses of worship and they don't charge people to come inside for a service.

So that's why you don't have a billion pictures of these two places from me, and also why my London album on Facebook is much smaller than any of the others. I get a little picture happy inside churches. It was kinda liberating, just walking into these two places and not feeling like I had to document every statue along the way. Which makes me feel like I've been doing this wrong.

So when I go in for services in a cathedral or a church or wherever, I tend to focus on getting to my seat. I don't know if this is because I'm actually excited for the service or if it's because I've adapted the "if I look like I know where I'm going, they'll think I belong:" strategy subconsiously. I motored into Westminster for the evensong service and slide into a chair beside the choir stalls without waiting for the direction of the ushers. I looked around and noticed that the vent beside me was used for the heating of the choir stall and A COLD DRAFT IS THEREFORE NORMAL. There was a sign. Apparently people had asked. I also talked for a second to the lady beside me who didn't speak or understand English particularly well. I knew where she's been and I wished I could help. But, as I always do when presented with paper and books, I chickened out and stopped looking around and read about the service.

The evenson service is particular to the Anglican communion. (I imagine Richard Attenborough reading this in a voiceover vis-a-vis an animal documentary.) It's a bit like a vespers service done every day. There's a gloria, a magnificant, a nunc dimittis (the prayer of Simeon, one of my favorites) and a time of prayer, plus an anthem by the choir. The one in St. Paul's was on a feast day, the one for Mary's parents, St. Joachim and St. Anne, so there was a sermon. You can have no idea how abusively wonderful it was to understand every word in the two services I attended.

I sat through the organ postlude at Westminster, wondering if the visiting choir brought their own organist, and wandered out much more slowly than I wandered in. I balked for a second on my way out the door in the choir screen, amazed to have stumbled on the grave of Sir Isaac Newton. I looked in the floor and saw a memorial to PJ Dirac, and began to study the place around me, finding Ernest Rutherford and JJ Thomson. I love finding these physical memorials to people that I've read so much about. I would have wandered over to the poet's corner but they walked us out of the Abbey. After all, the service was over.

The same kind of thing happened at St. Paul's, being in a church only as a place of worship. I'd walk around the outside of the building with that Feed the Birds song stuck in my head and when I finally went in for the service, I hardly remarked the decor of the place around me. I walked purposefully up to the man handing out the books for the service and found a seat and began studying the order of service and the hymns we would sing. When I finally allowed myself to relax and look around, staring up again and again into the dome and around to see the statues and symbols around me, I almost shrugged it off. It was nice, but it wasn't anything I hadn't seen before, and anyway, I was here for the service.

Now, I'm a little astounded at that attitude. St. Paul's Cathedral in London is nice, but it wasn't anything I hadn't seen before? And I've heard bells and I've listened to services and I've stared at arches and columns and domes and apses and I've visited and I've thought and I've been through this all before. But shouldn't each time I see a place be something new? There's nothing like St. Paul's. There's nothing like Westminster. But there are so many things so similar that it really takes a royal wedding to set the places apart.

So walk inside. Be amazed. Really, look around and be astounded at the things people have built and made. Realize you're paying for the history that's being preserved here and that history is no small thing to preserve. I want the people of our future to see these places as well. But realize, just as there are many famous people who have achieved wonderful things whose nameswe stumble over or confuse or forget, there are many famous places that we will mix up and each will eventually lose their disctinction in the busy filing cabinets of our minds.

And though this fate of the forgotten seems like a horrible fate, I don't think you have to take the worst of ideas from it. After all, isn't it better to have such an abundance of beauty that we confuse where we first saw it than to have an absolute certainty of a memory of the only place that beauty exists?

London

Do you know what the best thing about getting off the train in London was?

English.

Goodness, I love English.

Not the English, in particular, but I love the language with which they carry out their business. You might not know it, but two months spent in countries where everything primarily happened in a language you didn't quite understand wears on a person. All the signs were in English first in London. The announcements were in English. I could talk to anyone I wanted to. Really, the first couple of hours in London were almost joyous, basking in the beauty of my home language. And English isn't even that pretty. But I had missed its primary presence in my life.

