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.