On Earth as in Ireland, Pt. 6

Part 0 (The Dream) — Part 1 (The Fog) — Part 2 (The Hike) — Part 3 (The Colors) — Part 4 ( The Flu) — Part 5 (The Flowers) — Part 6 (The Cathedrals) — Part 7 (The Rest)

Cassie’s favorite park at Disney World was the Magic Kingdom. Mine is EPCOT. That meant whenever I’d have my way of going to EPCOT, I would have to compromise and do her all-time favorite thing there—we would watch the film about France. Yes, the film with the narrator that sounds like Jean Girard, the bad guy in Talladega Nights. There were plenty of reasons Cassie loved the idea of actually visiting the country, France. But there was one reason that really topped the list. She wanted to see cathedrals.

I always have too. So, while our friends and I were traveling we made visiting cathedrals and other beautiful churches a thing. I tried to see as many as possible, from Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin to any of a half dozen in London. One day was entirely devoted to it, as I went from Westminster Abbey, to Southwark Cathedral, to St. Paul’s Cathedral, and then over to St. Paul’s Hammersmith (for a Hillsong Church event, of all things).

As I looked at these stone monuments from the outside I couldn’t have been more excited to explore them and all the history inside. I mean, they were monuments to the faith I believed in, right? Oddly enough, I actually wound up a bit disenchanted as I went through them. The solid architecture of Christ Church Cathedral was awesome, but the dark stone building seemed to cast such heavy shadows as we walked through it. The light filtering in through the stained glass of Westminster Abbey was, well, enlightening, but the masses of people filing between the shrines seemed to take some of that light away. The gilded, vaulted ceilings of St. Paul’s Cathedral were breathtaking as my gaze was directed heavenward; but even then, the extra space between the floor and the domed roof brought my attention to a certain emptiness the structure evoked in me.

It didn’t take long for me to realize why I felt so off even as I was on these sacred grounds: Death.

It was everywhere. It almost made my head spin, that these marvels were committed to the God called Life, yet so many dead were committed into them. It was a bizarre feeling to be inside these giant towers filled with dazzling rainbows of light, knowing they were also filled with the darkness of crypts and coffins just beneath my feet. I went to these places, half-expecting to be inundated with visuals imparting the beauty in creation. Instead, every direction I looked there were memorials, grave markers, tombstones, and shrines overlying the remains of saints; even the stained glass depictions were often depicting the martyrdom of biblical figures. Granted, they were beautiful memorials.

But I couldn’t help but reflect on why this was detracting so much from my experience. I thought, maybe because it was part of a realization that I have focused on the cheery aspects of my faith, so confronting the grave sides of it was a little jarring. Or, maybe it was just my grief clouding my perspective. Either way, I couldn’t stop thinking of how the presence of these memorials must affect the people who come through these churches over the centuries.

These church buildings are places of worship, after all. They have been places where joy exploded in wedding celebrations, grief weighed heavy in the air through funeral services, and both are regularly brought together as the gospel is proclaimed in the sacraments. Those events have always happened for the sake of the living. But as they happened, the living were forced to remember loved ones who were passed because of the sheer number of epitaphs on every wall surrounding them. They would have been reminded of how those passed lives’ navigated their own triumphs and sorrows.

I made sure to take note of the memorial inscriptions scattered throughout the various cathedrals, to reflect on how those lives affected the life of the churches–before and after their passing…

A reverend who died in 1823, along with his wife:

To you, dear names, these filial thanks we give
For more than life, for knowledge how to live;
For many a rule with holy wisdom fraught,
And works embodying the creed you taught;
For faith, triumphant, though the lips which told
Its glowing lessons, now alas! Are cold;
Faith which, proclaiming that death but sleep,
Invites us home to those whom here we weep.

A bailiff who died in 1859:

A kindly spirit ne’er to whom in vain
Did friendship plead, or poverty complain,
An earnest life to useful labor given,
A simple trust in the good news from heaven
If these may win God’s mercy, all our pain
Gladly we bear—our loss, thy highest gain.

A cathedral’s organist:

His love of harmony equally refined his taste and regulated his heart, and while it gave melody to his voice and composition, added a consonant sweetness to his temper and conversation, so that he lived eminently distinguished in his public profession, and died universally lamented for his private virtues, Nov 22AD, 1777, in the 34^th year of his age.

I thought to how my experience of church (and of life in general) has been changed since Cassie’s death—how every time I sang in worship I can’t help but picture my late friends and family members singing as well; how much harder it is to think of life here as a guarantee each day; how ridiculous it is to think our impact on the people around us ends when we die; how Cassie’s presence in heaven’s throne room (presumably, not to beatify her or anything) makes me look forward to being in that space even more.

Though her grave is nowhere near where I worship each Sunday, I think of how Cassie might sing and how she might have me sing, how she lived out sermons and would have me live. I think the same of all those in my life, who no longer share it with me–family and friend alike. For those of you who in the same place, I wonder how much you do the same?

Part 0 (The Dream) — Part 1 (The Fog) — Part 2 (The Hike) — Part 3 (The Colors) — Part 4 ( The Flu) — Part 5 (The Flowers) — Part 6 (The Cathedrals) — Part 7 (The Rest)