Salisbury Cathedral on Good Friday

As soon as we get home I am going to re-read Pillars of the Earth. It has been speculated that Ken Follet was inspired by Salisbury Cathedral and used the cathedral as his model as he wove stories around history in his novels. My father in law and I were standing near the cathedral entrance looking across the great space of the side yard towards John and his mom who were off taking pictures of the cathedral. My father in law said, "look." I turned around to see where it was that I was supposed to be looking, I didn't see anything unusual, unless you count one the most magnificent cathedrals in the world as unusual....I turned back to him, "what, I don't see anything?" "There goes a monk." "A what?", I asked. "A monk, look." I followed his gaze to the back side of a Franciscan monk. Brown robe, rope belt, leather sandals. Wearing the same garments worn by his monastic brethren since the 13th century, this man was slowly walking away from me towards a gated courtyard at the side of the cathedral. Now Saint Francis has long been on my short list of people worthy of admiration. His relationship to birds and animals for starters as well as his uniquely open mind regarding prayer. The story goes that he went to Egypt and witnessed Muslims on their knees praying to Allah, and was so moved by this that he introduced Roman Catholics to this way of praying.

And then we went in the Cathedral. On the afternoon of Good Friday. The children's choir was preparing for an afternoon service. The choir has practice twice a day, every day. A young man stepped forward onto the alter, raised his eyes, his hands and his voice and sang. His beautiful voice echoed off the walls of the cathedral, and joined the ghosts of the hundreds of thousands of voices who have sung before him in this painfully lovely church. I felt silly standing by myself listening to him and crying, nearly choking back sobs until I saw John's mom who was in even worse shape and then I didn't feel so bad.

There are four copies of The Magna Carta in the world. One of the copies is in it's own special chapel at the Salisbury Cathedral. Prior to our visit to the cathedral I had heard the words Magna Carta, but I didn't know what they meant. News that The Magna Carta was a launch pad for our own Declaration of Independence has only just recently reached my ears. I find myself in a constant place of wonder that I am able to see things like a piece the paper that reduced the power of a King and made possible the creation of a powerful Parliament and some 500 years later became part of our very own Bill of Rights. We couldn't take any pictures of the Magna Carta what with it being old and fragile. We left the Cathedral and did what all good tourists do, we found a pub and drank beer.