Two Birds with One Stone (February 21, 2010)

Hello all,
First of all, sorry for the delay in getting this message out; this last week was busier than I anticipated. So I'll catch up on two weeks in one email; ergo, this one's going to be long. My apologies I'm starting to feel more at home here. It's still a new experience to figure out the logistics of a pretty independent lifestyle, but I'm figuring new things out all the time.
So here's what I've been up to in the last weeks:
On Sunday the 7th, I accompanied seven or eight fellow Calvin students to a morning service at York Minster Cathedral. York Minster is an active church, offering four services daily, as well as hosting different special events throughout the month. While there is a fee to enter the Minster for sightseeing purposes, religious services are free, so they're an economical way to take a quick glimpse and also hear a really beautiful service. I can't really give a detailed description of the Minster yet, but for the service we entered the cavernous east "choir" of the cathedral (I'm consulting a quick guide to Gothic architectural terms, so bear with me) that branches off of the equally cavernous transept, opposite the nave, or "front" of the Minster. The interior of the elongated choir is furnished with tiers of wooden pews; the ranks of organ pipes are housed in a large, elegantly carved wooden fixture mounted over the arched entrance to the choir. The seats for the choir members divide the choir in two, with twin raised pulpits immediately nearby, on either side of the space. More pews stand beyond the pulpits, leading up to the altar in the front, where an illustrated tarp stands in for the massive stained glass windows that adorn the east side, which is currently undergoing restoration. The service was Solemn Eucharist, which followed the Anglican Book of Common Prayer and consisted of liturgical readings, canticles by the choir, selections from scripture, and culminated in the eucharist. All of us Calvin students chose to receive eucharist, and accordingly we proceeded to the altar when prompted by an usher, knelt at the rail, and received the host and a sip of wine from the priest (being unfamilar with Anglicanism, I can only guess at the titles of the clergy). The service concluded exactly the way it started, with a procession of clergy and choir.
Later that afternoon, the entire Calvin group showed up for "Tea and Toast", two hours of Sunday afternoon fellowship at a church not far from my apartment complex. In addition to the Calvin students, there were merely six regular congregation members in attendance, so I felt somewhat awkward, fearful that we had overwhelmed them. However, there was an abundance of bread and crumpets (which, contrary to what I had imagined, are like fine, porous English muffins) for toasting, an abundance of jams and spreads to accompany them, and an abundance of tea and hot chocolate for sipping. After some friendly fellowship, the supervisors of the meeting showed one of Rob Bell's "Nooma" videos, which may seem more novel in York than they do to a group of students from Grand Rapids, where Bell's church is located, which was followed by discussion of the video.
I ventured out to the supermarket to buy groceries on Monday, which will probably become a weekly habit. In my British literature class we wrapped up our discussions on the bucolic poetry of William Wordsworth and switched to the more fantastic visions of his opium-crazed peer, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I find Coleridge's poetry more gripping than Wordworth's and quite enjoyed "Rime of the Ancient Mariner", although some archaic language and flowery phrases made it diffiult every now and then (I suppose that's what it must be like to read these emails of mine, although I balk at comparing myself too explicitly to Coleridge).
On Tuesday night I joined the first meeting of a "Lad's Small Group", coordinated through the York St. John's Christian Union. The focus of the meetings this semester is the Ten Commandments, only in reverse order to make things more exciting. Thus I discussed the ramifications of the Tenth Commandment (Thou shalt not covet) with five other "lads" attending the university. Despite some noise from a "football" game televised in the Student Union, we had a pretty good discussion, and afterward they were willing to entertain some of my questions about life in England.
On Wednesday afternoon, I joined the entire Calvin group for an excursion to the National Rail Museum, which is situated within a fifteen minute walk from the York St. John campus. There was a variety of locomotives and cars exemplifying the evolution of trains from their early days through the present. The trains were all in pretty good shape (thanks to extensive restoration in some cases), and there were a handful that had their cabs exposed for visitors to see the workings that regulated the engines. One engine had been cut away so that the inner mechanisms could be seen, which was quite interesting; an another one was situated above a trench in the floor, allowing one to walk beneath it and see its underside. Among the specialty displays in the museum were several of the royal coaches, including those used to transport Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth, as well as a Japanese Bullet train. But probably the exhibit that intrigued me most was a display on the restoration of the Flying Scotsman. A balcony overlooked a large machine shop where the famous locomotive was disassembled down to its chassis, with all its components spread around the shop at different stations. I was somewhat disappointed not to see her in one piece, but it was a sight to see nevertheless.
On Thursday evening, I went to one of the Christian Union meetings, which was just an informal praise service. One member led some songs on the acoustic guitar, and a local youth minister delivered a message about communication with God. Small prayer groups and more songs concluded the service, which was overall very similar to a dorm worship meeting in the Calvin dormitory, only longer. Afterward, I met a couple other members of the Christian union, including a fellow expatriate English major from Hope College. Our meeting was friendly and not marred by any rivalry whatsoever.
