God's House

Nothing is quite like walking into a cathedral. One immediately looks up, to the dark vaulted ceiling, then ahead, along the row of pillars that disappear into a chapel for Mary or a saint. The weight of that great open space pushes a breath from you, and maybe you forget the camera in your hand and the couple muttering in English next to you.



The first time I walked into a cathedral I was twelve. And it taught me more about religion in a moment then I had learned in all more short life before. It made more sense.

We’ve seen a lot of churches on this trip, and a few spectacular cathedrals – Notre Dame and the York Minister, San Marco and the Sagrada Familia. But in Bavaria we got to see a new kind of church.

Klaus, my mother’s cousin, says that they were built as a catholic reaction to the success of the Lutherans in Germany.



They are perhaps more spectacular because the outsides are so modest – simple pink or white stucco with a copper cap on the bell tower. You do not walk in under a scene of the last judgment, no damned souls.



Where the cathedrals make you gulp, these churches make you want to laugh for joy. They have over-gilded altars, angels and trumpets bursting from the walls, and pink and gold filigree circling clear windows that let the sunshine in. They make you full of wonder rather than the awe of a cathedral.



When you walk in, you still look up. Instead of the imposing stone and shadowed corners are huge rainbow bright murals: more angels and Mary, the infant Christ and various miracles and saints. Even in the small ones. The ceilings are high, and there is still that sense of space, but free rather than enclosed.



On top of that we caught them at harvest time, so in front of every church is a pile of food – cabbages and rice, a round loaf of bread and squash, tomatoes, apples, and zucchini. The expression of bounty is an ancient one: look we have enough food for winter, so we can offer some to God.



On the wall of one of these were small amateur paintings, done by supplicants in thanks to Mary for her help. Klaus deciphered a few, reading the cramped old scripts. And he found one from a family dated 400 years ago. He chuckled because he had taught students from that family.

When we were planning this trip I saved Bavaria as the last place we would stay with family before going south and east to Istanbul. We're very glad we did.

Finding Sherwood

So as I was planning our itinerary I realized that in going north we would have to cross through Nottinghamshire, and in doing so would find ourselves close to Nottingham and therefore Sherwood Forest.

My senior seminar this past year was on Robin Hood and it has become a minor obsession of mine. I went to Rochester, NY for the annual Robin Hood conference and found myself, slightly disturbingly, laughing at jokes about medieval lit and Robin Hood made by Robin Hood scholars. It was a disconcerting but pleasant experience.

Aside from that, who can fail to love Robin Hood and his many incarnations? From the Disney fox to Ivanhoe’s shadowy companion, Errol Flynn to Cary Elwes. We won’t go into Russell Crowe at the moment, but only because I still haven’t seen it and could not do justice with my comments. I also choose to pass over Kevin Costner. (Feel free to ask me about that if you want to hear a rant).

Now as it turns out Sherwood is not in fact very close to Nottingham. The nearest train station is Mansfield Woodhouse, about an hour ride north-ish, and from there you have to catch a bus to Edwinstowe and the Sherwood Visitor’s Center.

So our first day of serious travel within England consisted of the train to Nottingham (fairly relaxing) and then another to Mansfield Woodhouse.

I doubt any of you will ever get to Mansfield Woodhouse.


It is a small station. No one, in fact, works there. One cannot buy tickets, obtain any information about the surrounding area, and nor, to my chagrin, could you find a convenient locker in which to leave a few large and heavy packs.

And so Chelsea and I wandered forth from this station with our packs and into the town of Mansfield Woodhouse. Which was empty. It was a Sunday. Nothing was open, and the stares from the few of the populous driving by were alarmed.

By following signs to the town center we did find a bus station, the appropriate bus, and it did show up. When we told the driver we were going to the Sherwood Forest Visitor’s Center his bemused expression changed to one of bored understanding. Of course. We were here for Robin Hood.

There are several different theories on how Robin Hood began, no one has been able to find a likely historical figure to base him on. One theory runs that he is a continuation of a pagan king of summer, a forest spirit. I did not have a particular predilection to this theory, but walking in Sherwood Forest, looking at trees too big for three people to put their arms around, at a woods that is not as vast as it was but still feels deep, I can understand that more.

It was the last day of the Robin Hood festival, and there were kids running around with miniature bows and arrows with suction cups on the tips, there were bright green hats and swordswallowers, a woman dancing to the Korobushka and an alchemist. And of course there was Robin and Tuck, John and the Sheriff.

I tried to stay out of earshot from the actors because while they looked the part, I doubt they were staying much in character. And I wanted to believe in them for a bit, to believe in Robin who walks through the forest, who blows his horn and summons the merry men, who always escapes to annoy the Sheriff one more time.

Tower

So today we spent our morning at the Tower of London.

Now this is tricky. The Tower is a major historical site, a huge tourist trap, a checkmark on the superficial list of must sees in London. It has guards in red coats and black hats who march five paces in each direction in front of a little wooden structure about the size of a telephone booth with absolutely nothing in it. People take pictures of their children smiling in front of these guards.

And yet. It is the Tower.

We walked through rooms where prisoners had carved their names into the stone, a man who was part of the Gunpowder Plot. Some carved symbols of faith. One carved an astronomical chart. Towers and rooms were marked to show which monarch constructed them, right back to William the Conqueror. Traitor’s gate still rests in shallow water, and the ravens prance and cackle. And the jewels. You can’t forget the jewels.

And in the end, no amount of Henry VIII collectible dolls, no amount of fellow tourists exclaiming “It’s a unicorn!” in derision and disbelief, can really destroy the power that lives in that place.

The reason that I wanted to see the Tower was Lady Jane Grey.

For those of you who haven’t heard me babble about Jane Grey, she was Queen of England for nine days between Edward VI and Mary Tudor. She was seventeen when she was crowned, deposed and beheaded. And she was imprisoned and beheaded in the Tower.

It is not strange to encounter a historical figure who enchants you, and Jane Grey has always been one of mine. I’m not remotely alone in that. If you want a dramatized version there is a movie called “Lady Jane” with Helena Bohnam Carter and Cary Elwes which I adore and my family is sick of. Or you can read her letters.

One in particular. A letter to Thomas Hardy, written in the Tower, extolling him not to break with his faith, with Protestantism, for the sake of his immortal soul. It is beautifully written. And it was written when a conversion to Catholicism would probably have saved her own life.

At the Tower is a monument, two glass circles with the names of those given the honor of an execution within the Tower grounds. It is an unremarkable space, a field off a walkway, the walls are far away and it is open to the sky. Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard are there, and Countess Rochford who was Anne Boleyn’s sister-in-law and survived that queen only to be taken down in Katherine Howard’s fall.

And there is Jane Grey, the nine days queen.

I heard someone remark that it was too modern an object, out of place with the rest of the Tower.

Perhaps. But we are out of place, voyeurs who half understand what we are seeing. We don’t have time to really know this place, we who have a morning to spend glimpsing the behemoth that is history. I stood over Jane Grey’s name and mourned for her a little. Because I think she was brave. Because seventeen is too young. Because there was a person who walked from the Tower to this patch of ground and who, blind-folded, could not find the block.

That’s it really. I went looking for that moment and I found it, created it maybe. But I think that is what you have to do. It’s easy to forget the human beings involved in light of little paper dolls demonstrating how the rack worked.



“The soul takes flight into the world which is invisible, and there arriving she is sure of bliss and forever dwells in paradise.” – Plato, translated by Jane Grey for John Feckenham, who, bless him, wrote it down.