Originally published 8/29/16
All of these cathedrals are starting to look alike: cavernous ceilings, Norman and/or Gothic arches, crypts and crypts of hundreds of years of Bishops, rows of Chapels along the side, pipe organs, low altars for everyday use, high altars for smaller occasions, candle-lit choirs (or, quire, as they spell it here), and, our favorite, the gift shop.
Still, there is something amazing about these cathedrals. And I'll even throw Christ Church Greenville and All Saints Sewanee into that group. They are stone and plaster-based edifices with beautiful windows and uncomfortable seats that, to me, transform when those pipe organs start bellowing. On our third cathedral, in Norwich, (silent W) we walked into a wedding. Well, not right into it. These cathedrals have Naves, and Quires, and Sanctuaries, and Chapels, all in what a Baptist would call the church. In Episcopalian-land, church is really what we do, not where we do it. And in the cathedrals here, the Nave, which has a low altar, usually a modern adaptation, is separated from the high altar - literally up the steps - by the pulpitum, a stone "screen" that separates the Nave from the Quire. It's not a screen in our vernacular, either. It's a stone structure that often also houses the organ.
Here's the Norwich Cathedral pulpitum. There's the low altar in front, and the quire and high altar beyond.There's a small stairwell in the structure that the organist uses to get to the organ, which sits on top.
So just beyond that screen in the picture above, which is closed by a gate, was a wedding. So, we couldn't see it, but I thought it was just perfect that there was a wedding going on, at that moment. As Michael perused the gift shop, which was located in the back of the church, for a book about Julian of Norwich, I wandered up the aisle.
And then the organ began to play. Click here to listen to it. It was overwhelming. I plopped down in a chair and immediately started crying. (I did gather myself enough to make the recording, however.)
We also got to hear the organ at Canterbury Cathedral, twice. We went for church and Evensong, on Sunday afternoon. It, too, has the pulpitum, though not the pipes on top.
Canterbury Cathedral makes up for the lack of pipes on its pulpitum with this pulpit, left. About 10 steps up, guarded by Bishops of old. The pipes at Canterbury are to the left, on the wall.
Evensong was held in the Quire, the hall between the pulpitum and the high altar. Congregants sit on either side of an aisle, as does the choir. Evensong is a service of, just like it sounds, song and scripture. Canterbury has a resident choir for these services, but they were on vacation this weekend, and there was a guest choir, 24 voices that sang in angelic perfection. It was as if a blanket of peace and comfort, filled with the spirit, to give me strength and reassurance, and a moment to bask in worshiping without saying a word, knowing that God is glorified through this magnificent noise. It makes my chest feel heavy but my spirit light, which sometimes makes me weep, and other times an all-out snot fest.
David also commanded the chiefs of the Levites to appoint their kindred as the singers to play on musical instruments, on harps and lyres and cymbals, to raise loud sounds of joy. 1 Chronicles 15:16
My mom was the organist at our church growing up, Lamb of God Lutheran Church in Spartanburg. Not exactly a cathedral, nor cathedral-like, but our home church for many years, nonetheless. Clearly, we did not have a pipe organ at Lamb of God. The organ did have two keyboards and a foot pedal, and, if I remember correctly, it had some stops. The organ is one of the main reasons we went to church every Sunday and every major feast day, in addition to the general dedication of my parents to our Christian upbringing, and their own religious edification, of course. We always sat on the last row, so mom could sit with us during the sermon.
I cry when organs play partly because the noise is so joyous. I remember the first Easter vigil I attended at Christ Church, when, at the moment of resurrection, after two hours in the dark, the lights come up, and the bells ring and the organ plays triumphant and I lost my shit, sitting there in church, crying at the beauty of the moment, and the lights, and the lilies, and most of all the organ. I wrote David, our organist, a note to thank him for playing that night. As I wrote the note, I wept, and smeared the ink on the letter.
I cry, too, because it is a joyous noise of my childhood. When I moved to Greenville in 1996, I had been absent from regular church attendance for several years, and hadn't been to a Lutheran church in 10 years. At the corner of my new neighborhood was a Missouri Synod Lutheran Church, as if God had put it there to instruct me back to church. It too, was small like Lamb of God, with an electric organ. But the minute church started, and the hymns and liturgy progressed, I cried. I was home. It is songs I know, melodies we sang every week, and every season. And it was my mom playing it; because of that, maybe I paid closer attention, maybe it just sank into my DNA.
I was glad this summer, when we returned to Christ Church - which also has a spectacular organ - that Isabel was affected to by the glorious noise of a great pipe organ. In Sewanee, we mostly go to Otey Parish, which has pipes, but is small, as does St. Andrews chapel, where Isabel worships during the week at school. When she heard the Christ Church organ pipes blow, she smiled, and whispered, "Yesssss." She would not admit this now, I'm certain. But I saw it, and I know, and it makes me happy. Maybe it's in her DNA too.
Hozzászólások