I stayed up late on Thursday night, catching only an hour and a half of sleep before rousing from bed and walking to the train station for 3:00 train for the first leg of a weeekend trip to Wales. My half of the group thought had gotten tickets for an earlier train than the rest, but not so early as we initially thought; only after we were aboard did we discover that we had misread the itinerary and boarded a train an hour too early. Thus we were compelled to spend an hour layover in the city of Leeds, midway between York and Manchester. I passed that hour catching some patchy sleep stretched between two metal chairs on the platform. After another half hour of layover following our arrival in Manchester, I was able to snatch a solid two hours of slumber during the trip from Manchester to the Welsh town of Llandudno (a name whose true pronunciation I won't even attempt to convey via email). We waited in a smoky, greasy cafe for an hour for the second half of our group to arrive before dropping our stuff off at at the local hostel, getting some quick lunch, and catching a bus for the nearby town of Conwy.
Most of our time in Conwy was spent checking out the well-preserved remains of a castle built there, just one of several castles constructed as a part of Edward I's campaigns agains Welsh uprisings in the 13th century. Branching out from the main structure of the Castle is a stone wall that still practically encircles Conwy, which rests on the shores of a lake. We walked along the wall as far as the outer keep, entering the castle through a "back door" of sorts. Once inside, we were free to roam virtually anywhere in the structure. All of the eight towers were accessible by means of surviving spiral stone steps, and the view of the surrounding countryside was stunning. The wooden-framed structures within the walls were long gone, obviously, but the cellars and some structural walls were all accessible. Overall, it ranks as one of the single coolest things I've seen so far in the course of this trip. After an hour or two at the castle, we explored the rest of Conwy: more winding streets, a starkly beautiful lakeshore path, and the smallest house in the British Isles(little more than a lean-to with a door, window, and chimney). We rode the bus back to Llandudno shorty before dusk.
Back in town, we got dinner at a local pub, whose barkeeper ridiculed the frugal Americans for ordering water instead of more stimulating (and expensive) beverages. Then it was back to the hostel for the rest of the evening. Being unable to catch any coverage of the Olympics on television, we instead contented ourselves with snacks and games (we were the only ones in the hostel, which allowed us to be as loud as we wanted). Everyone was agreeable to an early bedtime after a long day.
After waking and having breakfast at the hostel, our group split into two; I accompanied the larger of the two groups, and we hiked up the Great Orme, a "prominent limestone headland" that juts into the Irish Sea from the coastline of Llandudno. As we climbed higher and higher, the view grew more and more glorious--mountains were visible behind us, and wind turbines and oil rigs dotted the horizon in front of us. Midway up the grassy, rocky climb, we stopped at a small church and meditated on the lonely, windswept graveyard. The final leg of the climb to the very summit of the Orme sloped up at a severe angle, and everyone was eager to catch his breath and pose for a photograph by a small pylon that stoon on the summit. From there, I split off on my own, because I wanted to check out the site of a Bronze Age copper mine nearby on the Orme; I was dismayed to discover that it was closed for the season, which I really should have anticipated. I contented myself to take a route back down the orme that strayed through a couple streets, meandered along a rock face, and brought me close to some nonplussed sheep (sheep droppings were ubiquitous on the Orme). After some lunch, I spent the afternoon wandering by myself, checking out some shops in Llandudno, ambling to the end of a long boardwalk that jutted into the sea, clambering around on the seashore, and walking the seaside promonade at sunset, with resort hotels on my right and the water on my left. After dinner, we caught an 8:00 train, where efforts to read "Wuthering Heights" were frustrated by the fact that we were caught between a group of noisy drunkards and some teenage girls who played music the entire time. Things were more peaceful after the connection at Manchester, and I was able to lavish all of my attention on the story of Heathcliff and Catherine and how they made life miserable for themselves and everyone around them. We arrived back in York shortly after midnight, and I flopped into bed around 2:00.
I slept in on Sunday morning, compensating for my slothfulness by attending Evensong at York Minster on Sunday afternoon. Once again, the service was lovely and I was chilled. Evensong concluded with a nice setting of Bach's Prelude and Fugue in G (BWV 541) that swelled magnificently in the air, as if the organ were a living, breathing thing...forgive me, I always think of organ music that way. Returning from that, I had the treat of speaking to my parents and younger sister via Skype (thanks Karin!). I spent much of Monday wrapping up "Wuthering Heights" and neglecting to write emails to sypmathetic and patient people who are interested in my time spent abroad. Since it's difficult for me to find means to stay caught up on weekly episodes of NBC's "The Office" over here, I decided instead to watch episodes of it's British predecessor on YouTube, which are pretty entertaining despite being hard to understand at some points.
Tuesday evening brought another meeting of the Lad's Small Group; I discussed the implications of the Lord's admonition not to bear false witness (white lies and Santa Claus featured tangentially in this discourse). There were some new faces at this meeting, including a wheelchair-bound student named Ben, who had a penchant for devil's advocacy; after I casually mentioned that I hadn't yet exploited my new priviliege of legal alcohol consumption because I had no idea what to drink, he promised to act as my helmsman to help me navigate the virtual ocean of alcoholic offerings in the city of York.
