Do cathedrals have fellowship halls?

When you travel, you quickly realize that what you expect and reality are often quite different things.

After a few delayed flights (thanks to American Airlines), we touched down at Heathrow in London on a bright yellow, April morning. From there we took an LNER train from London King’s Cross Station north through the East Midlands up towards Yorkshire and the Humber to our first destination: York.

The train stops briefly in Peterborough from its frantic sprint north. In the center of the town, I could see the towers and spires of Peterborough Cathedral through the disembarked passengers walking in front of the window. The ancient building was glowing in the early afternoon light. I pointed it out to my wife but she’d given into the jet lag. By the time I looked back, the train had lurched forward and the cathedral was gone.

I felt a small pit between my ribs. Cathedrals tend to grip my imagination and drag it upwards much like the architecture is meant to grip your eyes towards the heavens and the glory of God. They open up the part of me that gets frustrated in bookstores because I can’t read them all. There are certain longings that are like a glass that I want to chug to the bottom. Cathedrals and British towns and villages are like that. I put my headphones in and ignored that feeling.

It was the year after we got married and my wife and I were on our delayed honeymoon. We had gone cheap on our wedding so we could take a trip like this and we knew we would never be able to justify such a trip ever again. Using a combination of Rick Steves, YouTube, and other travel sights, I had all the must-sees, must-dos, and must-eats loaded into a note on my phone. 

York in April. The afternoon sun was gold on the medieval city walls out the doors of the old train station. They are standing behind a row of cherry trees in full bloom. Given that we were in England, I feel I should use more refined words like “exquisite” and “pulchritudinous” but I’m from East Tennessee so: y’all, it was something else. 

I enjoyed it for a moment before checking my phone to figure out how to get to the hotel. I’d found us a Holiday Inn in York that was in the city center and walkable to everything we wanted to see.

It's important that you now understand that there are two Holiday Inn's in York. One is in the city center walkable to all the sites we wanted to see and the other is two miles and two buses outside of town. 

I did not book the one in the city center walkable to all the sites we wanted to see.

One thing you definitely want to force your jet-lagged bride to do is carry a backpack across a foreign city looking for a bus system you don’t know how to use to get to a Holiday Inn in the suburbs. But my wife is a kind woman who didn’t complain on the walk to the bus stop. Or on the walk back across the street to the correct bus stop. Or during the 34 minutes we had to wait because we saw the bus we needed leaving as we walked up.

We disembarked on Tadcaster Road where the redbrick houses framed with white windows and occasional pub sign guided us on the right and on the left was a large gated house with a sign for a historic garden and a little sandstone Anglican church named for St. Edward the Confessor.

The next morning, the first planned stop was the York Minster Cathedral. Finally. 

We were walking past St. Edward’s to the bus stop when we saw a sign that said “Coffee Shop” outside of the church.

“Do you want to go in?” my wife said.

I think this is why I’m a bad planner. It’s not the making of the plans, it’s the sticking to them. 

“Yeah, let’s do it.”

Inside we heard an array of kind voices speaking in English accents. 

The room itself had some cheap furniture, a small section of children’s toys and books (much like the ones you might see in a kid’s ministry room here), and a few couches. 

And the people. They were in disbelief to see two people with backpacks standing there. They’d been less surprised if they’d looked up and seen two clowns standing there juggling. 

The room wasn’t so much a coffee shop as what we might call a “Fellowship Hall” where they served instant coffee from a pouch and little biscuits (cookies are called biscuits, it’s bizarre, I know). I can report that English church ladies seem to have the same affinity for Tupperware of all forms and kinds. This made me happy.

We made new friends. A middle-aged gentleman in a tweed jacket with red hair and a goatee named Tom told us about his affinity for the Anaheim Angels. He also told us how his grandfather had lived in Liverpool and finally gotten a ticket to cross to the US on a boat but the night before his trip, he met his grandmother in a pub. He never made it to the States. Ms. Belle was older with a big smile she’d surely given to thousands of people over her lifetime. She just beamed through her glasses and gave us more biscuits. 

It was beautiful and I knew it. 

Now to the Minster. We hadn’t lost too much of the day when we left and the bus was due soon. 

“Can we stop and see these gardens?” my wife said. “They look really pretty.”