I honestly can't tell you much about the places I visited in London or the things I did there. Life was pretty humdrum. I developed a walk down to the Millenium Bridge and over near the Globe and along the Thames for a good bit. I walked down on my first evening to St. Paul's, just to see how far I could go. The next day, I went farther, looking into getting tickets for a show at the Globe. I wandered around London for a bit then, getting over to Westminster and then Buckingham Palace. I loved the gardens around Buckingham, sitting and watching the people and the birds for hours in an unusually pleasant British afternoon.

My favorite things about London were the things I geeked out about (about which I geeked? Grammatically correct sentences are difficult to come by). The Milennium Bridge was in the background of a scene in Love Actually, I walked by 10 Downing Street, I walked by the Old Bailey and down Fleet Street, I looked up Baker Street and Portabello Road, I figured out that you could watch live video of people crossing Abbey Road, I discovered a TARDIS in the British Library and I saw a play at the Globe. Shakespeare's Globe. The noise my enthusiasm makes is "Eeeeeee!!!"

The play at the Globe might actually take the cake as my favorite thing about London. I was hoping they'd have a Shakespearan play that wasn't sold out that Christine and I could go to, but all of the evening shows and most of the afternoon shows were already sold out for about the next week as far as standing room tickets were concerned. The really pleasant man at the ticket office said that they had spots open for the midnight showing of Doctor Faustus on Saturday night. I'm a Marlowe fan as well as a Shakespeare fan, and Christine wasn't opposed to seeing a play about a man who sells his soul to the devil at midnight, so the tickets were cheerily bought and the plans laid.

We walked my usual walk down across the Millenium Bridge and over to the Globe around eleven thirty, still amazed at the way the light had lingered throughout the long summer days. We showed our tickets at the door and found our way into the theater and around the already gathered crowd to a spot by the stage on the side. Sure, we would miss some of the action of the play, but having stood through a few operas in our time, we understood the wonderful luxury of leaning. I took half a dozen bad pictures of the stage and the room and admired the zodiac on the ceiling as people gasped occassionally at the monster that would peek over the upper balcony. We were joined on our side of the stage by two young men of Ireland and we passed the remaining time before the beginning of the play exchanging stories of visitng London and talking over half-remembered summaries of the action of the story we were about to watch unfold.

The play started with loud drumbeats and music and prologue from a sole actor. Then we dove into Faustus' story and I was as fascinated as ever, listening and watching the listing of studies at which Faustus had excelled, internally waiting for the second when Mestophales would show up, because every play becomes exponentially more itneresting when there's a demon around. Show up he did, though inexpertly conjured, and I spent most of the rest of the first act watching closely the exchanges between Faustus and Mestophales, borderline impatient when other actors took up the stage.

Intermission came and, as the Globe has free wifi, Christine went out to look up some information on the play and I sunk down, leaning against the stage and talking about actuarial things with one of the Irishmen as that was his intended career. Funny the things you remember about people you meet momentarily. The conversation ended rather abruptly when Christine came back towards the end of intermission with a revelation, walking quickly over to our guarded spot by the stage, and announcing, "It's Rory."

Ten seconds of backstory on this: David Tennant, who played the Tenth Doctor in the British sci-fi series Doctor Who (the longest running sci-fi series if you count all its reincarnations, beating out Star Trek: The Next Generation, The X-Files, and Stargate SG-1- end nerd aside), went to stage acting and has been in some plays at the Globe. He's also doing Much Ado About Nothing with Catherine Tate, who played Donna, this summer and I think I might actually have died of happiness if I had seen that, a combination of two of my favorite British actors starring in my favorite Shakespearean play. But, pushing all that away, I had wondered if other actors from Doctor Who got into acting on the London stage in the off-season and Christine and I had both thought that Mestophales looked familiar, though we hadn't guessed from where.

So the second half of the play for me was spent geeking out at the fact that Arthur Davrill who plays Rory Williams on Doctor Who was less than a foot away from me at certain points. The real testament to how awesome an event this was is the fact that I ran over to Starbucks the next day to tell as many of my friends as possible what had occured and to enjoy their reactions of text-based exclamations. Beyond the fan-girl moment though, I was rather enthralled by the rest of the play, watching Faustus bother the Pope and kings alike, staring breathless at his final soliloquoy as the last hour of his life chimes away. It's a wonderful play, if I may recommend some English reading for everyone, and the story itself is fascinating to me.

