The Romance of Churches, Chapels, but not so much Cathedrals...

St. George's Chapel (inside) and Monument of Princess Charlotte above... St. Bernard's school and the grand staircase above ^

I often wonder why I love churches. I am pretty sure now that it is not some inherent religious desire I visit them and admire them so. It is still a puzzlement but this snippet of a poem I found in a book- "The Romance of Saint George's Chapel, Windsor Castle"-hits the nail on the head.

In the elder days of Art,
Builders wrought with greatest care

Each minute and unseen part;

For the Gods see everywhere.

Let us do our work as well,

Both the unseen and the seen;

Make the house, where Gods may dwell,

Beautiful, entire, and clean.

Well, the book only contains the first stanza, but I looked up the rest and it just captures it perfectly. It is called "The Builders" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It is a rather nice poem, but these are by far the two best stanzas.

St. George's Chapel really does just take your breath away. It is just that history, the adoration and loving care given to this building, a living monument to devotion, faith and hope. What a marvellous thing, eh?

One of the few great things about my secondary school was the 'olde worlde' part of it, the part that used to be an old manor house with its own private chapel attached, the crooked steps up to the history rooms, the terrifyingly steep spiral staircases and the huge, high-ceiling, shuttered windows. The chapel was beautiful, except when it came to the 'whole year gatherings' where we would be forced to sing, both badly and embarrassingly alongside our peers, and kneel, and pray and then get back up again. I am definitely irreverent!!

Hmm... anyhow I am deviating. Apart from the horrors of singing that the walls no doubt still harbour, its the sanctuary, the love and the dedication put into this small section of the building that is breath-taking. Every time I step inside a chapel/church (not so much Cathedral- that seems to be built more with a flair to show off and be impressive but impersonal. However there are some exceptions...) I miss that sense of certainty, of omnipotence of a greater being, that these fellows who built the chapels, who commissioned them. They may not have been devout or stuck to all the rules in the bible but it was a way of life... few said that they didn't believe in anything.

Today, as the news keeps telling us, Britain is falling apart. The ironic thing is they have said this for hundreds of years... On working in the Chapel archives and Chapter Library, the number of tracts, sermons and books I have found on how the Popish threat is sure to ruin the country and how Protestantism is sure to come to a sticky end, and how if we disobey the bible we are going straight to hell. Society would fall down without these rules they thought. It makes me wonder whether they may have been right. I am a keen example of how irreverent a society the British nation is. However it is a depressing route I shall forgo this evening...

I am sure you will be glad of that.

I conclude this "half" blog "half" rant "half" pondering... well maybe that should be in thirds?! with what Blackburne of "The Romance of St George's Chapel" says:

"Let worshippers and sightseers catch the message that rings out from these stones, laid so gracefully and carried up so high; let them take this message home and try to live it out in their lives, in order that that which was once a pious dream may become a reality."

I may not be a believer but surely this is why I wrote my blog? That the comfort, safety, awe and grandeur of the building spoke to me... I guess I must have 'taken the message home' in some form or manner! Hmmm... maybe I won't go to hell after all...