Umm. 

“The cathedral doesn’t close till 5. Sure,” I said. The house from down the lane did look rather Narnia-ish. 

We learned the home was owned by Joseph Terry who had invented a chocolate orange candy that was widely adored. Iona, the young woman at the front desk chided us for never trying one “You have to try a Terry’s.” 

“They used to make them here in York,” an older woman with large glasses and a cane said. “Not anymore though. Now they’re made in Poland.”

The gardens behind the house were awake with tulips, azaleas, and wisteria overwhelming the brick walls with purple joy. They had a magic about them I thought was exclusive to the pages of C.S Lewis and Francis Hodgson Burnett. Something in me breathed it in. I felt in my chest a brief moment of the way I did when I first read such books as a kid. 

It was all so beautiful and I knew it. 

Now to the bus, to the City-Centre and the Minster (but first Yorkshire pudding). 

NOW we emerged from under the medieval streets and into the early afternoon light and there she was. 

When you stand in front of a cathedral, you’re looking up. Good luck looking anywhere else. Large buildings make you feel small. Large cathedrals make you feel you are small and God is immense. I could feel the experience in my guts. They speak their own language: the nave, the aisle, transepts, narthex, chapels, and buttresses (some even fly). The people of the Middle Ages must have thought that from the top of the tallest tower, you might be able to see the bottoms of God’s feet.

Inside, I kept looking up into the vaulted ceilings and the heavens and for the first time looking at a building, my emotions got me. Water shot to my eyeballs and I quickly turned away from my wife so she wouldn’t see. I don’t know why I cried. I just felt it. All of it. The beauty, the history, the awe, and the grandeur.

My wife wasn’t as swept away. It’s not that she isn’t moved by things but she more often experiences the glory of God through a glass of warm tea which she said she was going to go find. I asked her if I could stay. I had to take a tour. I needed to know more about this place. It’s one thing to see something beautiful, it’s another to know its story.

“Well, you have the schedule,” she said. “Does that work?”

“Absolutely.” It didn’t. The other museums would close before we got there but I didn’t care. She gladly went on her way and I gladly let the tears flow. We were new to marriage and I’m still learning how to let her see me cry.

I lit a candle and prayed “May all beauty lead us home to you.” 

I went on my tour and stayed until the building closed at 5. As I was leaving, they invited us to come back in 30 minutes for Evensong. I ran to fetch my wife. 

We entered the church choir through the arch guarded by the first 15 kings of England and were greeted by the priest.

“Welcome, sit anywhere in the choir and please turn off your mobile telephone”

The choir is a large space with wooden stalls on both sides for singers. The wood is deep brown and ornately carved in the Gothic style. I had a booklet which I thought was a bulletin because they’d handed it to me when I walked in. Where I come from, you get a bulletin with some blank spaces to fill in from the sermon, a list of events like the youth group going to Panama City, and death announcements.

I felt apprehension. I’ve spent years feeling that apprehension when I picked up my bulletin and walked into church. I’d feel like something was expected of me, maybe I expected it of myself. The music is going to be rather emotional and someone near me will raise their hands and I will feel like that’s weird. I won’t be moved to worship by the music, I’ll be moved to fear because I don’t have whatever they have. I don’t want to raise my hands. I don’t feel these lyrics. I’m asking harder questions than this. I don’t belong here.

For a while, I could almost set my planner by having a small anxiety attack in church.

But it wasn’t a bulletin. It was the entire service for the day printed out with scriptures and prayers. There was no music tonight because it was Wednesday. The priest came in and read. We joined her for a passage. We confessed our sins and received forgiveness. We read the Apostles Creed together, the simple summation of who we are as a people in Christ. We read a prayer together. We prayed for the people of Ukraine, we prayed for the Queen, we prayed for the country and we prayed for the world.

 “A reading from Psalm 107” the priest's voice echoed into the arches as it had done for 1,000 years and beyond. “Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress. He brought them out of darkness, the utter darkness, and broke away their chains. Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for mankind.”

I cried again and I can’t explain it again. I just felt it. All of it. I felt like I was small and God was beautiful— and he cared for me. 

Later I tried Terry’s Chocolate Orange. They are exquisite, y’all. It was something else.