The ideas we discussed in my freshman English class floated around my head as we walked back in the late London night. I almost think I could have stayed in that moment forever, walking slowly back with my head on ideas of grace and decisions and worthiness and my feet on familiar pavingstones. I caught glimpses of stars as we walked again over the bridge and I love that our minds can consider ideas as big as they are, that we can sit back and think on all of these wonderful concepts.

In a way, it was just another way of basking in the wonder of English, of being able to think and express myself in my language again. It's difficult to be percieved as intelligent when you don't speak language. I think of that, of my own bias against people who I'm sure are every bit as reasonable as I am looking ridiculous as they try to express themselves in a language not their own. I loved London, visiting Westminster and St. Paul's for evensong services, listening to sermons and reflections that, for the first time since Florence, I understood.

Beautiful understanding.

Notre-Dame de Paris

Did you know that during the second world war, they took the stained glass windows out of Notre-Dame and put them in storage, for fear they would get blown out? I've seen this in a couple of places and it makes me wonder  how they did that. Seriously. You've got three rose windows- one at the west end, the big one, between the two front towers, and then one at each end of the transept, facing north and south. And beyond that, there must be near on a hundred stained glass windows besides the rose windows. They're everywhere. Notre-Dame's a Gothic Cathedral. It's the example you think of when you think of Gothic architecture. If you're me. So I'm puzzled and astounded by the amount of effort they had to put into it. Grateful, though.

Did you know that Notre Dame was probably the first place to use flying buttresses? They weren't even part of the original design, it's just that the walls were thinner in the Gothic style and they started to buckle under the weight of all the stones being added on top of them, so the architects threw these things in and they got popular as the style spread. It had a while to spread- the cathedral was finished in 1345. Just think! This is a building that's been around for nearly seven centuries. And somehow, with all our changes in fashion and taste and style, we still find it beautiful. Or I do, anyway. Me and all the people lined up across the parvais to see it.

Did you know that in the French Revolution they took out all the religious symbolism in the church and made it a Temple of Reason? They actually thought that the kings of Judah were kings of France and beheaded them. They replaced Mary over some of the altars with Lady Liberty. This place, this church that's so iconic to us, it was turned into a place were you didn't pray to God. I mean, this says all sorts of fascinating things philosophically, but I have such a hard time seeing this space as anything but a church. I love the gargoyles, pagan symbols though they be, and if you hadn't told me those were kings, I wouldn't have known, and the saints lining the doors could be any old people from that time period- well, maybe all of them except for St. Denis.

Noted Cephalophore. 

 But inside, smelling of incense and laid out in a massive cross with those choir stalls and those ceilings leading the eye up and up? They actually used this place to store food at one point in time. Strip the walls bare and it becomes a granary. And that's what some people saw in the cathedral.

Did you know that Victor Hugo wrote The Hunchback of Notre Dame about a time period much before his? We get confused about these things- all history is history to most of us. He was alive in the 1800's, after Napoleon had restored Christianity to the cathedral and been coronated in it. But Victor Hugo wrote it about the end of the 15th century, I think. I love the themes Mr. Hugo talks about in the book- there's all this about whether we actually have free will and the problem with class differences and the objectification of women. He also advocates for the repair of the cathedral, which, in his time, had fallen into disrepair, without being entirely restored from the damages of the revolution, and preservation of historic buildings is something I can certainly get behind. The cathedral is the main character of his book- it weathers all the injustice and stands solitary at the end.

Other people have taken the story and put a different moral spin on it. Disney, not famous for preserving plot lines anyway, makes the moral of the story acceptance of people who are different. Not universally, of course- Quasimodo ends up blessing the union of Esmeralda and Phoebus, because the two pretty people are the ones that should be together, but, you know, Quasimodo's had his one day out there and can happily go back to his bells and his church without the oppression of his former master, having been accepted as a good friend to Esmeralda and Phoebus alike. Notre-Dame is really the actor who paved the way for all of this justice- she protected Quasimodo from death as an infant and she allowed Frollo to fall, giving Quasimodo life as an adult.