Wednesday night was something of an adventure. I purchased a ticket for an orchestra concert at the University of York (a different school than York St. John's) and took the bus to the campus at the alloted time. Following two modernist, selections, a collection of lieder by Wagner, and the intermission, the orchestra performed a stirring rendition of Beethoven's 7th Sympony--well worth the £3 student ticket. I missed the bus to return to the city center after the concert, however, and ended up walking the empty streets of York for an hour to return to my flat. It was peaceful and moderately comfortable, so it wasn't that bad.
Not much happened on Thursday; Friday evening was marked by a social gathering at Prof. Ward's house. Another girl and I inadvertently arrived early, so we sat and talked with the professor and his wife for half an hour before others arrived. Inevitably, I ended up discussing bad genre fiction stereotypes with some of the fellow English majors in the group until about 10:00 before returning to my flat and hastily packing for our expedition to the Lake District. Yesterday morning we boarded a charter bus at 8:00 in the morning as drove for three hours to the village of Grasmere, stopping midway at the small town of Settle where I got some phenomenal fresh tea cakes at a bakery called "Ye Olde Naked Man Cafe"...I can only assert that the truth is stranger than fiction. The landscape was rolling and starkly beautiful, and almost everyone remarked how similar it seemed to the landscape seen in Peter Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings".
Grasmere is the town where William Wordsworth spent his most artistically productive years. We toured that housed some of his manuscripts, the journals kept by his sister Doroth, and manuscripts by a couple other Romantic authors, such as Coleridge and Sir Walter Scott. After the gallery we toured Dove Cottage, where Wordworth resided with his family and whichever of the friends he constantly entertained was with them at the time, such as Coleridge, Scott, and Thomas de Quincey. After stopping briefly in the village proper, we struck out on a hike up the slopes of a mountain behind dove cottage. Again we were struck by the rugged beauty, and it was evident how Wordsworth found limitless inspiration hiking over those hills. Myelf and three other students lagged behind the bulk of the Calvin group, pausing frequently to take photographs of the breathtaking scenery: clouds hung over mountains in the distance, only intermittently allowing some bold rays of sunlight to pierce through and bathe the scenery below in patches of golden light. The way up the mountain wandered over short grassy turf and metal gates admitted us through the stone fences that ran all over the slopes of the hills.
Following the hike and the 20 minute drive to the town of Keswick, we checked into our hostel. With an hour or two until supper, I explored a bit of the town, following a pathway along a river to a private garden I probably had no business to be in and then walking down a couple streets to a town square. The hot dinner that the hostel was a godsend, and I spent the rest of the evening filling out postcards and reading, first Tennyson, then Alistair Maclean, before calling it a day at 10:30. After a hot shower and breakfast this morning, two other students and I took advantage of a couple hours of free time to check out the James Bond Museum in Keswick (neglecting Sunday church to worship at the altar of Sean Connery, Roger Moore, and Pierce Brosnan). The museum wasn't too extensive, but I took several prohibited photographs of the actual vehicles used in many of the films. After that I wandered through town for a bit, discovering that a local theater was screening Stanley Kubrick's "Barry Lyndon" right at the time we were scheduled to leave town. I was able to moderate my disappointment at this cruel twist of fate and met the rest of the group to go take a look at the house inhabited by Coleridge after he followed his idol Wordsworth to the Lake District. The house is privately owned, so all we could do was take photographs from a distance; the massive housecat that ambled out down the drive attracted more admiration that the large white house itself.
We had intended to take another, more prolonged hike through more hilly terrain around a nearby lake, but reports of snow in York persuaded our bus driver to depart ahead of schedule...a mere three inches of snow. Small potatoes to those of us accustomed to weather in the Midwest, but snowfall is a much more confounding phenomenon to the English. We still hiked for an hour or so, and again I was one of the students who fell behind for the sake of taking phtographs. At one point we stepped into a theater to avail ourselves of the restrooms, and it seems that the theater is managed in some capacity by Dame Judi Dench, which I found somewhat interesting. We boarded the bus again at about 2:30 and headed back to York; I napped for some of the trip and finished reading The Guns of Navarone for the duration.
Upon returning to my flat, I spent half an hour trying fruitlessly to secure some clothesline and adhesive hooks to my walls; washing machines and driers entail exhorbitant fees, and doing laundry in my washstand is becoming an increasingly attractive option.
Whew! Sorry this message is so long. I really will try to stay more current in my dispatches so as to avoid too many messages of this length in the future. I hope everyone who is reading this is having finding success and satisfaction as he or she attends to whatever it is they do. For my part, I do miss life in the United States quite a bit; England is fantastic, but it isn't home. I intend to enjoy every minute I'm here, and also to relish being back home at the end of four months.
I miss you all and think of you often!
-John Morton