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...

SCHOOL "CHUMS"

Argh.... I had that moment yesterday that we all dread- when we meet someone unexpectedly who we went to school with. We so desperately want to be impressive and cool and important.

Yeah, guess what?

It didn't happen!

I was wearing a daft hat at work, standing outside in the muggy heat welcoming pervy old men into *enter tourist industry* with midges and greenflies from an infected nearby tree roaming around my head and having a particular affinity with my face!! Then she rocks up, thin, pretty (as she always was) and with a cute American boyfriend.

Damn.

At least she talked to me right? And seemed well pleased to talk to me- I hope it was not out of smugness for my situation! She is a dancer (professionally.) She left school and never looked back. She works hard. She now dances all over the world. In America for example. She was on holiday in the UK and bringing her boyfriend home and showing him the area. Damn. I can't really beat that. "What have you been up to?" "I work here, graduated last summer...." I tail off and ask more questions about her.

I just lack the cool-factor.

At least she was really nice. I am really grateful for that. And the memory of me beating her in a tap dancing competition once when I was little is particularly comforting... It is a consolation prize of "I could have done that if I had wanted to!" I did used to want to be a dancer... I just lack the natural aggression and bitchiness inherent in the industry to do it and be successful. I am far to easily manipulated by other people's thoughts of me.

It harks back to a convo I had with my dancing girls- when we had a bit of a get together at Easter. Jo and Polly had really tried to get into the industry. They are pretty self-assured characters. They know who they are and what they want in life. I am not. Neither was my other friend Charis. She was suffering from the same issues I had at uni. Polly and Jo gave up on the dancing game. Too competitive. Dancing wasn't fun anymore. If they couldn't do it, I would have been breakfast for the competition. I would have been eaten alive.

At the end of the day I am just pround of my historyness, my lumpy mid-section (instead of hardcore steely abs) and idiosyncracies!

Just at moments like that one yesterday... I just wished I had a shred of coolness.

De-Fuzzing My Hair Brush and Auschwitz...

What on earth....

Ok, so I was de-fuzzing my hair brush this morning, washing all the crud that hair products leave in between the bristles- it is a time consuming job, plus the enthralling nature of plucking wilting, greying hair that has merged to become blobs of grey matted stuff is a pleasure I could well forgo. In addition it has a very ominous connotation for me.

So... as I was de-fuzzing the hair brush this morning... it reminded me of the stacks, piles and hills of hair in the Auschwitz museum that I visited when I was 18. Now I went round this museum looking at the bits and pieces and of course it was horrible, but the amount of stuff that was around you, you did kind of become sensitised to it. In the end, at about ten o'clock at night when I was on the plane home, a sense of disappointment welled up in me. It didn't move me like I thought it would. Millions of people had died there. That was their stuff. That was their hair that was cut forcibly from their heads. Nope. Not a tear. And I am quite an emotional person, though I have realised over the years it will come into play at the most bizarre and inconvenient time for me. Other times when I could really do with a bit of a cry I stow it up and appear uncaring.

I went home, went to school, began writing the speech to present to the school about "our experience" of Auschwitz. Huff. Well, I was merely jumping through the hoops of what the teachers wanted to hear, what the first years wouldn't think too traumatising and what the older years would think boring.

I was still fine. So come Monday morning I brushed my own hair and went to go and do this stupid little oratory number. There I was standing in front of the school and WHAM! Bloody wonderful timing. Photos were being shown I think, or I remember looking at some photos before I went on to do my bit and I think I was saying my part when my mind went blank. I hated speaking in public then. It was all a blur, all I know was it didn't go very well... I think a traumatised rabbit caught in the headlights with a very annoyed fellow student who had gone on the trip with me, saying "What IS wrong with you!"

I think it had something to do with my brushing my hair in the morning and then seeing the photo being paraded in front- then, just like in the movies, the fast forwarding effect with flashes of memories taken like photographs. A pile of shoes. Knitted baby clothes. Suitcases. Hair brushes. Glasses. Etc.

So on defuzzing my hair brush, like today, it always reminds me of the greying hair that had been lopped off those poor individuals- once brown, blond, red, black- now sits in a museum slowly rotting whilst unfeeling people parade past it with some ignorant dutiful sense of importance.

Another thing that often sparks me to remember a) the horrors of Auschwitz and b) the humiliating spectacle in front of the school is my friend Jenny's porch. They used to have shoes piled either side of the doorway as you walked through their front door. Really creeped me out. There were old shoes from when they were kids stacked just like those in the cabinets in the museum.

I suppose it makes me feel bad when looking at those shoes or de-fuzzing my hair brush that I associate mass slaughter with half an hour of intense humiliation at school. No comparison really is there?

Anyhooo that is all folks. I think I have probably depressed you all enough for the time being :)

Does God Exist?

