#53: Canterbury

I’ve had to cancel the last two shows of my UK tour. Apologies to everyone who was going, and everyone who helped make them happen. I’m so sorry. But it couldn’t be helped. I can’t sing. I can barely speak. My voice is shot.

As those of you who read this Substack know, I’ve been struggling with a bug since back in February. In fact it started before that. In each case I recovered only to have it come crawling back. No, it’s not Covid. I’ve been taking tests regularly. All have been negative.

I blame this latest relapse on the Best Western in Newark-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire. Nothing in particular they did. It’s just that I went in feeling fine and left the next morning feeling wretched. Deliver me to became deliver me from. That was March 19. Since then it’s gotten progressively worse. On stage in Canterbury my voice collapsed. So there I’ve stayed, within the Precinct grounds, right outside the Cathedral.

This morning I went out to fetch something from the car, when music suddenly burst from the stone: a pipe organ and exultant singing. Of course. It’s Palm Sunday. So I walked over, not to a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but to a church doing what a church should do: orienting believers, turning them all in the direction of mystery, eternity, praise, humility, and forgiveness.

It’s been a long time since I’ve attended a church service. When I pushed against the small side door of the Cathedral, I did not expect it to be open, or that they would let me in. But it was, and they did. On the other side of the glass was a very nice man waiting to welcome me, not as a tourist but as a believer. I’m not a believer, but this seemed like the wrong moment to quibble. So I accepted when he offered me a pamphlet, “The Liturgy of Palm Sunday”, and a palm cross.

Mindful of my condition, both physical and spiritual, I sat alone and off to one side at the top of the nave aisle, more or less directly opposite where Becket was murdered. From there I would observe—again, as a tourist posing, perhaps, as a believer. But a funny thing happened. All my years of following the liturgy came back to me. Suddenly I was participating. I knew when to say and also with you and amen. I knew when to stand and when to sit, and when there would be a reading. I could still recite the Lord’s Prayer from memory (though it seems to have gone through some changes in my absence). Had I taken Communion, I would’ve known exactly what to do. What I did not know was how profoundly the experience would move me.

From my vantage point I could see the first dozen or so rows of churchgoers. I could see their faces. There was a toddler who would not sit still. There were the elderly in motorized wheelchairs. There was a family of five, all in a row, much as mine would’ve been years ago. There was a young woman with hair dyed blue who, by her expression, looked like her life depended upon being there. There were two older woman on either side of her—her mother and an aunt?—who appeared just as focused and devoted to what was being said, sung and offered. Later, the three of them would leave their places to carry the sacramental wine to the altar, the reason they were in the first row. When they returned, the younger woman needed steadying. She seemed fragile, or overwhelmed. The two older women steadied her. They resumed following the liturgy. I can only imagine what had brought them, everyone, to this Palm Sunday.

Yes, I was moved by the old forms, the hymns, the passing of the peace, and the language. But what really moved me was the people: everyone facing forward, looking up, beyond, without quite fathoming the magnitude of the thing. Because the thing is unfathomable, and even Canterbury Cathedral is just a kind of muddling through. In the faces of the congregation I saw all the suffering, joy, and incomprehension we accrue over a lifetime. For a moment the sight of those faces was unbearable, too much—until I remembered that I, like them, can bear it, have done, will. Suddenly we were all just humans in a room, including the clergy! Yes, I said we. Somewhere in there I had become one of them: a human in a room with other humans, all facing the unfathomable.