The Cathedral

Commonplace Newsletter #106

For hours now I have been sitting here watching the cursor blink, thinking of what to say. And the same yesterday and the same the day before. Reality- the world away from writing- has been difficult as of late. One of those periods where the challenges and the problems and the headaches and the minor injustices of life all coalesce into a heavy cloud that threatens to never clear. The seasons seem eternal until the seasons change. I know this.

And yet the knowing doesn’t make the feeling change.

In this state it is hard to think of something constructive or hopeful or positive to say, even though it is more important than ever to do so. To prove- if only to yourself- that you can endure and that you will endure. To prove that who you are and what you do is not solely dictated by circumstance.

When bad fortune is upon you, when things are not going your way, when you cannot catch a single break no matter how much you ‘deserve’ it and no matter how ‘unfair’ your current plight is, your creativity can turn dark. Which I suppose is understandable. In this frustrated, angry, low energy state it is easy to bring forth a little more bile and anger and viciousness into the world via your work. Some would say it is only natural. Some would say it is ‘authentic’ to do so. In this state you can project your hurt outwards and dress it in caustic, biting prose and sell it as hard hitting truth, as realness. But I refuse to do so.

See, in this frame of mind I could easily rattle off piece after piece about the bleak state of the world and its inhabitants as seen through whatever the opposite of rose tinted glasses are. I could tune into this energy. Ideas- bleak as they may be- abound in this state and pessimism certainly has a good dose of realism within it. But I refuse to give in to this impulse. And so, if I’m to write anything more than a cathartic-for-me, miserable-for-you diatribe I must first regain the proper perspective. And to do this I must take a trip to the cathedral.

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It’s raining. Heavily. The scattering of pension age pedestrians on Dam Street walk head down, shoulders up against the downpour. Those who have hoods or umbrellas cling to them and those who don’t- duck into the nearest black beamed Tudor tearoom. I am in Lichfield in the heart of England, a market town just a handful of miles from where I grew up. My hometown, I should point out- was a lot less leafy and historic and picturesque, and a lot more brutalist grey and down-at-heel and post-industrial. Not so much tearooms and giftshops, but boozers and bookies. Lichfield was where you would go if you wanted a short drive to somewhere tranquil, a bit posh. And though it’s been a good number of years since my last visit, such distinctions die hard.

The ducks in Minster Pool¹ are the first glimmer of light below the heavy dark grey clouds, happily paddling in the downpour in spite of the fact that no one is foolhardy enough today to stand on the water’s edge and throw crumbs of old bread for them. Not in this weather. The mallards and the geese and the swans don’t seem to care either way though. A reminder of D.H. Lawrence’s line about how he ‘never saw a wild thing sorry for itself’. Which is true enough, but we are humans and so the capacity for self-pity, as well as self-recrimination, vitriol, envy and worse is all a part of the deal. So is our capacity for joy and hope and love despite all obstacles². You can’t do away with any of it. It all must be dealt with.

Over the causeway and a left turn onto the close. The medieval Gothic cathedral stands on the right, massive and imposing, a burnt orange colour against the canvas of this miserable weather. Hyperbole and carelessness have a way of robbing words of their weight, but this building is majestic. It is what people used to mean when they used the words awesome and sublime. The rain doesn’t diminish its grandeur, nor does the scaffolding of perpetual restoration and upkeep, which will mar at least part of the appearance of any cathedral you will ever visit.

Recently worked on patches of brickwork and masonry have a paler and cleaner surface whereas the unworked on (or not recently worked on) majority show the weathering of centuries of wear accelerated by the comparatively harsher and filthier times from when the Industrial Revolution began belching out smoke across these English counties. But the cathedral’s magnificence endures, and its spires and monuments and stained glass seem defiant and beyond time. Individual aspects of the cathedral may have been replaced after being destroyed in the English Civil War, the statue of King Charles II on the south transept may have been eroded to a wigged and caped facelessness, but the cathedral in its totality strikes you as immortal. It ever was and it ever shall be.

Just look at the figures that bejewel the vast west front. Christ on the gable offering his blessing, Moses with the tablets, Michael with lance and serpent. And below them the northside prophets and angels- Gabriel with shield and sceptre, Amos with crook and branch, Daniel with scroll and fire. And the southside prophets- Isiah with his saw, Ezekiel with his wheel and St Raphael with his pilgrim’s staff. And below them the Anglo-Saxon kings- Wulfhere, Ethelred, Egbert, and Canute. Names, history, continuity- a whole foundational, uninterrupted story of a people carved in stone, one that all pilgrims would have known and felt and understood as they approached, understood to a depth that perhaps us modern visitors will never be able to truly grasp.

All this and we are still outside in the rain. I haven’t spoken yet of the Flemish stained glass inside, of the Lichfield Angel (an 8th century relic only discovered in 2003), of the shrine of Saint Chad, of the Sleeping Children- a piece of Victorian marble work as beautiful and melancholic and masterfully crafted as any piece of art I have ever seen. I haven’t spoken about the illuminated manuscripts that date back to the 100 Years War or the vast nave or the mystery of the carved stone faces that line the walls- where one will be pristine while its neighbour will be eroded down to a featureless silhouette.

It is all here- war and conflict and mystery and beauty and death and edification and consolation and grandeur. The totality of the human experience told in sandstone, marble, brick, wood and glass and the pin-drop quiet within which to contemplate it. 

Which is exactly what I do. You may come into such a place wrapped up in a bleak present, trailing a past full of regrets and faced with a future that promises no easy way through. So have many others over centuries and centuries, plagued by wars, famines, plagues, and hardships- that the cracks in the friezes and the figures they depict-are themselves a testament to. You can’t do away with any of it. It all must be dealt with. 

Every object in this place, and in all places like this speak not only to the messiah and apostles and saints who inspired it, and to their story, but also to the unnamed, unknown, forgotten craftsmen who collectively spent their lives toiling on this artwork without end- from the medieval stonemason, to a Victorian sculptor to the 21st century artisans who work high up on the scaffolding today, performing their highly skilled restorative crafts- itself an antithesis to the highly touted disruption ideology of Silicon Valley.

I watch the flicker of the candlelight beneath St Chad’s shrine as I consider the ruined hands and ruined backs of dozens of generations given in the service of producing the delicate, precise, exquisite art that surrounds and envelops me. Endurance. Sacrifice. The humility of devotion and contributing your gifts to something greater and more meaningful than merely your own enrichment and aggrandisement. Are these the answers? Is it as simple (and as difficult) as this?

It’s time to go. I light a candle on the flame whose flicker illuminated the moment outside of time I was just gifted with. Above it, St Chad with his halo and tonsure and red and blue bible looks on, wise and still and inscrutable. Over 50 generations after his death, the church he founded here still has the power to lighten the burden of those who seek shelter within it.

1. I didn’t know the name of this little body of water until looking it up just now. It has forever been the duck pond to me, and always will be.

2. Samuel Johnson- Lichfield’s most famous son- was one of the great writers who could deal with *all* of these facets of the human condition. The local hospital is named after him.  The townhouse he grew up in is a museum where his witty and wordly wisdom are bound and on sale in the gift shop. If you’re ever in town…