English Reflections

Well. England was a thing that happened last week. If you're a friend of mine on Facebook, you've already seen the best of my photos. If not, I'm impressed at your finding and reading of this blog. It was ... interesting. Group travel is not my favorite thing in the world: having to get through an airport with 20+ other people is one of my metaphors for hell. This trip, frankly, involved a spot more drinking than I was expecting or was comfortable with. I mean, once in the week we were there, of course, but I could not gather the motivation for going out to drink multiple nights in a row with people I'm not entirely comfortable with. I also can't really do that stuff anymore without thinking about the people who are left out of that equation. Enough folks in seminary are in recovery of one form or another, and centering so much of the social life of the trip around drinking felt exclusionary in the worst way.

I did, however, get to see my brother, which was a real treat! We had a good visit, just for a day, and he got to come with me on our "cathedral climb", where we climbed to the top of the "Bell Harry" tower. Here's a photo or two:
The flat parts of the roof here are where the "firewatchers" stood to throw the incindiary bombs off during the blitz.
This is the close where the cathedral clergy all life. To the far right is the dean's house, to the left of that is where the pastoral canon (who is the only ordained woman on staff) lives. The other buildings are other things.
The sky was just fantastically beautiful.

So I thought a lot about why it was that this part of the trip was, hands down, my absolute favorite. I think what it reflects is my desire for more personal time, both with the people on the trip (I really did have a good time, one-on-one with all the folks I was with), and with the building. Canterbury used to be a center for religious tourism -- people wanted to come to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket -- and now it's just kind of a center for tourism. I didn't find much of our time at the cathedral to be very spiritual, but hearing the dean explain the way the tower was constructed, and seeing the care with which the building was build and remodeled over the past millenium was where I really connected.