Westminster Cathedral

Probably I should have gone to Westminster Abbey next. But I didn't want to. It seemed too historic and busy for me today. There are also a couple of small churches that are nearer too, but I have walked past them hundreds of times and they never seem to be open. I don't really know what to do about them - should I try and ring and make an appointment? What would I say? Anyhow, Westminster Cathedral is nearer to Sainsbury's and even nearer to Zara where I want to look at a dress I am obsessing about. I go and look at it for the fourth time. It is a navy blue sundress with big print flowers. I love it. But I don't have time to try it on. Don't have £35.90 either. I will probably keep going to look at it until it sells out. Then maybe try and track it down on e bay. Or move on to another obsession. Only when it has nearly gone or completely gone, will I know if I really, really want it. Sort of extreme sport imaginary shopping. It is an occasional hobby.

This morning is warm, blue skies, beautiful. I have taken my sons to their counsellor, and sat in a small room with them, watching them draw disturbing but fascinating pictures. My eldest son, in all the confusion of our lives started suffering massive violent rages, like x rated episodes of supernany which had me in the end, calling in some help. I felt so badly that I had failed, that despite my absolute love and what I believe to be my kindness and care I had failed. Since then, I have thought and thought and worked out some strategies to help us all, and now sitting laughing or playing a game, things we always did but sometimes on tiptoe, on eggshells, waiting and expecting another terrifying outburst, I feel very fully that we are all present, all participating, that I have turned it round. I almost hope that the woman is going to say, 'you three don't need to be here, be on your way' but then I sit and watch my youngest take a pen and say 'it feels like this', and do the most extraordinary map, with pages and pages turning into different levels, like a console game, that keeps going, (the pair of them work together, consulting each other, taking it in turns and it is the youngest taking the lead, which rarely happens, but here they are colouring together, adding arrows, sketching the structure almost oblivious of me and her in the room) and just as I think, after the initial recognition of the situation he has drawn, and the exact model of emotion he has precisely conveyed, I begin to think, he is pushing it now, just keeping us entertained, he has forgotten his purpose (not a criticism, he is a little kid, he has our attention) he announces the final level and adds a figure, putting the most excruciating exact and painful details of his emotional landscape to it that I am almost breathless with pride and winded with the pain and confusion he must feel. I am not certain about the ethics of reporting this, and have left the detail general to keep their privacy but I feel exhausted by what I witnessed.
Also this morning my mum friend from the school who is at present living in a refuge ( I know!? It is so awful I couldn't/wouldn't make this up) texted me to say that she has to go to hospital, she needs an operation. Could I collect her children this afternoon and take them home? Only this weekend I said to her 'Things can only get better from here.' And we laughed. But they just got a whole lot worse. I instinctively believe that hardship is finite, that there is a bag of it for everyone, and if you carry your load long enough then it will lift. But it isn't true. Here is some bleak truth. You can soldier your load bravely and stoically with humour and fortitude and only be given another huge bag to carry.
The cathedral though is like a fairy tale drawing. I can remember years ago, when I first moved to London as a student, seeing it from a bus, and craning back to try and make sense of it, 'what was that?' Stripey stone, multiple layered domes, a huge rapunzel tower, a large plaza at the front. It is the Catholic cathedral
Above the doorways the signs for alpha and omega in stone held by carved birds. The door opens to the musky, dirty, sweet smell of incense. I have been inside once before and loved it. I am looking forward to the experience, looking forward to describing it. It is a surprise then, the noise. It sounds like a lorry reversing, a lorry reversing in a huge echoey church, an incessant high pitched beeping, and the sound of mechanical levering. There is somewhat unexpectedly, just in the part of the church, where previously I got the first magnificent view, a yellow cherry picker crane, extending up and down, a man perched, doing high cleaning. The view is obliterated. The power of the church, the power I expected to feel is lost. I move to find it. This cathedral is absolutely massive, an amazing patchwork of different marbles and mosaics, and flowers and candles and wrought metalwork, all in dull snake colours, but, and this is the part I like, as the eye lifts above this, above the columns, above the normal eye-line, lifting higher and higher into the high domes of the cathedral ceiling there is only dusky, dense, ash black. I had never seen anything like it before. I believe it is normal in a church to lift your eyes to the heavens to find light and beauty and magnificence. This, is like looking into a void. The grey, gradually fading to the soot black of nothing. A kind of horror to the weight of darkness pressing down.

But the church below, is busy. Tourists, people praying, strangely a photographer taking a picture of a black man rocking in ecstatic prayer. Like an actor playing a part it looks a bit over the top, a little bit unnecessary. I see too a woman, a young woman, touching the stone of a small altar, her body slumped into it, as if in surrender. Another woman fills a plastic bottle from the tap of holy water, slowly and reverentially. A smart man in a suit with gold buttons on the sleeves, sits, eyes closed, completely still and devout, his face lifted to the dark ceiling, his whole body at peace. He looks like he has just left the office for a Pret a Manger sandwich not this total, absorbed prayer. Others are slumped on their knees, their supplications still and quiet. Here, ardent devotion is not private but public, expected.

Hanging, suspended from the volcanic ash of the ceiling there is an enormous red cross with Jesus on it, his arms, long, stretched wide to the pain of his hands attached by nails.
I sit. Eyes straight ahead. Interested and observing. It is almost like a prayer, my thoughts for my friend. I want her to have somewhere to live. I want her to be well. I attempt to fill the space with these wishes.

The church was opened in 1903 built on land that had originally been marshes, then had many uses, a market and fairground, a maze, a pleasure garden, a place for bull baiting, a prison, finally the catholic church bought the land and started building the cathedral in 1895. So close in date to the Methodist Great Hall I realise that I want to go back and date the chuches I forgot to. It seems fascinating, this area, with it's competitive church building. Also there are 14 stations of the cross by Eric Gill. I had seen a few and thought they looked like his work, but found everything else too fascinating to concentrate on them. I read that he called them 'a statement without adjectives'. 'The figures are impassive and are meant to be so, for the emotion must come from us.'

A small madonna and child statuette that I had liked best of everything turns out to be medieval. The most precious thing in the cathedral. I just thought there was something beautiful in the worn fragility and sensitivity of the pair and their gaze. A very old description made in alabaster of what we still feel.


Amen