If you see Notre-Dame de Paris, the musical based off of the story, there's this overarching theme of justice for the immigrants, for the gypsies that have made Paris their home. They demand sanctuary from Our Lady, and liberation. The cathedtal is a safe place, more than it ever is in the book, where the gargoyles watch over Esmeralda, where in the winter it's not too cold and in the summer it's not too hot. The bells are Quasimodo's loves. Even if, by the end of the musical, all has fallen into tragedy, the words of the songs have made their point- the gypsies and the outcast bellringer are the heroes of the story, not the captain of the archers or the curator of the cathedral. The opening song of the opera says that this, the time of the story, is the time of cathedrals. Man has reached for the stars, to write his story in glass and in stone.




Is it an exclusionary story, the one written above the doors and in the stained glass of Notre-Dame? What does someone with no idea who these people lining the doorways see, what does a pagan see in Mary when she walks into the building dedicated to her?

That's actually one of the things that I notice most in the three versions of the story I'm most familiar with, Esmeralda praying to Mary. In the book, it's rather tongue in cheek- Esmeralda is deathly afraid while the cathedral is being attacked by her liberators, and Victor Hugo says that, in times of need, one always prays to the god to which you're closest. In the Disney movie, a wiser Esmeralda walks along the halls of the cathedral, asking for God's help for the outcasts. We get to hear from the good people of Paris too, asking for love and glory and God and his angels' blessings, but Esmeralda doesn't ask for anything for herself, just for those less lucky than she is. And in Notre Dame de Paris, Esmeralda asks for protection from Mary, but she also asks for the barrier between herself and Mary and between brothers everywhere be taken down. I think all the prayers have beautiful points to them.

I wore my Esmeralda skirt on the Sunday when I went to mass at Notre Dame. I carried it around Europe for two months because it was definitely, definitely below the knee, a flowing green skirt that reached halfway down my shin. It really saved me in Rome, making sure I could get into St. Peter's without suffering in my jeans all day. I was being better safe than sorry in Notre-Dame. Really, given the choice, I would have loved to walk in barefoot and fit the part of a gypsy- my skin was still tan from Rome and Spain and sunny days in the south of France and my hair has grown to a remarkable length, curling unruly along the way. All I need are some gold earrings and I'm set, total gypsy. And that's all I ever want to be. I want to be the other, the outsider, the underprivileged, the one deserving pity and the one commended for rising above the sorry lot life has given me. Then it's not me that has to change the way I look at the world. The world has to adjust to me and my claims to be fair. It's so much easier to be on this end.

I bet you thought I was going to talk about the building, didn't you? The famous gargoyles, not even half as old as the building itself, the flying butresses, the carved altar stalls and the pieta and the statue of King Louis XIII and the crown of thorns in the treasury? Or maybe about the saints outside the doors, St Denis and the statues of Mary and Jesus and Peter and Paul, or the saints inside the doors, the statue of Joan of Arc whose redemption from heresy was carried out inside these very walls? Maybe I would detail the services for you, talking about the intriguing sermon preached in French from the surprising priest who stood behind the lectern with one elbow leaned against the Bible in front of him or about the sound of the organ as it played, sweet and beautiful, throughout the building, just softer than the choir that sang on Sunday morning hidden back in the choir stalls, or about the procession from the sacistry, incense smoke leading the way through the tourists still filling the halls and up the center aisle between the chairs and back out again, standing in silence broken by music as the cross came into and left the sanctuary?

But I've seen so many cathedrals. I've been to so many masses. Without the words to differentiate them, they're all the same. And these churches, they're all laid out the same, they're all used the same, when they're used for mass. The difference between all of these churches lies in their stories, and Notre-Dame de Paris has so many stories attributed to it. They're stories that I hold dear, because I love each and every one of the renditions of Mr. Hugo's novel. I love his idea and his protest against the injustice he saw. I love the ideas and the themes explored by the musical. I even love the Disney version with the unquenchable hope of Quasimodo only momentarily displaced from his bells.

This church, this cathedral, inspired one man to write a story and that story has been adapted so that people can hear it anew and can focus it on the problems they face in their own worlds. And that's what cathedrals are for. Yes, they are places of worship, yes, they are places that display the percieved power and glory of the God that blessed each of these nations with enough money and might to build such a building, but now, after all the history that has passed between the building of these cathedrals and us, all these buildings have left are their stories, their proclamations of times gone by. But this place, this one cathedral more than any other, has allowed her story to be molded to benefit others, to benefit, in point of fact in all cases, the least of these and though the building and furnishing of this cathedral proclaim's religions benefit to those with much, that's not what Christ came to do.

I love a faithful church.