Don't worry... well, that much. It is not a long rambling debate on whether God exists. I am going to type out an essay I wrote when I was 17 and having to jump through the hoops of a course I had to do in the sixth form at my Catholic grammar school. I was just battling with my mam about me becoming more atheist and cynical at the time. Most kids at school did not even bother to finish off the course and write this essay. i was a geek and did. But I think it had more to do with teenage angst. I am still waiting for my certificate from the Archbishop for completing the course...

The arrogance combined with an acknowledgement of having to jump through the correct hoops to pass amused me on digging it out the other day when I was rummaging through my old school work and deciding what to throw out and what to keep.

"Through time human beings have existed, we have been 'obsessed' almost with the question of the existence of God. it is necessary, some argue, that God exists and there is in fact a great design for our lives. In this essay, I intend to answer the unanwswerable question: 'Does God Exist?'

"The ontological argument is a much debated argument for the existence of God. Ontologism is a theory that we have some natural and immediate intuition of God's existence. However, the main flaw of this argument is that we cannot prove the existence of God enough to satisfy the speculative reason. The classical argument was created by St. Anselm of Canterbury, who defined God as 'that than which nothing greater can be conceived'. The idea that one needs a definition of God if only to dismiss God's existence. It is now easy to come to the conclusion that God exists in the mind and because of Anselm's idea of 'that than which nothing greater can be conceived', he has to exist in reality because he is 'greater' than us and he need something in which to compare to. However, with the argument concerning reality, it brings up a whole new philosophical question: What is reality? (If you believe the film the Matrix: "What is real? How do you define real? If you're talking about what you can hear, what you can smell, taste and feel then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.")

"In addition, the idea of God's existence is necessary to give reason to why we are here. However, Bertrand Russell said that Anselm used the word 'exist' incorrectly. He says that existence cannot predicate and does not exist. So in conclusion to the ontological argument, it seems somewhat unstable and therefore unsuccessful, as definitions are limited and it is difficult to establish a definition for God, especially seeing as we are not altogether sure that He/She exists, let alone what He/She is.

"The idea of 'MOTION', i.e. the passing of power to act as it takes place, implies a first unmoved Mover, who is God, otherwise we should postulate an infinite series of movers, which is absurd. For the same causes, we see them operating in this world imply the existence of a First Cause that is uncaused i.e. that possesses in itself the sufficient reason for its existenceand this is God. Also the fact that contigent beings exist (beings whose non-existence is recognised as possible) implies that the existence of a necessary being... or God. Also the chance of us just appearing with no cause is extremely unlikely (1/1x10133).

"Humans have a concept of 'perfection', so we will need something to compare it to- an absolute standard that is also actual and infinitely perfect, which we associate with God. there is also evidence of intelligent design, which the Universe and our world shows. it implies the existence of a supreme designer- God. The ethical argument is an idea of an internal witness of conscience to the supremacy of the moral law and therefore to the existence of a supreme lawgiver. The aesthetical argument also proves the existence and perception of beauty. This beauty has to come from somewhere and we must have some comparison as we polarise such things as beauty and ugliness.

"The cosmological argument assumes the validity of the principle of sufficient reason amounts to: that it is impossible according to the laws of human thoughtto give any rational explanation of the phenomena of outside experience and of internal conscience. Whatever exists or happens must have a reason for its existence or occurance. If it is used by a scientist and is valid to explain a phenomenom of physics, it has to be equally valid when used for the explanation of the Universe as a whole. Also the theory that certain things are effects and depend on another cause, and these causes can depend on another cause. One must also realise that our species had its origins late in the history of the universe, and from commonly accepted theories, the actual organisation of the universe has a definite beginning. If time had a definite beginning, then we had a beginning, then how did time and we originate? This happening by chance again is 1/1x10133, so extrememly unlikely then!!

"The telelogical argumentis absed on the existence of design in the universe and proves the existence of a supermundane mind of great intelligence and therefore the existence of God. The idea that we exist because of blind chance is absurd. The argument, however, is not weakened by our inability to explain somethings because we have limited knowledge of the entire design.

"The existence of evil could weaken all arguments promoted for the existence of God. Some believe that god balances evil and vice versa. God is all knowing and all powerful and benevolent, but does that make evil the opposite- not all knowing or powerful? It all seems a little hazy and seems like there is no definite answer. Why would God let evil and suffering exist if He/She is all benevolent? However, one could believe that we need to know evil and suffering to know good and happiness, and appreciate it.

"To conclude, there have been many arguments put forward for the existence of God, but there are flaws in everyone of them. I think in the end it is all to do with faith, if you believe or not. I suppose for the majority, we shall have to wait until death, either to tell us the 'truth' or confirm already stated beliefs."

What a cop out conclusion!! haha... jokes....