With Scott Moore and Barry Harvey I left Oxford yesterday morning for Victoria Station, London. We checked our bags at a nearby hotel and then went by train to Canterbury. Some months ago Scott proposed a pilgrimage on our final day before returning, following in the steps of those countless Christians from days of old to the present who have journeyed to the great cathedral.
Canterbury is a clearly identifiable medieval town. From the station at Canterbury East, we walked along the ancient defensive wall to the village, and along the main street lined with quaint shops and flats–too overrun with global, corporate franchises like the ubiquitous Burger Kings and McDonalds, but still bearing resolute witness to the days of old. Turning down an alley that led straightway to the cathedral gate, we were met with a vision of one of the great places of Christian worship in the world.
Though Scott regards Canterbury as his favorite cathedral the world around, and though I am in awe of its majestic witness to human longing for the God who has visited us in Jesus Christ Incarnate, I maintained that St. Peter’s in Rome holds pride of place. I detected mild disappointment in Scott that Canterbury was less than supreme in my estimation, but I must hasten to say that it is virtually indescribable in its beauty. Its sweeping gothic lines, its sacred memorializing of Becket and Anselm, its angelic choirs with voices reverberating from end to end, its sightless heights–such as these qualities mark it wondrous in the Christian world.
How many penitents it has held over the centuries, how many earnest prayers have been directed to God, how many faithful acts of obedient Christian discipleship have been practiced, how many words of pastoral counsel heard and received–thanks be to God!
During an evening in London we took the tube to Leicester Square, then walked to the raucous evening life of Covent Garden. Street performers of varied ability, a carousel, and shops and stores clamored for the attention of the throngs of people there. After the finest meal of my week abroad, at an Indian-Bangladeshi restaurant, we walked to Charing Cross, visited a few bookstores, toured the area southwards to the river Thames, and walked across and back on the Golden Jubilee bridge, from which we saw London at night in one direction to the Houses of Parliament and in the other to St. Paul’s Cathedral–a perfect way to commemorate our last evening in London.
My heart is set on home now. I write aboard the plane; we have taken off and are pointed westward toward the New World where loved ones wait for me. To embrace wife and child, hold them close, hear them and bear them along with me in and through all of life’s joys, and also to keep them from all the world’s pains when they come–these goods of life together draw me homeward.
High among the lessons underscored anew during these last days is the imperative to conform my life to disciplines and practices of Christian faith, the ones attested to by millennia of well-ordered, time-tested, biblically-shaped, and ecclesially-based tradition. Christians are made, not born, and however much I know and assent to this, to observe the divine offices each day within our household, to note the saints’ days and holy days of the liturgical year, to hold in my heart the creeds, confessions, hymns, and prayers that have buoyed the sinking souls of the faithful through the years, and to know these things amidst friends and families–my own included–must occupy my attention. I have long thought of the need to follow a new, more serious way of discipleship. I have oft wanted to speak with Michele in earnest of it, but ’til now I have not. Delay no longer. “Choose ye this day whom ye shall serve,” the Lord says. Insofar as such choosing takes place each day, and inasmuch as the resources of the Christian tradition enable just that, so must I give the tradition that is mine the wholeness of my devotion.
