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A Serious House
September 8, 2002
"It pleases me to stand in silence here;One of the deepest joys and satisfactions of my sabbatical visit to England in April was an opportunity to visit several of the great cathedrals there, a recurring dream of mine for many years. Though my aesthetic favorite was unquestionably Canterbury, it was my weekday morning visit to the Cathedral of St. Albans which moved me most. I had risen early to catch the train to the town of St. Albans, about twenty minutes north of London, and had arrived there as inbound city commuters were still crowding the platforms for their workaday journeys. I walked through the quiet morning streets of what had once been the ancient Roman city of Verulamium, into the charming medieval center of the town. Odd though it sounds, I couldn't at first find the Cathedral, which was actually hidden from view on the approach I had taken, but when I finally did, it did not disappoint.
A serious house on serious earth it is. . . ."--Philip Larkin, from "Church Going"
The Cathedral of St. Albans is famous for several reasons. Begun in 1077, it is one of the oldest cathedrals in England, erected as it was to St. Albans, a Roman convert to Christianity in the 3rd century and its first English martyr. There has been a church on the site of his martyrdom ever since 793. St. Albans has the longest nave of any English cathedral, and because of its construction over several periods of design it is one of the best places to observe the various architectural styles in which English cathedrals were rendered. Because it is constructed largely of rubble stone masonry and tiles salvaged from the Roman ruins of Verulamium, it has a most unusual, and to my eye, rough and beautiful appearance.
Other than its vastness, and the vivid contrast of Norman and Gothic architecture resulting from a 14th century collapse of part of the Nave walls, the cathedral interior is plain, not spectacular. But by luck or chance I had arrived early enough to catch the closing strains of music from the boys' choir of the nearby Cathedral school, and other than the singers and a few teachers I had the huge cathedral almost entirely to myself. I was able to wander at will without the usual press of crowd, and the few cathedral employees about at that early hour either completely ignored my presence or appreciated the solitary purpose of my visit. It was, as the poet says, a pleasure "to stand in silence there."
Indeed, my visit brought to mind Philip Larkin's wonderful poem "Church Going" which I read to you this morning. For here I was, a "non-conformist," as the English like to call those who are neither Anglican nor Roman Catholic, a rationalist by tradition, visiting a great English cathedral, the faith of which my Puritan religious ancestors had totally rejected as corrupt and "impure." Why, then, did I feel drawn to this place? What was I expecting to find there, beyond an increased understanding of cathedral architecture and a heightened respect for the medieval builders of these great stone churches?
Writing of the modern, post-World War II cathedral in Coventry, Alec Clifton-Taylor, author of The Cathedrals of England, has said,
. . .One asks oneself again and again, what is the nature of this popular interest--not only in Coventry but in other cathedrals such as Canterbury and St. Paul's, into which in summer-time the crowds pour in their thousands week after week? Is it an interest in religion that draws most of them? I do not think so. Except on Sundays and on special occasions cathedral services are usually poorly attended, and it seems no exaggeration to assert that, for every one visitor who goes to worship, there are a hundred who go just to look. And why not? Any number of people, not necessarily religious, find in visits to cathedrals a source of deep spiritual refreshment. . . .There is something about the cathedrals that draws in even the most skeptical of those among us. Perhaps it is because, as Philip Larkin writes,
. . .someone will forever be surprisingI happen to believe it is precisely this "hunger . . . to be more serious" which draws the thousands of non-churchgoers who visit the great cathedrals, as it certainly drew me. I long for something other than the cynicism and despair which I too often feel, and the cathedrals put me in touch with something larger and grander than myself and even than my fears.
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground. . . .
The Cathedrals are among those "things which endure," in the words of my Harvard Divinity School advisor and minister to Harvard's Memorial Church, Peter Gomes; and in a world of seemingly ceaseless change and transition we gravitate to such things and places. Indeed, we "hunger" for them.
But I know, also, that for myself it is something deeper and more complex. As Larkin discovers on his morning bicycle ride, the cathedrals are holy ground "if only that so many dead lie round." The past is palpable in such places, places where the drama of life and death has been lived out for centuries, even millennia. Sigrid Unset gets close to the reason why I think I am drawn to the cathedrals when she writes:
In all the years when I did not know what to believe in and therefore preferred to leave all beliefs alone, whenever I came to a place where living water welled up, blessedly cold and sweet and pure, from the earth's dark bosom, I felt that after all it must be wrong not to believe in anything.Like her, and like most of us, I daresay, I am searching for something to believe in. And though I am skeptical by nature, I am much like Robert Browning's Bishop Blougram in his poem "Bishop Blougram's Apology," who chooses to opt for what he calls "a life of faith diversified by doubt," rather than its opposite (a life of doubt diversified by moments of faith), not because they are fundamentally different, but because attitudinally they are. I want to believe in something more, and sometimes I do. Why not live to that something rather than to its absence?
I prefer to believe that there is something more than meets the eye, even though I sometimes doubt it. And like Philip Larkin, I wonder "what remains when [even] disbelief is gone?" The great cathedrals, with all that they stand and have stood for, and just by the fact that they continue to stand at all!--lend credence to my faith in the "the things that endure." They inspire us, which means literally that they "in-spirit" us. And I don't know about you, but I need that. I need it desperately.
I would hazard to say that this ancient building in which we meet for worship this morning is as close to an English cathedral as you can get on this side of the Atlantic. Like them, it is "a serious house on serious ground," and I like to think that it is a place "proper to grow wise in, /If only that so many dead lie round."
Each year when we start up our regular worship services again, I go through a period of wondering why we do it. Why do we come to church? Why bother with all the mundane institutional stuff that goes along with "doing" church? And then, when I enter this space made sacred over time and life-times, this vessel for our fondest hopes and dreams and memories, I am reassured and have an answer of sorts. For it is good to be together with you in this special place.
I welcome you herein, and I trust that this place, too, may "surprise" your "hunger . . . to be more serious," and even offer you some peace along the perilous journey of your life. We wish it so; so may it be. Amen.
The Rev. Harold E. Babcock
