Off to the Cathedral!

Last Sunday, I visited the Norwich Cathedral. I've found that the best way to get around having to pay for the rather steep admission prices to tour churches in England, is to go to a service. That's not to say that I just went to the service so I could get a peak at the church, but I do think that you get a clearer perspective of the church when you go to it for the purpose it was built.

I woke up at about nine on a sunday morning, got dressed, and took the bus downtown (I was told that "downtown" is an American turn of phrase. Here, the "down" part is assumed to be a verb and it implies that you are going down from a hill to town. The proper way to refer to the part of a city where most everything is centered is "city centre." They also don't say "you're welcome" here, it's a very strange place.)

I got off on the exit next to the castle (there's a castle AND a cathedral here. In my hometown, we get excited about the house that has a bowling alley in the basement.) I followed the signs to the cathedral which took me past the castle. There was a tablet I saw along the way. It had a medieval looking soldier and a quote from "Roadways" by John Masefield (I had to look that up, I don't know poetry off the back of my hand unless I can recite it in Sylvia Plath's voice.)

The cathedral had a kind of citadel around it. It was completed in 1145, so it's been there for nearly 900 years. I wondered what it must have looked like when it was first completed, and how truly awe inspiring it must have been.

The spire on top is the second highest in England, eclipsed only by Salisbury. I felt like I had stepped back in time when I went through the gates. There's a large empty swath of land around the church, whereas outside the walls, the city is densely packed into every corner it can manage. There was a baptism at the service I attended. The baptismal font was donated to the church by a chocolatier, and it was a former basin of sorts for melted chocolate. I wanted to take a picture, but I felt like that might be disrespectful given the setting and it would give me away as a tourist (as if my accent weren't enough. I realized how truly different I sound during the Lord's Prayer when everyone was saying "gode" while I was saying "gahd.")

The inside was beautiful. There was a huge organ, and during "We Three Kings of Orient" (last Sunday was the last day of the Advent season, so they were still singing Christmas music) the star on top began to twirl during the chorus when the chimes were playing.

Towards the end of the service, as Communion was winding down, the sun came out and went through the windows and lit the whole thing up with the most wondrous light, it was the kind of light one would associate with the Second Coming. I know that the architect designed it so that when light came through, it would have that effect, but at any rate hats off to the architect. I don't understand why modern church's can't take a similar stance.

Not to bag on the Los Angeles Cathedral (because everyone loves to and it's SO easy) but when I see that building, it doesn't inspire the same grandiose feelings in me. I don't think of God, I think of the idiot that designed the thing and the idiot who approved it. Perhaps this extends from my love of historical architecture as well as my Anglophilia. Whatever it is, you can't complain about the view.